By DEXTER DUGGAN
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — A reason why Republicans have a problem getting together to govern as a majority in Washington, D.C., might have been demonstrated by a rally here for a candidate seeking to fill the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Jeff Flake.
Kentucky’s liberty-inclined GOP Sen. Rand Paul came out here to stand up for Senate candidate Kelli Ward at a rally. However, Paul’s Kentucky teammate, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, had thrown his support to Ward’s establishment-oriented primary-election opponent from southern Arizona, Cong. Martha McSally.
A wild card in the GOP’s August Senate primary is former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Ward, saying that the “message of freedom and liberty is spreading,” described herself to the February 16 rally as “a liberty-loving constitutional conservative Republican” who is “pro-life, pro-family, pro-freedom.”
Pledging his support to Ward for sharing his principles, Paul told the rally that there’s only one person he’ll endorse in this race, “and that’s Kelli Ward.”
There’s an inverse relationship between how popular someone is in Washington, D.C., and back home, Paul said, recalling his amazement in 2009 about the large turnout he saw for a Tea Party rally in Kentucky as that movement took shape.
The Washington establishment, on the other hand, opposed the Tea Party from the first.
Republicans “have to believe in freedom,” Paul said. “They have to believe in the marketplace….What made America great in the first place? Freedom. Leaving us alone.”
The Arizona race “is going to be a battle of conservative versus the establishment,” Paul said.
His presence served as a reminder of conservative national media and political figures backing Ward, including Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, California Cong. Dana Rohrabacher, and Iowa Cong. Steve King.
On the other hand, the leading media voice of the Arizona establishment, the Phoenix-based Arizona Republic, candidly described Ward’s primary-election foe McSally as “the favorite of the traditional GOP establishment” just after McSally announced her entry into the Senate race on January 12.
The Republic also said on January 13 that Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, “the epitome of the Republican establishment,” “has called McSally one of his top recruits of the (election) cycle.”
Ward strongly supported Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy but McSally vocally opposed it. However, with a Senate gleam in her eye, McSally began tying herself to Trump.
McConnell has been injecting himself into Senate GOP primary races, lavishing campaign funding to his preferred candidates as the Washington wise man who knows what’s best for various states’ voters.
A person need only look back to Alabama’s 2017 Senate race to see the disastrous results when McConnell intruded. He claimed to want to have the “electable” GOP candidate move forward. But his backing for loser Luther Strange led to chaos that gave the victory to Democrat pro-abortionist Doug Jones.
The “electable” candidate, in McConnell’s eyes, seems to be the less conservative of the GOP choices. The Conservative Review website’s congressional “Liberty Score” gives McSally a 42 percent rating, which is even lower than departing Never-Trumper Jeff Flake’s, at 56 percent. Both of these are graded as “F’s.”
Meanwhile, McConnell’s own Liberty Score is 38 percent, which still is better than Never-Trumper Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 33 percent.
Ward is a former Arizona state senator but has not served in Congress. However, like Paul, Ward is a physician, a fact that both of them noted.
Strong criticism of Washington, D.C., was voiced at Ward’s rally, which might seem strange when both Congress and the White House are under Republican control. Except that the control is far from unified, and at odds over important issues.
Paul recalled that the “exact same bill to repeal Obamacare” that a Republican Congress passed in 2015, which Obama proceeded to veto, failed to pass in 2017, when Trump could have signed it into law.
With the 100-member Senate narrowly balanced on a majority of 51 Republicans, it would seem McConnell should want strong conservative members less likely to cross to the Democratic side, as “maverick” McCain did last summer, killing forward motion to repeal Obamacare. But games-playing “moderates” seem more to manipulator McConnell’s liking.
Budget-minded Paul, repeatedly describing the southern Arizona congresswoman as “Martha McSpender,” denounced Washington’s spiraling high spending.
With U.S. government spending headed for $4 trillion, Paul illustrated how much one billion is. “A billion hours ago was the Stone Age,” he said, but the time needed to spend one billion dollars is two hours and five minutes.
As for this campaign, word apparently is circulating among McConnell’s establishment wise men to avoid Ward and get on board with compromiser McSally.
“Kelli has one of the best chances of any liberty candidate” to win, Paul said.
Learn From Mistakes
But there are complications.
An article in the February 18 Arizona Republic about the rally quoted Paul that “I don’t want to kid you that it will be easy….I’ve been calling some of the people who are the big muckety-mucks, and they’re lining up in the other direction.”
The 31-paragraph Republic story spent its first 18 paragraphs on Paul’s and Ward’s opinions on whether the seriously ill McCain should resign his Senate seat — Paul said at a pre-rally news conference that he hopes McCain is able to return to work — and about Paul’s and McCain’s political differences.
Ward previously said McCain should step aside if he can’t perform his duties.
Strangely, the story said nothing about Paul’s own serious health issues after a neighbor allegedly violently attacked him from behind last November, breaking six of his ribs.
In a January 10 report, CNN showed Paul saying, “I had the pain of a thousand knives for about six weeks. I could barely move and barely breathe. I couldn’t sleep. And so I am better than I was, but I won’t say I’m back to normal yet. But I am getting better.”
And the New York Daily News posted on January 7 that Paul said his recovery was “living hell.”
That experience might have influenced Paul’s attitude toward McCain’s possible recovery, but you wouldn’t know from the Republic story.
Paul appeared in good health at the news conference and rally.
Ward told the rally that border security requires a wall first, before other issues like DACA and the Dreamers should be addressed.
“I will tell you, we have got to learn from the mistakes we have made in the past,” Ward said, citing President Ronald Reagan’s signing an amnesty bill in 1986 then futilely expecting Congress to come through on border security.
The Border Patrol should be enhanced, chain migration eliminated, and sanctuary cities defunded, she said.
“When America is strong, the world is a better place,” she added later.
Arizona State Republican Sen. Nancy Barto told the rally that Ward had been the strongest voice in the State Senate against Obamacare, and that she helped pass legislation bringing Arizona its current ranking as the number one pro-life state.
Alluding to McConnell’s support for McSally, Arizona State Sen. Warren Petersen jokingly referred to her as “Martha McConnell,” drawing laughter.
This rally definitely was smaller than one in Scottsdale on October 17. That rally originally was planned as a signing event for talk host Laura Ingraham’s Billionaire at the Barricades book tour, but was expanded to include political strategist Steve Bannon and also a Ward political rally.
About 850 people attended the October rally, Ward’s campaign told The Wanderer at that time. However, the February rally appeared to have less than one-fourth that number of people.
The Wanderer asked a local political observer if this indicated Ward was losing momentum. The observer, who asked not to be named because of his professional ties, referred to the fact that Ward unsuccessfully ran against McCain in the 2016 GOP primary, then against Flake for the 2018 primary until Flake announced he was dropping out of the race on October 24.
“Part of Ward’s attraction has always been that she was running against McCain and then that she was running against Flake,” the observer said. “Without the villain in the story, she isn’t going to attract the same level of support. That said, McSally will be worse than McCain, so if the grassroots figures that out, the enthusiasm may return.
“It may also be that Paul isn’t as big of a draw as Ingraham-Bannon were, and that it really shouldn’t reflect on Ward,” he added.
This newspaper also raised the point that a local radio-talk host, James T. Harris on KFYI (550 AM), said on February 13 that Ward wasn’t appearing on Fox television anymore because Fox got the word that the establishment wants McSally.
The observer replied by recalling GOP Cong. J.D. Hayworth’s unsuccessful primary run against McCain in 2010.
“I remember Hayworth suddenly got shut out from Fox — except for once or twice on Fox Business Channel — when he was running against McCain, and hosts like (Sean) Hannity, who had nothing good to say about McCain, suddenly were muted,” he replied. “So I’m sure some of that goes on.”
The Wanderer also asked Ward spokesman Zach Henry about talk host Harris’ remark, but Henry replied he couldn’t comment because he hadn’t heard it.
Henry said Ward has “a huge bloc of the conservative voter base in Arizona. . . . I think they’ll rally around her campaign. Conservative voters are ready for a change.”
Ward beat McCain by 100,000 votes on primary-election day itself in 2016, Henry said, and she has a better ground game now.
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