The Arizona secretary of state was supposed to be a shoo-in when she won the Democratic nomination for governor. After all, her Republican opponent is Kari Lake, a TV personality the mainstream media is overjoyed to smear as an “extremist” and “election denier” at every possible opportunity.
Unfortunately, Lake has managed to run a vigorous campaign in which issues that don’t involve Donald Trump have been foregrounded; she’s come across as both engaging and likable. Hobbs, who has been unable to find a foothold issue besides “I’m not the other candidate” — yet refused to debate the other candidate — is also handicapped by having the personality of a two-by-four with an NPR tote bag wrapped around it, not an asset in any state but especially not in Arizona. After leading in the RealClearPolitics polling average until early September, Hobbs now trails Lake by 3.2 points — including an 11-point shellacking in a recent InsiderAdvantage/KSAZ-TV poll.
Things are looking pretty grim, in other words. Have no fear, though, for the Democrats are calling in the big guns in the homestretch of the campaign. To persuade the undecided Arizonan to vote Democrat on Nov. 8, they’ve pulled the ultimate October surprise: an ad from GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
You can, uh, tell why Katie Hobbs is in deep trouble.
Are you glad Liz Cheney has been voted out?
“I don’t know that I have ever voted for a Democrat,” Cheney said in an ad sponsored by her PAC, The Great Task. “But if I lived in Arizona, I absolutely would.”
“You have a candidate for governor, Kari Lake, you have a candidate for secretary of state, Mark Finchem, both of whom have said they will only honor the results of an election if they agree with it.
“If you care about the survival of our republic, we cannot give people power who will not honor elections.”
As far as I’m concerned, this ad needs to be playing in split-screen with that GIF of Tony Stark rolling his eyes in “The Avengers.” Kari Lake felt similarly — and, in an open letter to Cheney, thanked her “for your generous in-kind contribution to my campaign.”
“Your recent television ad urging Arizonans not to vote for me is doing just the opposite,” she wrote in the letter, dated Friday and addressed to “Liz Cheney, Defeated Member of Congress.”
“Our campaign donations are skyrocketing and our website nearly crashed from traffic as people rushed to learn more about my plan to put Arizona First and join our historic political movement.”
She went on to say that “my team tells me your commercial should add another 10 points to our lead. I guess that’s why they call the Cheney anti-endorsement the gift that keeps on giving.”
“While we appreciate your in-kind contribution, the $500,000 ad buy likely exceeds Arizona’s $5,300 individual contribution limit.”
That number isn’t an exaggeration, by the way: According to CNN, Cheney’s PAC is spending a whopping half-million dollars airing this thing.
Apparently, both Cheney and Hobbs labor under the misapprehension that a lame-duck representative from Wyoming who flunked out of the GOP primary for her seat because of her monomaniacal focus on Jan. 6 is really going to sway the few voters who don’t have an opinion about this race or convince conservatives to abandon Lake. I’m not sure whether this is self-aggrandizement on Cheney’s part, cluelessness on Hobbs’, or both — but either way, it’s not a good look for either.
The name of Cheney’s ad, by the by, is “Honor.” I only bring that up because, given Cheney’s primary loss and the trajectory of [the] Arizona gubernatorial race, a more apropos title for it might have been “Misery Loves Company.” Just saying.
Reporting by The Western Journal.
