Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
PHOENIX—When Arizona Republicans nominated Blake Masters to run against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), there were signs it marked the beginning of the end of the GOP’s chances to flip one of their most coveted Senate seats.
The 36-year old protégé of far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel, Masters made it through a contested primary with the backing of Donald Trump. He’d run a campaign so hard-edged and stridently Trumpian that it bordered on “dystopian,” in the words of Chuck Coughlin, a GOP pollster in Arizona.
For months, Masters had struggled to gain traction, and polls showed him losing to Kelly in resounding fashion—some by as much as 10 points. In September, the leading GOP super PAC cut its ad reservations in Arizona in an apparent triage of Masters, and prognosticators like the Cook Political Report moved the race into a less competitive category along with states like Colorado.