Democrat Mark Kelly to win re-election to U.S. Senate, CNN Project



CNN

Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly will win a full six-year term, CNN Project, defeating Republican Blake Masters, the venture capitalist backed by former President Donald Trump and repeating his 2020 Some lies about the 2019 election.

Kelly won, and he was elected in 2020 to fill the late Republican senator’s term. John McCain, is a key victory that brings Democrats closer to their goal of maintaining control of the U.S. Senate — a move that would be one given President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings and the unfavorable economic environment that appears to be driving momentum Amazing feat to go to the Republican Party.

With Kelly winning in Arizona, Democrats will take 49 seats and Republicans will take 49. In Arizona, Democrats only need one more seat to secure a majority in the upper house. Gov. Democrat John Fettman defeated Trump-backed Mohammad Oz in the race to Replacing the retiring Republican senator. Pat Toomey. (The Senate is currently on a 50-50 vote, but Vice President Kamala Harris cast a tie-breaking vote.)

Both parties are still eyeing a very close race in Nevada, where Democrat Kathryn Cortez Masto is trying to fend off a challenge from Republican Adam Laxalter, the state’s former attorney general. Democrats are also defending a seat in Georgia, the Democratic senator. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker head to the Dec. 6 runoff, CNN Project.

Control of the U.S. House of Representatives is still up in the air, but it’s clear that even if the Republicans win the majority, it will be less than GOP leaders hope.

Kelly enters the 2022 cycle well positioned to weather the headwinds Democrats face — even in purple states like Arizona, where Joe Biden narrowly won — as a retired astronaut , Navy Veteran and Former Congressman’s Husband With Strong Fundraising Skills and Unique Personal Brand… Gabby Giffords.

While the electoral votes were being counted in Arizona, Masters’ campaign had hoped that the unusually large number of mail-in ballots cast at polling places on Election Day would favor Republicans. In Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county, those ballots took longer to count than Tuesday’s in-person ballots because officials had to verify signatures on ballot envelopes.

In a call with reporters on Friday afternoon, the Masters’ campaign adviser believed the Masters had a path to victory. “We always knew it was going to be a close game,” a campaign official said. “Smart observers watching this game know that it’s all too close. Either way, it could drop to 10,000 votes. We feel good, we have a way.”

But eventually as the stats continued, Kelly opened up an insurmountable lead in the Masters.

Earlier in the race, the first-timer Masters was able to navigate the Republican primary with strong financial backing from conservative tech billionaire Peter Thiel (his former boss). He appealed to Republicans by promising to prioritize immigration while also echoing Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. In a campaign video released last year, he said he believed Trump had won.

Masters then appeared to adjust his tone on the 2020 election results and the conservative stance he sought on abortion during the primaries — which initially appeared to appeal to the wider Arizona electorate. (While Republicans have a majority in Arizona, independents make up about a third of the electorate and often influence close elections.)

After his primary victory in August, Masters removed his website, which included false claims that the election was stolen. Asked by the moderator during the debate with Kelly, Masters admitted that he saw no evidence of fraud in the 2020 tally or election results that would alter the outcome. In that debate, Kelly argued that if election deniers like Masters were elected, the “wheels” could be “disengaged from our democracy.”

But Masters appeared to reverse course after Trump’s call, urging him to “get stronger” on rejecting the election, a conversation captured in a Fox documentary. In the final week of the campaign, Masters told CNN’s Kyung Lah that he didn’t think moderates would be bothered by his comments about the 2020 election, insisting that voters were more concerned with their concerns about inflation, crime and borders.

Throughout the campaign, Kelly painted Masters as an extremist who would jeopardize abortion rights as well as Social Security and Medicare. In a state where lawmakers passed a new abortion ban 15 weeks earlier this year — and in nearly every case legal efforts to ban it — Kelly’s campaign continues to focus on Masters’s Anti-abortion stance.

Masters has said he would support a nationwide abortion ban in 15 weeks, a proposal put forward by Republican senators from South Carolina. Lindsey Graham. The bill includes exceptions for rape, incest and protecting the life of a mother.

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