Two days after Blake Masters won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, Democrats launched an ad campaign about his “extreme” position on abortion. Democrats launch campaign highlighting Blake Masters’ ‘extreme’ abortion position:
“Three years ago, I had an ectopic pregnancy, and if I didn’t make it into the OR within a couple minutes, I was going to bleed out and die,” a woman named Brianna says in the ad by the Senate Majority PAC while recalling a life-saving abortion she received.
Masters, who advocated for abortion rights while in college, has called for a nationwide ban on abortion. He has taken a hard-line stance on reproductive rights, calling for a federal “personhood” law for fetuses and falsely claiming his Democratic opponent, Mark Kelly, supported abortion “up until the moment of birth.”
Masters has also called abortion a “sacrificial ritual” to the left and has referred to abortion as a “genocide.” He has also campaigned on overturning the constitutional right for women to access birth control.
“Masters claims he supports women and families. But if I didn’t have the right to abort the pregnancy, my three children (would) be left out on their own,” Brianna said in the ad. “Masters is so extreme and so wrong for Arizona.”
Senate Majority PAC, the campaign arm for Senate Democratic leadership, is spending $1.2 million on the ad beginning Thursday. It is part of a blitz by the PAC in the state to support Kelly, who must win if Democrats hope to retain the majority in the Senate..
“It’s no surprise that Blake Masters is deeply out of step with Arizona values: he’s an out-of-state candidate bankrolled by out-of-state special interests who would be nothing but a rubber stamp for Mitch McConnell’s extreme agenda, including outlawing abortion across the country,” Senate Majority PAC spokeswoman Veronica Yoo said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror.
NBC News reports, In Arizona, Blake Masters backtracks on abortion, scrubs campaign website:
Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters softened his tone and scrubbed his website’s policy page of tough abortion restrictions Thursday, as his party reels from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
In an ad posted to Twitter on Thursday, Masters sought to portray his opponent, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, as the extremist on the issue while describing his own views as “commonsense.”
“Look, I support a ban on very late-term and partial-birth abortion,” he said. “And most Americans agree with that. That would just put us on par with other civilized nations.” (Late-term abortions are extremely rare, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracker.)
Just after releasing the ad, Masters’ campaign published an overhaul of his website and softened his rhetoric, re-writing or erasing five of his six positions. NBC News took screenshots of the website before and after it was changed. Masters’ website appeared to be refreshed after NBC News reached out for clarification on his abortion stances.
“I am 100% pro-life,” Masters’ website read as of Thursday morning.
That language is now gone.
Another notable deletion: A line that detailed his support for “a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”
The personhood effort is an anti-abortion rights pursuit that would grant the same rights and legal protections to fetuses, in some cases before viability, as any person. Those fetal personhood laws would make abortion murder and eliminate all or most abortion exceptions provided in states where the procedure is strictly curtailed, The New York Times reported.
This isn't the first time Blake Masters has deleted things from his website. He did the same thing in May when the @ArizonaMirror wrote about his stance that women shouldn't have a constitutionally protected right to contraception https://t.co/YZ7IDIYVyT https://t.co/nTKswRcc9n
— Jim Small (@JimSmall) August 25, 2022
Those are much harder and more expensive to scrub https://t.co/PF7je64sxn
— Jim Small (@JimSmall) August 25, 2022
In Arizona, a state law recognizing the personhood of a fetus from the moment of fertilization is currently blocked in court. In Congress, the personhood bill sponsored by Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., called the “Sanctity of Human Life Act” says, according to its summary, that “each human life begins with fertilization.”
Masters did not outline on his campaign site when in a pregnancy he thought personhood began, though his campaign pointed NBC News to recent comments in which he said he interprets such a federal law as applying to the third trimester of a pregnancy.
Additionally, Masters previously expressed support for “the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, the SAVE Moms and Babies Act, and other pro-life legislation.” The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act would make it a criminal offense for performing or attempting to perform an abortion 20 weeks after conception.
Now the website states he backs “a law or a Constitutional amendment that bans late term (third trimester) abortion and partial-birth abortion at the federal level” and “pro-life legislation, pregnancy centers, and programs that make it easier for pregnant women to support a family and decide to choose life.”
Masters’ backtracking is one of the clearest signs of how much the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate federal abortion protections is scrambling the political landscape, energizing Democrats to both turn out at higher-than-expected rates in some bellwether contests and to flood their candidates and campaign committees with small-dollar donations.
Masters’ campaign pointed to an interview in which the nominee expanded upon his abortion rights views with The Arizona Republicearlier this month, after he prevailed in a Republican primary that pulled all the conservatives rightward. The campaign did not immediately answer a follow-up question on why the website was updated.
In that interview, Masters, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, said he believed a federal “personhood law” would work to ban all abortions in the third trimester, though, as the publication reported, he had in February expressed support for banning abortions earlier. Speaking to The Arizona Republic, Masters added Arizona’s soon-to-take-effect ban on abortions after 15 weeks — with exceptions only for the life of the mother — is “reasonable.”
“The federal government should prohibit late-term abortion, third-trimester abortion and partial-birth abortion,” he said. “Below that, states are going to make different decisions that are going to reflect the will of the people in those states, and I think most reasonable. I think that’s what most people certainly in this state and nationwide are looking for.”
Now the sentence no longer mentions “abortionists” — a term coined by abortion rights opponents — nor “any organization that promotes abortion.”
Another promise was completely eliminated from the website: “Remove funding for any research that uses embryonic stem cells of aborted fetal remains.”
“If Blake Masters thinks that he can quietly delete passages from his website and disguise just how out of touch and dangerous his abortion stance is, he’s in for a rude awakening,” Kelly spokesperson Sarah Guggenheimer said in a statement to NBC News.
Masters is far from the only Republican feeling the impact abortion politics are having on the midterms. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel fretted about the post-Roe Democratic small-dollar advantage in a call to donors that Politico reported Wednesday. Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision this spring, McDaniel also expressed concern about the energizing effect that abortion could have for the left if Roe were overturned, according to two sources who had spoken with her about it in the past but spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations more freely.
“It’s a big fundraising concern because we’re seeing a huge boost on the Democrats’ side,” one of the Republican sources said. “We never expected Democrats to sit out. We expected them to put their jerseys on. Now the candidates have to navigate this in the states.”
In Arizona, a once-red Republican bastion that is now a purple swing state, voters opposed the Supreme Court’s decision 52% to 33%, according to a poll from OH Predictive Insights this summer. Only a majority of Republicans were in support while most independents sided with Democrats in opposition.
Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona Republican pollster, said he just wrapped up a survey of voters that suggests Masters is trailing Kelly by 10 points. A recent Fox News survey found Kelly up 8 points, too.
“Abortion is a devastating issue for Republican candidates,” Coughlin said. “There are three constituencies who don’t like the Republican position: women, independents and voters over 64 — who are just tired of all the change and chaos and want to go back.”
“What Mr. Masters is discovering is there no such thing as political startups,” he added of the venture capitalist who tech mogul Peter Thiel has spent millions backing. “You can’t make it up as you go along.”
Kelly’s campaign has labeled Masters “dangerous.”
Kelly’s campaign holds a significant edge in fundraising over Masters, who emerged from a bruising primary.
Masters has taken aim at Kelly for voting for the Women’s Health Protection Act, which failed in the Senate earlier this summer. That legislation would have prohibited states from banning and criminalizing abortion at any stage when a woman’s health was at risk, a determination that would need to have a doctor’s approval.
Blake Masters is also trying to cover up his extremist white supremacist views. The Phoenx New Times reports, “Blake Masters Plays Dress Up in the Racist Ways You’d Expect”, https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/blake-masters-plays-dress-up-in-the-racist-ways-youd-expect-14214241
Blake Masters, Arizona’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, has a penchant for spouting provocative takes. But a new host of racist material advocating for his campaign has cropped up online and on the streets of Phoenix. It’s more controversial than his typical bombast — and he’s even raising money from some of it.
The material is a far cry from his maiden campaign ad released a year ago in which Masters appeared urbane.
“We’ve got to take care of each other,” Masters says in that ad as his three sons cavort in the Sonoran Desert brush. In the distance is the towering steel fence along Arizona’s border with Mexico.
In the new material, from supporters outside his campaign, Masters mocks Native Americans and appropriates Black culture. He also is backed by Jews for Blake Masters, a Twitter account with 145 followers, despite his antisemitic statements.
Masters bills himself as an altruistic champion of safety, prosperity, and freedom. But his run for office is tethered to racist campaign materials from alt-right trolls.
Last month, a one-minute clip of Masters rapping while wearing what was meant to resemble Native American war paint made its way to Twitter.
Link: https://twitter.com/AriBradshawAZ/status/1549775393455886337
“I’ve got the war paint on, as you can see,” he rhymes over a superimposed beat in the video. “Who said what about cultural insensitivity?”
The footage in the video dates back to 2008 during his years as a student at Stanford University. At the time, Masters was a self-styled Libertarian who preached the gospel of open borders and belonged to a left-wing vegetarian co-op with socialist ideations. He has since about-faced, joining the Republican Party he once criticized amid an existential pivot away from the fiery populism that previously defined him.
“I dress up as an Indian,” Masters says in the video. “If you don’t like it, I’m going to … throw you in jail.”
A poorly photoshopped image of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, wearing a traditional Native American war bonnet pops up on the screen as he raps that line.
The video is littered with other right-wing memes: Barack Obama dancing in the Oval Office, former Virginia governor Ralph Northam in blackface, and British porn actress Belle Delphine with the caption “he’s mad, BIG MAD!”
“Blake Masters’ decision to mock Native American culture is off-putting, disqualifying, and shows Arizona voters exactly who Blake is,” Rachel Hood, deputy political director of Native engagement at the Arizona Democratic Party, told New Times. “Tribal voters make up a large and powerful part of this electorate, and we’ll definitely make our voices heard this November.”
The video closes with Trump saying, “Blake Masters has my complete and total endorsement.”
A spokesperson for Masters said the video didn’t come from them.
“This isn’t from the campaign,” spokesperson Katie Miller told New Times. She declined to answer any of our questions.
A spokesperson for U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, the Democrat Masters faces in November, declined to comment.
Blizzy 4 Sizzy
Spend any time paying attention to campaign signs filling roads in Phoenix and you might spot a flashy one featuring “www.blizzy4sizzy.com” in oversized rainbow-colored letters.
The signs depict Masters wearing a gold chain, sunglasses, and a flat-brim hat with the name “Khabib” on it. It’s a reference to Russian ultraconservative influencer Khabib Nurmagomedov.
No, “Blizzy” doesn’t allude to the slang term for a hollowed-out cigar full of weed, nor does it refer to the Atlanta rapper who was murdered in 2016.
The emergent “Blizzy 4 Sizzy” moniker is a play on “Blake for Senate,” evoking the “izz” affix popularized by Black rappers in the Bay Area in the 1990s.
That affix is a part of African-American Vernacular English and was born from the Harlem Renaissance in the early 1900s. In 1931, jazz legend Louis Armstrong talked about smoking “shuzzit,” slang for weed. The affix was further developed as poor, young Black girls improvised chants and nursery rhymes while jumping rope, with the -izz phraseology serving to add syllables to maintain the rhythm.
Snoop Dogg gave more popularity to the uniquely Black dialect around 2000, which he later said he heard from pimps and jive hustlers in the 1970s, with his classic catchphrase, “Fo shizzle, my nizzle.”
The signs supporting Masters haven’t gone unnoticed. Scott Neely, a Tempe Republican who recently ran for governor, cited one in a July tweet. Others on social media criticized the signs for appropriating Black culture.
The Blizzy 4 Sizzy landing page is a gaudy, visually accosting mess of animated blue slime dripping behind two large letters: BM.
The site says, “Blake Masters is running for U.S. Senate in Arizona. He is extraordinarily based and freedom-pilled.” That’s a reference to the alt-right meme “based and redpilled,” born out of the white supremacist hotbed 4Chan in 2013 and popularized in a Reddit forum called “The Red Pill,” which was for men who aspired to trick women into sex using psychological manipulation.
There is no other content or information on the website, save for the hashtag #OneFamilyOneIncome, a tagline for Republicans who want to see women quit working and resume homemaking, and a button to donate to Masters’ campaign.
Money collected through the site is facilitated by WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform. Masters has received more than $2 million in donations through WinRed this election cycle, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.
His official campaign website averages 40,000 page views per month, according to New York-based web analytics company Similarweb. The Blizzy site is pulling in 30,000 page views per month.
The Masters campaign declined to answer whether or not it created the site.
Phoenix-based Republican consultant Chuck Coughlin told New Times that it’s difficult for candidates to control their own narrative in the heat of campaigns.
“The only way a candidate can control that narrative is to not accept money. If you are really opposed to the views expressed on the website, you wouldn’t cash the checks,” Coughlin said.
Jews for Blake [Seriously???]
Masters’ antisemitic misadventures date back further than the war paint video. In a 2006 essay, Masters included a “poignant quotation” from Hermann Göring, a Nazi leader and war criminal, to argue against American intervention overseas.
Earlier this month, Masters was caught lying about not knowing his antisemitic backer, Andrew Torba. He was endorsed by neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, although he rejected that endorsement.
Masters is also supported by Jews for Blake, which on its face seems to be a parody. It isn’t.
The group’s website claims that “Blake Masters is a friend of the Jewish people,” and “the Jewish people are tired of being used and having our history be used by political hacks to label their opponents as antisemitic.”
Reputable Jewish groups point to Masters’ troubling record.
“The Jewish community of Arizona will judge Blake Masters and his campaign by his words, actions, and the relations he keeps,” Paul Rockower, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, told New Times.
“It will not be remotely swayed by astroturf websites or faux Twitter accounts that hold no connection to our community,” Rockower continued. “We are still waiting for any sort of serious denunciation of antisemitism and Holocaust denial by Blake Masters, and remain deeply disappointed that such seemingly easy steps seem beyond him.”
Jews for Blake is not associated with the Masters campaign, but Masters is one of its 145 followers on Twitter.
About half of Arizona voters view Kelly favorably, while less than one-third feel that way about Masters. Only 13 percent of voters polled view Masters “very favorably.”
Meanwhile, half of voters have an unfavorable view of Masters versus 38 percent for Kelly.
“We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Once voters get to know these MAGA candidates, they don’t like them,” Jacob Perry, Center Street’s co-founder, said in a prepared statement. “Once more Arizona voters get to know Masters and see what an extremist he is, we think Arizona will go blue, in this race at least.”