Arizona megathread

[MT Treasurer]

As Centrist and Xavier have noted, Hobbs has virtually zero TV presence currently.  (Lake doesn't either, but as I've said she doesn't really need it due to her name recognition.)

Tying into what I said earlier and about what was asked about Kelly-Lake voters?  My parents, for two.  They're just in love with her.  I managed to cajole them into voting for Biden, and they really like Mark Kelly, but I can't currently dissuade them from voting for "Kari."

The abortion angle?  Doesn't move them at all.  The nutcase election rhetoric?  According to them, she doesn't really believe it, so it's okay.

A confident and familiar female candidate with a lot of experience in charming and playing an audience is hard to paint as "extremist" regardless of her actual policy positions or past statements, who would have thought? (They’re probably right about Lake's 'Trumpism' being entirely performative, though.)

[MT Treasurer]

I will say that this race brilliantly illustrated the limits of both retroactive and non-retroactive assessments of a candidate's "quality" when done independently of the overall state/national environment. Katie Hobbs probably fits neither the stereotypical "weak" nor "strong" candidate image; rather, she’s precisely the type of good-enough-in-a-good-enough-year candidate who runs a scripted, consultant-driven, relatively minimalist but nonetheless cautious campaign, makes no glaring missteps even while not "exciting" anyone in particular, and then counts on her opponent to fumble the ball and external factors to do the rest.

If this had been a red wave election, she probably would have gone down in the history books as a "weak" candidate. Now that she won the lottery by facing not only an unpopular opponent/incompetent state party but also (and far more importantly) running in the best midterm year for the incumbent President's party since 1934, history has quickly been rewritten by many.