Arizona megathread

[wbrocks67]

Looks like all the red counties (Pinal, Cochise, etc.) are basically exhausted. Apache, Pima, and Maricopa seem to be the bulk of what's left. Mayes should be fine, but I assume it will still end up <0.5%. Is it an automatic recount?

[wbrocks67]

WA/OR/CA/NV incoming!

Hobbs envisions expanding it — perhaps even mailing ballots to all registered voters, as now happens in a growing number of states.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/16/arizona-governor-katie-hobbs-2022-midterm-election/

[wbrocks67]

That's really depressing that she's the only incumbent among them, and she lost too.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1593427262942040064?s=20&t=HTPhvWX...

At least 4,570 of Maricopa's are not going to be counted according to their own tabulation.

And at least 1000 of the Maricopa left are the Box 3. So that will help Republicans, though 2500 left in Pima/Apache should hopefully offset it. If I had to guess, Mayes will win by just a few hundred, if that.

[wbrocks67]

Mayes still looks really good though. There can't be a ton out at this point, and I assume there's not all 1,200-1,300 box 3 ballots still outstanding. Though even if there was, Abe would need to win them by a large margin to overcome Mayes' 850 lead right now.

[wbrocks67]

You can tell her heart is not in this. She's more obviously reading a teleprompter than from what I've seen her do before and she seems kinda exhausted. She's ultimate max grifting at this point

[wbrocks67]

Has Hamadeh said anything btw ? He probably has a semi valid claim due to the election day fiasco. Its not gonna get it overturned in a lawsuit but he atleast has a viable claim to claim a "stolen" election.

Yeah, his Twitter feed is essentially pretty close to Lake's nonsense right now

https://twitter.com/AbrahamHamadeh/status/1594819746209439757

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1595210451465293825

[wbrocks67]

I wonder if Ducey voted for Hobbs.

[wbrocks67]

So is Kari just gonna become another fringe Q-Anon "internet celebrity" at this point or something?

[wbrocks67]

Meanwhile....

her teleprompter skills are seriously fading

https://twitter.com/Jules31415/status/1597426436557918210

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1598018906115170304

[wbrocks67]

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.

It's amazing the revisionist history that is going on with Hobbs, but not incredibly surprising. At least 75% of the people in this thread were convinced she was the worst Dem candidate all cycle, basically.

Not really sure where "consultant-driven" fits into this, which seems like a pretty big slight to her. Hobbs just ran a competent low-key campaign that did what it needed to do. She campaigned (despite people saying she didn't), she ran more TV ads than Lake did, and she was a competent statewide elected official going into this. There was no reason people needed to be so insistent on how "bad" she was. She was fine. People got so caught up in the Lake of it all that they needed to make ridiculous comparisons between the two, assuming Lake was "winning" just because she was commanding media attention every day.

[wbrocks67]

Something I think is interesting in hindsight is that Lake ran a pretty unconventional campaign by regular standards. I remember there was a POLITICO article I believe where it said something like she was her own campaign manager, and she also "didn't believe" in running TV ads. (she ran some, but probably only because she was forced to by the Arizona GOP)

[wbrocks67]

I guess the ~500 vote difference for AG is too much to expect a different outcome? Why is that one even closer than Gov and SoS?

I think it’s just that the race went under the radar compared to the other two. I’m not sure if Hamadeh was an election denier, but he was certainly much less vocal about it than Lake or Finchem.

He was, and nearly as crazy as Lake (on social media) about it all, but it's also possible like you said that a few more normies didn't know about that since Lake was more high profile about it

[wbrocks67]

I can't quite put my finger on why, but I somehow always disliked Lake far more than Mastriano.

Maybe it's the fact that Trump endorsed her early, while he only endorsed Mastriano the weekend before the primary when he was pulling away. Or maybe it's because she was always much more likely to win so I perceived her as a bigger threat even though he was arguably more extreme.

I know what you mean.  There was something very artificial about Lake's persona during the campaign, which I found extremely off-putting.  Mastriano at least was authentically crazy.

Yep, 100% this. Mastriano is a nutcase but at least he's a true believer. I can give to him that at least that's who he truly is at his core, even if it's insane. Lake is clearly grifting and this entire MAGA persona is so obviously fake and she just did it try and win.

[wbrocks67]

This is the type of expose I was hoping we'd get for Oz too

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1602309869394083840

[wbrocks67]

2026 Hobbs vs Yee. Book it. Yee is an amazing Candidate. Hobbs will have a huge problem.

Yee tried to run for Governor last year and flopped hard dude. Republicans didn’t want her.

Yeah, winning a primary will be hard for Yee. Not to mention, I won't say her performance wasn't impressive this year, but she also seemed to really benefit from being the only "sane" Republican on the ballot.

[wbrocks67]

Not to mention, one of Hobbs' positives this year was how undivisive she was. So she has a really big chance here to cultivate a good image over the next 4 years, especially with AZ trending blue. She's not someone who seems like they'd incur a huge backlash from either side.

[wbrocks67]

That's what the most egregious thing about this whole "act" is. It's just that - a total act.

[wbrocks67]

Yeah she's grifting HARD

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1604890282184450048

[wbrocks67]

Archer is so annoying. He knew that there was not enough "discrepancy" votes to change the outcome and yet he tried to bait everyone just for Twitter engagement.

[wbrocks67]

Archer is so annoying. He knew that there was not enough "discrepancy" votes to change the outcome and yet he tried to bait everyone just for Twitter engagement.

He said that there was a large discrepancy that would bring the election closer, which in my opinion never implied that the election result was going to change. I thought it was totally fair, not like a Ralston thing where he gives no information.

Eh, I still feel like it was just ambiguous enough to make sure there was tons of engagement on his post.

[wbrocks67]

Interesting interview with Hobbs-

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/katie-hobbs-why-kari-lake-lost-1234647708/

Two things of note here-

She said basically their internal campaign model always showed it very competitive and showed Lake was not running a solid campaign in terms of the tangibles, like money, ground game, ads, etc. Which we had talked about before and I think I brought up - how Lake actually didn't have a ton of money outside of the RGA and she herself wasn't a fan of running TV ads. Looks like trying to rely on earned media rather than paid was a very bad decision.

She also said essentially that not doing the debate was a strategic decision, and seemed to be more of one of her team's than her own. She describes how in the end she did agree it was the right decision but there were plenty of heated conversations behind the scenes about it, and she had to go through the ringer a bit when angry donors would call about it

[wbrocks67]

so did she actually announce anything at this rally yesterday lmao