Race for Sinema Senate seat stirs up ‘land of the weird in politics’

Kari Lake says she is the rightful governor of Arizona but is eyeing a U.S. Senate seat as a consolation prize.

Ms. Lake would be running to unseat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a first-termer who won in 2018 as a Democrat but has since turned independent. Rep. Ruben Gallego has the inside track for the Democratic nomination. His fiery liberalism would be a big step for the changing state.

Republicans are not lacking for drama. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is already in the race, and the party’s two big losers from 2022 — Ms. Lake, who was defeated in the governor’s race, and Blake Masters, who failed in his bid for the state’s other Senate seat — are pondering their options.

It makes Arizona’s Senate race the “ultimate political science experiment,” said Kirk Adams, a former state representative who served as chief of staff to Gov. Doug Ducey.

“Arizona is sort of like the gathering spot for all these political trends we are seeing across the country and everything happening all at once,” Mr. Adams said. “You have the populists versus the traditional conservatives in the Republican Party, the rise of the progressive left and a growing number of people that don’t identify with either party.”

Perhaps no other state has had the sort of political shift that Arizona has experienced over the past five years. It has gone from reliably Republican in presidential races, having two Republican senators and Republican control of most statewide offices to having backed a Democrat for president, elected two Democrats to the Senate and split the top state offices. Democrats now hold the governor, secretary of state and attorney general posts.

Republicans still hold both chambers of the state Legislature, but the House booted Republican Liz Harris several weeks ago. She had arranged for a woman to testify, without proof, before a legislative committee that Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, and other elected officials and judges had taken bribes from the Sinaloa drug cartel and committed other crimes.

“From a national perspective, Arizona was a sleepy ruby-red state and now has become the epicenter of all things politics — from high-octane Senate races to election audits to the land of the weird in politics,” said Mike Noble, chief of research for Noble Predictive Insights, an Arizona-based polling firm.

Historically, Arizona has not lacked its share of characters.

Arizona voters sent Sen. Barry Goldwater, a father of modern conservatism, and Sen. John McCain, an iconoclastic Republican, to Washington.

Now they are represented in the Senate by Mark Kelly, a bland former astronaut and husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, and Ms. Sinema, a bisexual marathon-running fashionista who sprang from left-wing anti-war politics of the early 2000s, won election to the U.S. House as a Democrat in 2012 and then ditched the party in December.

Her move sets up a likely three-way race with the winners of the Democratic and Republican nominations.

Ms. Sinema hasn’t announced her reelection bid, but her calculations likely hinge on her ability to chart a path between a Democrat running far to the left and a Republican candidate running far to the right.

“I think most Americans in this country are hungry for something new and different, and they want to see a reduction in the partisanship,” Ms. Sinema said in a recent interview with KTAR News. “I hope that is what I’m offering, not just to the folks in Arizona but to folks around the country, is to show a different path.”

The incumbent, who had more than $9 million in her campaign account at the end of March, said she does not have a timetable for her reelection campaign. Her office declined to comment.

The Democratic race is lackluster at this point. Mr. Gallego, a Marine Corps combat veteran and outspoken liberal, announced his bid in January and raised nearly $4 million over the first three months of the year.

“While Sen. Sinema has abandoned the people of Arizona for her rich and powerful donors, I’m focused on fighting for the families that have been left behind,” Mr. Gallego said.

Republicans, meanwhile, are trying to sort out messes from 2020 and 2022, in which former President Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election reverberate with some party voters.

Ms. Lake contends that her 17,000-vote loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs was stolen.

She has argued in court that ballot problems disenfranchised Republican voters. Judges have rejected those claims, and Ms. Lake is nearly out of legal avenues for appeal.

She said in April that she is “seriously considering a run for Senate.”

“I’m so dangerous to the status quo and this rotten swamp that they’re willing to steal an election to stop me and our movement,” she said. “I’m not letting them get away with that. We’re not going away.”

The prospect of a Lake rerun is stirring fears that she could dominate the primary race and then lose the general election. For Republicans, that would be a nightmare scenario after Trump-backed candidates lost winnable races in the 2022 midterms.

“Kari Lake has a significant uphill battle to win a competitive general election — particularly in a presidential cycle where the turnout is much different and will lean more Democratic than 2022,” Mr. Adams said.

Some Republicans hope Mr. Ducey will run. Karrin Taylor Robson is also considering a run after losing to Ms. Lake in the 2022 Republican gubernatorial primary despite spending millions of dollars of her personal wealth.

The Senate race will play out down ballot from President Biden’s reelection push. Mr. Biden carried the state by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020.

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election tracker, rates the race for Ms. Sinema’s seat as a “toss-up.”

Tate Mitchell, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm for Senate Republicans, said the seat is ripe for the taking.

“Arizona is a top battleground in 2024, and we are committed to doing everything we can to elect a Republican who represents the values of Arizona,” Mr. Mitchell said. “While Arizona Democrats are fighting a civil war, Republicans will be focused on flipping the Senate and bringing relief to hardworking families.”