Blake Masters looks at a dysfunctional, leadership-driven Congress and imagines a junior Republican senator from Arizona can be effective.
“A lot of people get in Congress and immediately surrender their legislative ambitions to practical reality,” Masters told the Washington Examiner in a telephone interview the first week of January. “What good is a Republican majority in Congress if we’re not ready and willing to legislate?”
“I intend to find out just how much one person can do,” he said.
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It would not be easy. Major legislation is often the purview of party leadership, even more so than the heads of so-called powerful committees, and the bipartisan majorities required to effect lasting reform are hard to come by. But even with the prospect of a Republican-controlled Congress serving in tandem with a GOP president come 2025, Masters opposes dismantling the legislative filibuster.
"It’s good on a neutral basis, and I think it net-benefits conservatives because the [Democratic] agenda is so crazy you’ll never get 60 votes for it," Masters said.
Masters, 35, is part of the crowd of Arizona Republicans vying for the party’s 2022 Senate nomination and the right to challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in midterm elections. The venture capitalist is a first-time candidate but not quite a political novice. He was active in former President Donald Trump’s campaigns and is the right-hand to Republican megadonor Peter Thiel. Masters’s professional relationship with Thiel — he works for him — made the Senate contender instantly formidable.
Thiel is backing a super PAC supporting his employee’s campaign with $10 million from his personal fortune.
The connection to Trump might come in handy, too. At the very least, Masters does not have to fake his reverence for the former president and his “America First” agenda. In fact, Masters argued that some of his primary opponents, namely front-runner Mark Brnovich, the Arizona attorney general who has been attacked by Trump for insufficiently supporting his unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
“Everybody in the race has learned that you have to be ‘America First.’ Everybody is [claiming] to support [Trump’s] agenda,” Masters said. “I have reason to believe a lot of my opponents are insincere. I think it’s pretty clear who's actually supportive of that 2016 agenda.”
So, is it about loyalty to Trump personally or fidelity to the cornucopia of conservative populism that defined his presidency? “I don’t think it’s about personal loyalty,” Masters said. “But I think he saved the country by winning in 2016.” After less than one year with President Joe Biden in office and Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, Masters said the United States needs saving again, lest it slip away — permanently. That, he said, is what is motivating him to leave a lucrative career behind for a thankless job that pays a middling salary.
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“We’re losing the country, as cliche as it may sound,” said Masters, citing election integrity, inflation, and border security as issues he hears about most from GOP primary voters. “I just feel called to do it.”
Masters, like Thiel, is a graduate of Stanford and Stanford Law School. Masters raised a healthy $1.38 million in the fourth quarter of last year. His campaign's cash on hand figure was not yet available.
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'Called to do it': Blake Masters plots Senate rise - Washington Examiner
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