Martha McSally To Replace Jon Kyl

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Martha McSally To Replace Jon Kyl

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Tue Dec 18, 2018 5:39 pm

As everyone suspected, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey will replace the outgoing interim senator Jon Kyl with former congresswoman and loser of the 2018 US Senate election Martha McSally, effective December 31st. A rather odd decision seeing as she was the losing candidate and a rather unpopular one at that up for reelection in 2020 in a state that's slowly getting bluer.
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Re: Martha McSally To Replace Jon Kyl

Postby cmsellers » Tue Dec 18, 2018 6:56 pm

I think the hope is that this will give her the advantage of incumbency. The problem for her, as I see it, is that she has a moderate voting record in the House, but ran hard to the right for the primary and never pivoted back to the center. This suggests that she believed she could win in reddish Arizona with base turnout. I don't know if her loss in 2018 taught her a lesson, but since Arizona is trending bluer and presidential electorates tend to be bluer than midterm electorates, that strategy almost certainly won't work unless Trump's approval rating shoot up dramatically.

Republicans have a large enough buffer in the house for Collins, Murkowski, and McSally to defect whenever they want to as long as no other GOP Senator does (or the GOP gets Manchin). Nate Silver has suggested that it would be wise for Corey Gardner to defect on some high-profile votes, something he so far hasn't done and doesn't seem inclined to do. I suspect the same is true for McSally. However Gardner at least has always been very conservative and can play his record off as principle. Given McSally's previous voting record, if she votes as consistently pro-Trump as Gardner, it's going to look like she's terrified of a primary challenge, which undermines her whole "tough and brave" brand.

Unless McSally defects publicly and often on votes where the GOP can afford it, which does not seem likely given her clear fear of primary challenges, she'd better hope that Trump's approval rating improve or the Democrat run a complete assclown against her.
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Re: Martha McSally To Replace Jon Kyl

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Dec 18, 2018 9:21 pm

FiveThirtyEight tells me appointed officeholders have almost no incumbency advantage until they win an actual election. That said, Jon Kyl is old and seems to want to go back to his quiet retirement, so they need a replacement, and I don't know if the Arizona GOP has got anybody who's more likely to win the seat in 2020. McSally Round 2 would still be a smarter pick than, say, Kelli Ward, her top opponent in the primary.
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Re: Martha McSally To Replace Jon Kyl

Postby cmsellers » Tue Dec 18, 2018 9:43 pm

FiveThirtyEight also told me that Trump had an advantage in the Electoral College relative to his popular vote advantage. How many Democratic political figures were proclaiming the "Blue Wall" meant exactly the opposite?

Politicians and pundits aren't exactly known for their reliance on evidence over conventional wisdom.
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Re: Martha McSally To Replace Jon Kyl

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Dec 18, 2018 10:10 pm

What's a "blue wall"? And don't tell me it's like "blue balls".
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Re: Martha McSally To Replace Jon Kyl

Postby Absentia » Tue Dec 18, 2018 11:01 pm

The Blue Wall theory was that the Democratic candidate for president was always going to win in certain states, so it was a waste of time to campaign there instead of the traditional swing states of Ohio and Florida. Trump broke the wall by winning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which made a lot of people look silly.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the hope is to give her the advantage of incumbency," unless you think Ducey has a personal preference for McSally over any other candidate. From a party perspective it makes no difference; he has to replace Kyl with somebody and McSally will be no more of an incumbent than anyone else he could appoint.
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Re: Martha McSally To Replace Jon Kyl

Postby Krashlia » Wed Dec 19, 2018 12:28 am

Grim reminders were had that election day.
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Re: Martha McSally To Replace Jon Kyl

Postby ghijkmnop » Wed Dec 19, 2018 2:22 am

Redacted
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Last edited by ghijkmnop on Thu Mar 14, 2019 2:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Martha McSally To Replace Jon Kyl

Postby Crimson847 » Wed Dec 19, 2018 6:59 am

A warning about the bluer presidential-year electorate: that's largely a function of turnout, which normally drops substantially during midterm elections. However, the decline in turnout this time was minimal--we saw turnout comparable to a presidential year. In other words, the "presidential-year electorate" may already be priced into the 2018 results, not so much additive to them.

Particularly if that's the case, then given that she won 47.6% of the vote this time around despite a weak campaign against a pretty good candidate, McSally is reasonably well-positioned to win in 2020 if she gets a better campaign strategy or a worse opponent or both.

Absentia wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "the hope is to give her the advantage of incumbency," unless you think Ducey has a personal preference for McSally over any other candidate. From a party perspective it makes no difference; he has to replace Kyl with somebody and McSally will be no more of an incumbent than anyone else he could appoint.


The party does care about holding the seat, however, and installing the most effective 2020 candidate they can find in that seat in hopes of granting them an incumbency advantage is arguably the best way to serve that goal. Evidently, they see McSally as that candidate.
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