AZ-Sen: Less than two weeks after the NRSC
cut $3.5 million in September TV ad reservations in Arizona, Politico's Burgess Everett reports that the committee's super PAC counterpart, the Senate Leadership Fund,
is slashing another $8 million in bookings, the strongest sign to date that Republicans have grave doubts about Blake Masters' ability to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.
What makes SLF's decision all the more remarkable is that the organization, which has close ties to Mitch McConnell, is seemingly flush: As of June 30,
the PAC had $105 million in the bank and has undoubtedly raised more in the two months since. That stands in sharp contrast with the NRSC,
which had just $23 million on hand at the end of July (though super PACs, unlike party committees, can accept donations of unlimited size).
So why pull back? SLF's own president, Steven Law, claimed that "other offensive opportunities … have become increasingly competitive," though at this point, Georgia and Nevada are the only states he could plausibly have in mind (and note that the NRSC also recently canceled $1.5 million in TV time in the latter). But more telling—if he's being truthful—is Law's admission that his group faces "an unexpected expense in Ohio, "a reference to the fact that SLF recently announced
it was pouring $28 million into the Buckeye State to bail out the GOP's hapless candidate there, J.D. Vance.
The
New York Times' Shane Goldmacher also offered another theory: SLF
is trying to send a message to Masters' chief benefactor, billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Thiel's own super PAC
spent $15 million to help Masters—an employee and protégé—win the Republican primary earlier this month, much as he did for Vance in May. But like some sort of malign deist entity, it seems that Thiel birthed Masters and Vance only to abandon the universe we know as the general election.
So now, according to this argument, the SLF is desperately hoping to signal Thiel and all but force him to intervene. If true, though, the fact that the best-funded Republican super PAC has to resort to drastic advertising cuts to get the attention of one of the GOP's wealthiest megadonors is not a sign of harmonious party. And even if Thiel does belatedly return to the playing field, he'll have to pay higher advertising rates, since rates go up the closer you get to Election Day.
Republicans still insist Arizona is play, and simply given its swing-state status, it probably is. But if they do ultimately give up on Masters, the path back to a majority for the GOP, which is facing an increasingly likely loss in Pennsylvania, will grow exceptionally narrow.
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