From Abortion to Brazil, Blake Masters’ Debate Performance Debunked

It started with a bang: “Our current senator, Mark Kelly, has messed everything up.”

Those were the first words out of the mouth of Blake Masters, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee, at a televised debate hosted by Arizona PBS on Thursday. He and Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, squared off in the only opportunity this fall to see both candidates side-by-side.

Masters’ salvo was a bold start to what would become a bad-tempered debate, and one that set the tone for the rest of the event. The two candidates sparred over a range of issues, with Masters painting Kelly as a radical clone of President Joe Biden, and Kelly stressing his experience and bipartisan credentials. Libertarian Marc Victor also took part in the debate.

Masters also made clear his opposition to a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers,” who are undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, and confirmed his unyielding approach of “no citizenship, ever.” He suggested deporting the immigrants “back to some country that wants them” and accused Kelly of “turn[ing] over the entire border to Mexican drug cartels.” Masters quipped, “These terrorist narcos, if they could vote in this election, they’d all vote for Mark Kelly.”

Masters did change his positions on a number of key issues, including abortion and the hackneyed Big Lie that Democrats and the media stole the 2020 presidential election from former President Donald Trump.

Debate moderator Ted Simons grilled Masters on several of his political positions as he tried to appeal to both his alt-right base and Arizona’s throng of moderate and Independent voters following a summertime skid in the polls. His attempts were laden with gaffes and easily debunked untruths.

Here are a few of our favorites.

Auditor Army

“Mark Kelly said yes to 87,000 new IRS agents,” Masters said at the debate. “He said it himself, he wants 87,000 IRS officers.”

This baseless conspiracy theory is a recent favorite among Republicans looking to sow tumult over the seizure of stolen classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. It’s being used to drum up fear among Trump supporters that their personal information will be shared with the government and that they will face an IRS audit.

“The people of Arizona know that the 87,000 IRS agents that you’re sticking on them, they’re going to be auditing you. They’re going to be auditing small businesses. He thinks the fix is 87,000 new IRS agents,” Master said.

The irony is that Trump, who endorsed Masters, is the one who tried to hide his personal information from the IRS for years. Now Republicans are trying to use the agency as a boogeyman to scare people into votes, according to political analysts.

The landmark $750 billion Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by President Joe Biden in August earmarks about $80 billion for the IRS, which could use the funds to hire 87,000 workers by 2031. How the agency will use that money is not finalized, and the personnel figure is doubtful, as the agency also faces the retirement of 50,000 employees in the coming years.

For those reasons, PolitiFact recently ruled the trope to be “false.”

Damage Already Done on Abortion About-Face

Since filing his candidacy, Masters has made it clear that he wants a national ban on abortion without exception. He has called abortion “demonic” and equated it to “religious sacrifice” and “genocide.” It’s a position that prompted three prominent Republican women in Phoenix to call Masters too extreme for Arizona.

Although 87 percent of Arizonans support the right to safe and legal abortion, Blake Masters has said he wants to go on “offense” and institute a no-exceptions federal ban.

On August 25, Masters quietly scrubbed his campaign website and nixed any inkling of his previous vow to be “100 percent pro-life” and his call for a national abortion ban. Before the August primary, his website also stated that he would “support a federal personhood law, ideally a constitutional amendment, that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”

He hasn’t openly taken that position since late August. During the debate on October 6, he doubled down.

After softening his position on personhood and dodging questions from Simons about the changes to his campaign website, Masters said he supported a woman’s right to choose up to 15 weeks, which is the ban Governor Doug Ducey signed into law in March.

The Democratic Senate Majority PAC and VoteVets said in a campaign ad that Masters opposes abortion “even in the case of rape and incest, a claim that PolitiFact rated as “mostly true.”

‘Joe Biden is Absolutely the President’

Scroll back through Masters’ Twitter feed, and you’ll still find the maiden campaign ad he posted in November 2021. “I think Trump won in 2020,” Masters said to the camera.

While his belief that Trump was the rightful winner of the election may have earned him the president’s endorsement, it is diametrically opposed to the view of most Americans.

That’s probably why he ditched the Big Lie on the debate stage.

“Is Joe Biden the legitimately elected president of the United States?” Simons asked.”Joe Biden is absolutely the president,” Masters responded. “My gosh, have you seen the gas prices lately?”

Masters has repeatedly sowed doubt in American elections and even said – without any evidence – that there will be fraud in this year’s election. “I’m the one candidate running in our race that has said I don’t think this was a free and fair election,” Masters said on Steve Bannon’s War Room on May 11. “I think they stole it six ways from Sunday.”

During the debate, he told a very different story.

“I’m not trying to trick you,” Masters said, adding of Biden, “He’s duly sworn and certified. He’s the legitimate president, he’s in the White House – unfortunately for all of us, right?”

In lieu of the Big Lie, Masters piloted a fresh conspiracy theory about how the election was stolen. In a twist, Masters said during the debate that “the FBI forced Facebook and other big tech companies to censor true information about Hunter Biden’s crimes in the weeks before the 2020 election. And so millions of Americans didn’t get to read about that.” That, Masters contended, helped sway the election to Biden.

According to PolitiFact, “There is no evidence that Hunter Biden came close to breaking the law, much less any evidence that his father has done so.”

In October 2020, the New York Post published a story alleging that Hunter Biden had dumped a laptop brimming with incriminating evidence at a repair shop. The story sparked widespread controversy, and both Facebook and Twitter took steps to limit its spread. Masters is now elevating the story once again – this time, on the debate stage.

“I suspect President Trump would be in the White House today if big tech and big media and the FBI didn’t work together to put the thumb on the scale to get Joe Biden in there,” Masters said.

‘Abortion Radical’

During the debate, Masters accused Kelly of being an “abortion radical.”

“I don’t believe I’m being extreme on this issue,” Masters said. “Senator Mark Kelly is the abortion radical. Mark Kelly says any abortion is OK for any reason all the way up until the moment a baby is due to be born.”

Kelly quickly snapped back, “It’s nonsense.” And he’s right.

In February, Kelly voted in favor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which failed by a margin of just two votes. The legislation would have barred states from criminalizing abortion of a viable fetus if the mother’s life were to be in danger.

Terminations after 21 weeks account for about 1 percent of all abortions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

PolitiFact rated Masters’ claim as “mostly false.”

Masters Said ‘Biden’ More Than ‘Kelly’

At times, it felt like Masters was debating the current president. Biden’s name was uttered a dozen or more times in the opening frames of the debate.

He also regurgitated a false claim from his July 20 campaign ad that “Mark Kelly votes 100 percent of the time with Joe Biden.”

Masters offered a nod of approval to Arizona’s other senator, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, and said he’d reach across the political aisle to work with her because she’s a moderate – but then added, “You can’t work with senators like Mark Kelly.”

In reality, Kelly doesn’t vote with Biden any more often than Sinema. According to pollster FiveThirtyEight, Kelly votes with Biden 94 percent of the time. Sinema does, too. Of the 48 Senate Democrats, 43 of them vote with Biden more often than Kelly. He’s one of the five Democratic senators least allegiant to Biden.

In response to the accusations, Kelly made a point of emphasizing his independent streak and repeatedly mentioned his disagreements with members of his own party, including Biden, over border and oil strategy.

‘Brazil Can Do It’

At the debate, Masters said he believed the U.S. should model its elections after Brazil.

“Can we count the votes in one night … like a first-world country?” Masters asked. “Brazil can do it.”

As the Washington Post pointed out in 2020, “especially in wealthy democracies,” election results sometimes can take time. Brazil, which is considered a third-world country, held its presidential election on October 2 and released its election tally that same night. But U.S. election deniers pushed voter fraud conspiracy theories in Brazil ahead of the election. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro even claimed that government employees were altering ballots.

That didn’t sour Masters’ opinion of the South American nation as he called on American election officials to “be more like Brazil.”

According to Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Freedom House, there were frequent pre-election threats and violence targeting candidates, political supporters, journalists, and members of the judiciary in Brazil.

Freedom House’s report also highlighted that corruption was a concern for voters in the 2018 elections. “Widespread corruption undermines the government’s ability to make and implement policy without undue influence from private or criminal interests,” according to the report.

Kelly has opened up a six-point lead over Masters, but it’s an edge that has dwindled from 14 points on August 10.