The NPR Politics Podcast - Midterm Update: Arizona, Florida, & Oklahoma Hold Primary Elections

Episode Date: August 27, 2018

On Tuesday Arizona and Florida hold some of the year's most anticipated primaries. The fight for Senate in both states will test how much candidates should attach themselves to President Trump. And Democrats are hoping to pick up a seat in Arizona, while struggling to hold onto one in Florida. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, Congressional reporter Kelsey, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stationsLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Jessie, and I'm researching candidates for Florida's primary. This podcast was recorded at Monday, August 27th at 149 Eastern. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, Arizona, Florida, and Oklahoma hold their primaries, and we are here now to tell you what you need to know about what's at stake. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. How's everybody doing? Awesome. It's the full August outside in Washington, so I'm happy to be inside and not sweating.

Oh, are we back to the humidity? Yeah. We had like a week reprieve. Let's talk about a place with no humidity. It's a dry heat in Arizona. I thought you were going to say Florida because... Have you been to Florida lately? Sarcasm, yeah.

Let's start in the less humid state. Arizona, I think far and away the most interesting race on the ballot tomorrow is the Republican primary for Arizona Senate. Of course, we've been talking in the last few days about John McCain's death and opening of a Senate seat. This is for the other seat, Jeff Flake's seat. Kelsey, can you recap why the seat is open to begin with and just rewind on the political climate? Yeah, Jeff Flake gave this big long speech on the Senate floor to announce that he wasn't going to be running for reelection because basically the party had become too Trumpy and he was not willing to move in that direction. So Domenico Flake says, I'm not even going to try to be Trumpy because that's not me,

but walk us through the candidates running in this primary and how they are all trying to get the Trump angle. So and we should clarify when he says the state is really Trumpy, he's talking about the Republican Party and how that's changed because Trump only won the state by, you know, about five percentage points or less. So, you know, the state demographically has certainly moved away from it being a rock ribbed Republican state and something of a kind of more purple with more of a purplish hue, if you will. But in this Republican primary, it's everybody trying to out Trump each other. So you have three candidates on the Republican side who have really stood out. The front runner far and away on the Republican side so far has been Martha McSally, the congresswoman, who's also a fighter pilot. And she will remind you of that in every political ad. 26 years in uniform.

She's taken the fight to the enemy and the establishment. The U.S. Air Force decided Martha McSally had the right stuff. The first female pilot to fly in combat. Colonel McSally is not afraid of a good fight. She has launched a one-woman campaign against a military policy in Saudi Arabia that forced her to wear a long black Islamic robe over her Air Force uniform. I absolutely refuse to bow down to Sharia law. To give you kind of an image of what's happening in this ad, she's like, we get to see her in full fighter pilot regalia. We see her in all these different scenes. She's looking tough.

It's a lot. And she even says at the end, that's why I told Washington Republicans to grow a pair of ovaries and get the job done. She's the favorite in the race overall. You have two other challengers here with Kelly Ward, who's a former state senator. She's somebody who's tried to rally up the conservative base, the more pro-Trump base in the state. And Joe Arpaio, that same Joe Arpaio who we've heard over and over again, the former Maricopa County Sheriff who Trump pardoned earlier this year for a misdemeanor on contempt of court for trying to round up immigrants in the country illegally. The first in a series of pardons that were overtly political and went

outside of the typical vetting process the Department of Justice does for pardons. We've seen that several times since, but that was the first got a lot of attention. And now that may seem like the person who is maybe closest to Trump or the best able to wrap their arms around him. But Kelly Ward is definitely trying to compete with Arpaio on that front. One of the things that I think distinguishes her in the past couple of days is she didn't stop criticizing John McCain after it was announced that he was going to stop treatment. And then just this morning, she tweeted political correctness is like a cancer, which has been very poorly received on Twitter. She even suggested on Friday that the

family putting out the statement that he was ending treatment was intended to hurt her in some way. Right. And one thing we should remember about her is she is well known to National Party Republicans. They'd gone out of their way to discredit her in the past and they very much do not want her to be the candidate. So this is a flavor of kind of the identity politics, Trump-esque tone of the primary. What's going on on the Democratic side?

Because, Domenico, you mentioned this is a purple state, but Arizona is one of those perennial states where, even though Democrats have won in the past, they think, oh, the demographics are changing in our favor, and yet they still end up losing statewide. So who are the Democratic candidates and how are they positioning themselves? Well, there's really one Democratic candidate who's really been positioning herself most strongly, and that's Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema. She is running a race where she's trying to paint herself as an independent. Here's one of her ads. I'm a police officer. She's my little sis. And he's my big bad Marine

brother. We used to fight like cats and dogs as kids. Not so much anymore. Clearly, she's real headstrong. I call it being independent. In that ad, her brother is wearing a T-shirt with the logo of the thin blue line, blue Lives Matter police officer supporting logo that you've seen as kind of a response to the Black Lives Matter movement protesting police brutality. The thing about cinema that I find really interesting is that this is kind of the culmination of a shift towards the center that she's been doing since she got elected. She ran as a pretty liberal candidate, didn't she?

She started her career as a Green Party candidate. And she's really, I guess we could say, evolved. But it has happened over time. She joined the Blue Dog Coalition, which is kind of... The more centrist. Yeah, it's a centrist group of Democrats that there really aren't that many of them left in the House anymore. She's also part of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. And one of the things that distinguishes her in a more personal way

is she's the first openly bisexual member of Congress. Yeah. And the thing is, you know, because she doesn't really have a big primary fight on her side, she's been able to, you know, really position herself as this independent in the state trying to win, like we said, in sort of a right leaning state in a midterm year. Democrats are obviously hoping that McSally doesn't win. Right. I mean, they're hoping that one of these other two more right leaning Trumpian candidates wins and that opens up a real lane for Sinema. But Sinema right now is actually leading in general election polls over McSally. And that's one of the few states where Democrats feel like they do have a shot at picking off a Republican seat in the fall. And that's important

because Democrats need to pick up two seats to take over the Senate. It's really difficult because of the terrible field that Democrats have this year, one of the worst in almost a century. And by that, you don't mean the candidates. You mean the turf that the battles are being fought on. Right. I mean, you know, of the 35 seats that are up this year, 26 of them are being defended by Democrats. That's a very difficult thing to do to be able to, you know, win and pick up seats when 10 of those places are, you know, places Trump won by a lot. And they are many of those seats are ones that are very much on the bubble polling wise or where we don't have a lot of really good general election polling yet because there were some

contested primaries. We've been talking about Arizona. We should mention here that we now know how the rest of the week is going to play out when it comes to honoring John McCain, who died over the weekend. Quick reminder here that Saturday night when news came out that McCain had died, we came and recorded a special podcast. Kelsey, you were on it. You can find that in your feeds. Kelsey, can you walk us through the schedule of how this week is going to play out? Yeah, on Wednesday, McCain will lie in state in the Arizona State Capitol. There will first be a private ceremony and then public viewing. On Thursday, there will be a memorial service in Phoenix, and then he will be flown to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland and will be then taken to the

U.S. Capitol where he will lie in state on Friday. And there will be a public ceremony and public viewing there. He will be the first person to have that honor since Daniel Inouye, who died in office in 2012 and was a World War II veteran. Other people have had viewings in the Capitol. It's called lying in honor. But he will be the first person to lie in state since, anyway. And then on Saturday, there will be a service at the National Cathedral in Washington. And then on Sunday, he will be buried in a private ceremony at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. That really sounds like a presidential level of services and events,

especially the funeral at the National Cathedral. But Domenico, I think it's pretty notable, the president is not going to be participating in it. Yeah, and he hasn't really said very much about McCain's passing. You know, these two obviously clashed a lot during the campaign. And, you know, there really wasn't a lot of love lost between these two men. You know, McCain really wasn't a lot of love lost between these two men. You know, McCain was so much different, lived such a different life than Trump did. And McCain being McCain wasn't afraid to say what he thought about President Trump. And you know how President Trump

responds to people who criticize him. And then last question on all of this, kind of bringing this back to the Senate seats. McCain's Senate seat is now vacant. Do we have a sense of the timeline for Arizona's governor appointing a. The governor has to make the appointment he's required to. He's also required to pick somebody from the same party. So it has to be a Republican. This is in the state statute. That's just the way that they do things in Arizona. Yeah. The Arizona Republic listed out a few names of potential replacements. They include, by the way, none other than Cindy McCain, who is John McCain's wife. She wouldn't be the first, by the way, widow of a former senator to take over a seat. Yeah, Debbie Dingell in the House took over her husband's seat when he left Congress.

Yeah, John Dingell. Kirk Adams has been mentioned. He's 45 years old. He is Ducey's current chief of staff, a former state lawmaker himself, ran for Congress in 2012. Also noted Barbara Barrett, who is 67. She is in charge of the Aerospace Corporation and a former ambassador to Finland. And John Kyle, if that name is familiar to people, it's because he is a former senator from Arizona. We're going to take a quick break, come back and talk about Florida. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Newman's Own Foundation, working to nourish the common good by donating all profits from Newman's Own food products to charitable organizations that seek to make the world a better place.

More information is available at newmansownfoundation.org. Fall TV is gearing up. And whether you watch on your sofa or on the subway, Pop Culture Happy Hour is here to help. We'll tell you what we're looking forward to and how you might find your next favorite show. And we're back. Everybody here likes baseball. So I'll point out we're going from the Cactus League to the Grapefruit League here from Arizona to Florida. I am more of a fan of Florida spring training myself.

It is not spring training, however. We're getting into the final push for the playoffs. Yes, and Kelsey is the only one here feeling good about the playoffs. Though the Yankees are making a comeback toward the Red Sox. Who is your team? Oh, the Cubs. Oh, well. You're such a frontrunner as a Cubs fan.

As my dad likes to say, my first sentence was, go Cubs, go. So, Domenico, we were talking about the Senate primary in Arizona. In Florida, it's really the gubernatorial primary that's getting the most attention. Yeah. You know, the Republican on this side is Congressman Ron DeSantis is somebody who President Trump has endorsed and endorsed. So he's done it a couple of times here. He was tweeting about his appreciation for DeSantis just a little bit ago. Right. And the agriculture commissioner, Adam Putnam, is the the other main candidate here. But DeSantis is seen as the frontrunner because of the way Trump has endorsed him.

So one of the parts of this race that I think has been really interesting, and we talked about it as a theme happening in Arizona. But again, on the Republican side, candidates trying to hug Trump as close as possible. And I think Ron DeSantis probably wins the award for that. Does he really? Because there have been so many candidates. I mean, in Florida. Oh, in Florida. Okay. We're not ready to hang that national award yet. A few more primaries. He had an ad that caught a lot of people's attention. I think we can hear some of it. Everyone knows my husband, Ron DeSantis, is endorsed by President Trump,

but he's also an amazing dad. Ron loves playing with the kids. Build the wall. He reads stories. Then Mr. Trump said, you're fired. I love that part. He's teaching Madison to talk. Make America great again.

People say Ron's all Trump, but he is so much more. Big league. So good. I just thought you should know. Ron DeSantis for governor. Yeah, it's pretty clear how he is positioning himself. Wow, but Florida is Florida. I mean, that is a big risk to go and present yourself as the all out most Trumpian.

Even the current governor, Rick Scott, does not try to hug himself that tightly to the president. I saw a study recently. Somebody wouldn't add it up. I forget how far back it went, but like several of the last few presidential elections in a row just added all the statewide vote totals for the Republicans and Democrats up. And even over the course of like five or six presidential elections, it's basically 50-50. That's how consistently narrowly divided Florida is. Yeah. I mean, this all goes back to something we've all talked about is, is there going to be a risk and are there going to be repercussions for all of these people who have decided that following Trump and following Trump's type of politics are going to be the answer for them in this election? I mean, that's always a risk, right? In a primary is if you tack too far to one side that you alienate people in the general.

Though maybe we should flag here while we're talking about Florida that we were talking before about how good Democrats feel about the Senate race in Arizona. In Florida, Democrats are feeling increasingly uncomfortable about how that race is looking for their incumbent right now. Yeah, because right now we don't really have a, we're not spending a ton of time talking about the Florida Senate primary because there's no real competition within the primaries. The Republican is the incumbent Democrat, Bill Nelson. The Republican is the incumbent governor, Rick Scott,

who has huge name ID, obviously statewide. And there's been this already fierce back and forth between Nelson and Scott and a couple of stumbles from Nelson, where Democrats are feeling less enthusiastic about his candidacy. And that's really dangerous when you have Democrats, you know, really trying to cling to so many of these seats and hope to not lose seats, frankly, in 2018. Yeah. And Trump tweeted about Scott today, too. Again, we're going to cling to so many of these seats and hope to not lose seats, frankly, in 2018. Yeah. And Trump tweeted about Scott today, too. Again, we're going to have to see how much that makes a difference. And before we go, worth flagging, there is also a primary in Oklahoma.

Oh, Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. You know all the words. Of course, I was curly in fifth grade. Very authentic performance of Oklahoma in Flushing, New York. Governor's race is the most interesting primary to watch there. We will bring you the results from that race from Florida and from Arizona on Wednesday. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress.

I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.