We could have gone the rest of our lives without ever thinking about or hearing from Blake Masters again after he lost his 2022 bid for U.S. Senate in Arizona. Unfortunately, rumor has it he’s thinking about making another run for office, and he could be announcing his candidacy as early as… next week?!

Ugh.

The basic 37-year-old gay-hating, Trump-loving Republican unsuccessfully tried to unseat incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly in last year’s midterms, despite having a huge PR machine and massive campaign warchest courtesy of gay billionaire Peter Thiel.

Yes, you read that correctly. Masters ran on an anti-LGBTQ+ platform, which included overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the SCOTUS decision establishing a right to same-sex marriage, even though his campaign was largely funded by a gay man, whose same-sex wedding he attended in 2017.

Related*

Now, there are whispers that Masters is plotting to launch another Arizona Senate bid, possibly sometime in the next few days. There’s just one slight hiccup in his plan, and it’s this lady:

Drag-hating MAGA queen Kari Lake told reporters at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa back in August that she was exploring a possible run for Arizona Senate after her failed bid for Arizona governor (which she still refuses to accept) last year.

“I’m thinking in the next couple of months I’ll be making a decision,” she said, adding she’d make an announcement “maybe sometime in the fall.”

If Lake were to run, that would potentially put her and Masters in a head-to-head matchup, which would be super awkward since they both received Trump’s endorsement and campaigned together in 2022.

Per Politico:

Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist, said he talked to Masters a few months ago and he “was pretty decisively in.” However, he said, Masters had been waiting for Lake to decide whether to run.

“I think he is now under the impression that maybe Kari Lake isn’t going to run, because I’ll tell you if Lake and Blake are both in, he is wasting his time,” he said. “They occupy the same lane. They have nearly the same name. And she has much better positive name ID among Republicans than Blake does.”

“If Kari Lake runs, there is no lane for Blake Masters,” he added.

Masters hasn’t commented on a rumored second (losing) bid for U.S. Senate, and Lake has yet to reveal her plans either. For the most part, she’s been busy campaigning for Trump (a.k.a. Inmate #P01135809) and angling to be his VP pick in 2024, reportedly going so far as to move into a suite at Mar-a-Lago to be closer to him.

But the odds of that happening seem to be getting slimmer by the day, as Lake’s popularity keeps waning in the battleground state, and everyone knows Trump doesn’t like losers.

A recent poll conducted by the nonpartisan research group Noble Predictive Insights found that 51% of Arizona voters, including 29% of Republicans, held an unfavorable view of her. Meanwhile, just 35% said they held a favorable opinion of her.

Related*

The 2024 election in the Grand Canyon State is likely going to be a messy one for a number of reasons.

In addition to a potential Masters/Lake faceoff, bisexual Sen. Kyrsten Sinema might be running as an independent after leaving the Democratic Party last December, and Rep. Ruben Gallego has already announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that the GOP candidate for president might very well be a convicted felon by then.

Oof.

Godspeed, Arizona.

Help make sure LGBTQ+ stories are being told...

We can't rely on mainstream media to tell our stories. That's why we don't lock Queerty articles behind a paywall. Will you support our mission with a contribution today?

Once Monthly Annually

Cancel anytime · Proudly LGBTQ+ owned and operated