It’s safe to say this has not been the greatest week ever for Blake Masters or Peter Thiel. Despite outspending Hamadeh at least 3-1, Masters went on to lose in a crowded Republican primary in AZ-08.
Source: Business Insider
Blake Masters just lost another election.
The former venture capitalist, an ideological ally of Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and tech billionaire Peter Thiel, was defeated by Abe Hamadeh in a crowded GOP primary in Arizona’s 8th congressional district.
That’s despite getting a last-minute boost from Donald Trump. After initially endorsing just Hamadeh several months ago, the former president issued a dual endorsement of both Masters and Hamadeh in the final days of the race. That came after Vance, who’d supported Masters from the beginning, became Trump’s running mate.
This is the second time Masters has lost an election in two years. In 2022, when he was the GOP nominee for US Senate in Arizona, he was handily defeated by Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
It came after a remarkably nasty campaign, where Masters — who lives over 100 miles away from the Phoenix-area House district where he was running — painted Hamadeh as sympathetic to terrorists and sought to make an issue out of his Muslim background.
Stuart Stevens, a Republican strategist, summed it up quite well.
