A muted rollout, some rookie mistakes, and a proposal to annex all of Mexico into the United States have robbed Daniel McCarthy’s U.S. Senate campaign of much-needed momentum as he seeks to knock out incumbent U.S. Senator Martha McSally in the 2020 Republican Primary, but McCarthy’s campaign has plenty of time and opportunities ahead to reset his campaign and get on track.
McCarthy has the makings of a large campaign team going together under the leadership of Kelli Ward’s 2018 campaign manager Shawn Dow. He has hosted large meetings of Republican activists who have offered him their advice on how to run and win, and he is in the midst of a two-day announcement tour that is taking him from Tucson to Scottsdale to Flagstaff and then Prescott. He is showing an ability to draw a crowd of activists, although how much of that is excitement about McCarthy and how much is the hunger for a McSally alternative is a fair question.
At this early stage McCarthy likely doesn’t care which it is that motivates people to show up. All he is asking for is a chance to be heard. He chose DemandDaniel as his campaign theme and website because he says its time to demand a real change in Washington D.C. and he often treats McSally and Mark Kelly (the certain Democratic nominee) as two sides of the same coin. The argument that our system is broken has often proven effective, and his pitch that a successful outsider is the person to try and change things also has a good win/loss record across the country. But challenging an incumbent is tough, especially for a U.S. Senate race, and it requires making very few mistakes — which may be where McCarthy is getting himself in trouble.
His initial announcement was rushed and failed to attract much media attention. He took flack for attacking McSally and Kelly as lifelong government employees, making them seem like bureaucrats while one was an astronaut and the other served in the U.S. Air Force. And he made a proposal to annex the entire country of Mexico that turned out to be completely serious and something he seemed to have given a great deal of thought to. How Arizona Republicans will respond to the idea of lots of new Mexican states with 2 Senators each, or one supersized Mexican state with an Electoral College vote total that dwarfs California’s remains to be seen, but McSally’s supporters are clearly feeling better about their chances than they were when news of McCarthy’s campaign first broke.
The 2020 primary is a lifetime away, and McCarthy will have plenty of opportunities to impress Arizona voters, but it will take a lot of resources and an end to mistakes that derail ordinary campaigns. Fortunately for McCarthy, he has the personal resources thanks to his success as an entrepreneur. Now it is up to Dow and McCarthy’s team to get the campaign on track for the long run ahead. McSally may be a flawed candidate who is putting Arizona’s other Senate seat at risk right after losing the first one, but McCarthy needs to prove he is a better candidate if he is going to beat her in 2020.
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