It appears that Sen. Mark Kelly’s chances of re-election are slipping again. Inside Elections has moved Arizona’s 2022 Senate race from “Battleground Democratic” to “Toss Up.”
Cook Political Report and Crystal Ball also moved the race to “Toss Up” in November.
Kelly has come under attack by his fellow Democrats for his refusal to provide a definitive answer about the filibuster.
The Hill asked Kelly if he would vote to nuke the filibuster and he responded vaguely. “If there’s a real proposal, I’ll take a look at it,” he said.
According to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), since June 2020, Kelly has indicated that he doesn’t consider ending the filibuster a serious solution to Senate log jams.
“I mean, the filibuster really shouldn’t be part of the discussion. It’s also very hypothetical and it’s kind of more of the same stuff from a broken Washington,” said Kelly in September 2020.
On Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz pointed out that it wasn’t long ago that the Democrats fought to preserve the filibuster.
“Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are desperate to break the Senate rules and try to engage in a corrupt power grab. This bill that they’re pushing, The Corrupt Politicians Act, would undermine democracy across the country. It takes laws adopted by democratically elected legislatures and subjects them to the arbitrary veto of politically radical unelected bureaucrats at the Department of Justice. President Biden has nominated hard left ideologues across this country,” said Cruz. “What Schumer and the Democrats are trying to do is strike down every single voter ID law in the country even though 80 percent of Americans support them. Even though a large majority of African American voters’ support voter ID laws. Democrats have decided that voter fraud benefits them politically and they’re willing to go to any length to tear down the reasonable common-sense protections that protect the integrity of our elections. They’re willing to go so far as breaking the rules of the Senate to end the filibuster. Now if you want to know the consequences of that, you may perhaps be skeptical of republicans, if you’re not a Republican. You may be from a different political view, so I want to point you to someone who’s not a Republican assessing the consequences of what Chuck Schumer is proposing right now. That person is a person by the name of Charles Schumer who in 2005, March 16, 2005, said this about nuking the Senate rules and ending the filibuster. Here’s what Chuck Schumer said, ‘Because they can’t get their way, they want to change the rules midstream. To wash away 200 years of history, they want to make this country into a banana republic, where if you don’t get your way, you change the rules.’ It’ll be doomsday for democracy if we do what Chuck Schumer said, ‘ending the filibuster would be doomsday for democracy and turn America into a banana republic. He was telling the truth in 2005, and it’s still true today.”
In 2017, 27 Democrats signed a letter asking to save the filibuster when the Republicans were in power.
But now that Democrats are in the majority, they want to trample the rights of the minority. pic.twitter.com/j2NBBuzTqL
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) January 12, 2022