Hamadeh Unfurls Steady Slate of Endorsers in CD8

The Arizona Globe is already on record expressing our opinion that endorsements of candidates by elected officials and other notables usually don’t matter so much at the ballot box. You don’t walk in to vote and think “I wanted to vote for Bill but State Senator Smith thinks I had to vote for Jane.” Even if you really admire State Senator Smith, you just don’t care.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not very valuable to get these endorsements. What a candidate is trying to create with a bunch of early endorsements is a phrase I have coined, and you should feel free to use it. I call it the “cascade of invincibility.” The steady drumbeat of announcements of support from elected officials and other VIPs, especially in a primary, makes a candidacy feel inevitable.

This might not have much impact on voters, but other candidates looking at jumping in the race might think twice if the important and influential fundraisers have already been spoken for.

Abraham Hamadeh, the only announced GOP candidate so far in CD8 is trying to create the cascade of Invincibility. So far he’s doing a pretty good job of it.

Other candidates rumored to be at least taking a look at the race include 2022 GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters and Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives Ben Toma.

But every day for the past week since Debbie Lesko announced she would not be running for reelection to Congress, Hamadeh‘s team has put out a tweet of a smiling Abe backed by some local notable elected official, and even a few random national figures.

So far, Sens. Wendy Rogers, Sonny Borelli, Janae Shamp and Justine Wadsack, former state GOP chair Kelli Ward, Reps. Alex Kolodin, Cory McGarr and Rachel Jones, Trump National Security Advisor Bob O’Brien, former Nevada AG Adam Laxalt, West Va AG Patrick Morrisey, former Director of the United States National Intelligence Ric Grenell, former Trump staffer Kash Patel and former Commissioner of the NYPD Bernard Kerik have all gotten the smiling Abe treatment.

While it might not matter to the average voter in November, who Kelli Ward endorsed in the Republican primary a year earlier, the advisors to people like Masters and Toma are surely paying attention and wondering how many other prize endorsers are out there, given the growing list for Team Abe.