In Arizona, incumbent Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I) recently announced that she will not run for a second term, avoiding a three-way contest with Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake (pictured above).
Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in 2022, had been seeking re-election as an independent, but her departure from the race is expected to help Gallego avoid splitting the Democratic vote.
Activist and columnist Robert Knight believes election fraud cost Kari Lake the governor's race in 2022 and could be a factor again in this race.
"Her biggest concern is not so much her Democrat opponent as it is vote fraud," he submits. "A lot of it has been uncovered. The mainstream media have ignored it, and I know people are working in Arizona right now to try to ensure it doesn't happen again."
Tom Zawistowski, president of the tea party affiliated We the People Convention, confirms that there has been progress in the Arizona courts.
"There's all kinds of lawsuits that we've been winning there to change the voting laws and make sure that they can't cheat as easily as they did before," he tells AFN. "You can tell that because Kyrsten Simona wouldn't have dropped out … if Kari Lake wasn't winning. They have to make sure that they consolidate all their forces to try to defeat her. That's why Sinema dropped out, and I think Kari Lake is still going to win."
Still, Knight says, "It would probably do Kari Lake well to have a landslide victory so that even vote fraud couldn't prevent her from taking office."
In California, Craig Huey says the radical Left is shocked by former Major League Baseball star Steve Garvey's showing in this week's Senate primary.
A great deal of the vote has yet to be tabulated, but Garvey, who played most of his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers, is trailing Democrat Adam Schiff by just one percentage point – good enough for him to finish second and advance to November.
"The radical Left is shocked," says Huey. "The Democratic Party leadership, the biased media – their heads are spinning because they did not anticipate this happening. Schiff is scared because he knows that he's got to really do a good job."
The Associated Press notes that Garvey owes "a debt of thanks" to Schiff and his supportive super political action committees, which ran millions of dollars in advertising spotlighting Garvey's conservative credentials. That indirectly boosted his visibility among Republican and right-leaning voters.
Huey thinks Donald Trump ought to come to California and hold a rally with Garvey.
"If Donald Trump came to California, it would draw publicity, the media," he suggests. "Steve Garvey would lift up Donald Trump; conservative Republicans would lift up Steve Garvey where they have some suspicion of him."
Garvey has twice voted for Trump, who lost California in landslides but remains popular among GOP voters, but he has not made up his mind about this year's presidential contest.
The political analyst adds that the more baseball fans think about having a baseball hero as their senator, the more they like the idea.
