Laura Gersony
Arizona Republic
Arizona Republican Blake Masters, who lost his 2022 bid for U.S. Senate, announced Thursday morning he is running to represent Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.
Masters will vie for the seat now occupied by incumbent Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., who announced last week that she would retire at the end of her current term.
“Biden has failed. We need Trump back. We need to stop inflation, Build the Wall, avoid WW3, and secure Arizona’s water future. We need to fight for our families,” Masters wrote in a social media post.
Masters, who lost to Democrat Mark Kelly in 2022, had reportedly been weighing another run for a U.S. Senate seat. Independent Kyrsten Sinema now occupies the Senate seat that will be on the 2024 ballot.
Masters served as chief operating officer of billionaire Peter Thiel’s investment firm and also president of the Thiel Foundation. He was a political newcomer when he ran for Senate in 2022.
During his Senate campaign, Masters was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, promoting an “America First”-style platform that emphasized border security, criticizing tech companies’ efforts to curb misinformation on social media and insisting on the baseless claim that Trump won the 2020 election.
