An interviewer asked Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters to pick a “subversive thinker” whom people should know more about. Masters gave it some thought and came up with a risky response for someone running for elected office. He picked the Unabomber. “I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this,” Masters responded. “How about, like, Theodore Kaczynski?” Masters was careful to point out he doesn’t condone the bombings that killed three people and injured dozens between 1978 and 1995 and terrorized the nation until Kaczynski’s arrest in 1996. But Master’s March interview on an obscure podcast is emblematic of the provocative style that has helped the 35-year-old first-time candidate connect with the segment of Republican primary voters eager to confront Democrats, technology companies and other enemies of the right in the midterm elections. Boosted by Donald Trump’s endorsement, Masters is gobbling up most of the attention in a primary defined above all else by fealty to the former president. The winner of Tuesday’s election will take on Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, one of the GOP’s top targets. The primary does not fit easily into the Trump vs. GOP establishment pattern that has defined so many contests this year, including the race for Arizona governor. All the major candidates aggressively sought Trump’s imprimatur and have not been shy about advancing his false claims of election fraud from the 2020 presidential election. GOP Gov. Doug Ducey declined to run and the party’s mainstream has not coalesced around any particular candidate. Masters faces businessman Jim Lamon, who founded and sold a solar energy company, and Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who started the race as the best-known candidate but has been weighed down by fierce criticism from Trump. Retired Maj. Gen. Michael McGuire, the former head of the Arizona National Guard, and Justin Olson, a former lawmaker and member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, have struggled to gain traction. As for the Unabomber, Masters said he doesn’t endorse all of Kaczynski’s views, but “there’s a lot of insight there.” Kaczynski’s 35,000-word manifesto, which blames technological progress for societal ills, has found a loyal following. “He had a lot to say about the political left, about how they all have inferiority complexes and fundamentally hate anything like goodness, truth, beauty, justice,” Masters said. Despite a venture capital career tied closely with Silicon Valley startups, Masters is running as a critic of Big Tech and is calling for regulating social media giants such as Facebook, which he says is unfair to conservatives. It’s an interesting position for a candidate who owes virtually his entire professional career to Facebook’s first investor, billionaire Peter Thiel. Masters took a class from Thiel as a Stanford law student and formed an enduring bond. They wrote a book together, Masters worked for Thiel’s investment firm and foundation, and the billionaire is now bankrolling Masters’ run for Senate through a super political action committee to which he’s so far contributed $15 million. Trump last week called Masters “a brilliant mind who truly supports the MAGA movement and America First.” MAGA refers to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” theme. Masters was once a strident libertarian whose online posts as a college student have been fodder for his rivals. He called for unrestricted immigration and wrote that “the U.S. hasn’t been involved in a […]

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