In a private call obtained by the Arizona Mirror, Arizona Republican candidates expressed concerns about their prospects on Election Day. Alexander Kolodin, a state lawmaker running for Arizona Secretary of State, noted that early ballot returns had not met expectations. “I have to say, after we had a gangbusters start to the week, the drops today were quite less than I was hoping for,” Kolodin said. “Now, we can still get to an R+10, which is what we need in order to sweep the executive branch. But today’s drops, they’re not going to get us there.”
The call included Kolodin and other candidates for statewide and federal offices, including Andy Biggs and Sine Kerr, who are running for governor and lieutenant governor; Warren Petersen, the party’s nominee for attorney general; and Jay Feely, the Republican in the hotly contested bid for Congressional District 1. Kolodin urged attendees to redouble their efforts. “We can take back Arizona and restore competent conservative governance, but it is going to take a massive effort from now until Election Day,” he said. “Now is not the time to relax. Now is the time to bear down.”
Kolodin’s sentiments were echoed by other speakers, who all urged attendees to get out the vote. Warren Petersen emphasized the need to reach an R+10 margin. “With the drop that just happened here, we’re at an R+1.2, and the real issue is that the Dems are front loading very well,” Petersen said. He noted that Republicans still outnumber Democrats, with final voter registration figures giving the GOP an edge of nearly 300,000 voters. However, he warned that this advantage would not matter if Republicans did not show up to vote.
Petersen also highlighted the importance of independent voters, who have been consistently leaning more to the left this election. “A great way to help with turnout is using the Numinar app,” Petersen said, also urging the use of a Turning Point USA app. “We now have 700 people on the app. We want to hit 2,000 people, so that we can fully activate. I mean, we want to use it now, but also it’s a great tool on Election Day. The app tells you which of your contacts have not voted.”
Petersen said the goal was to ensure that every person in their phone who had not voted was contacted by Election Day. “We literally have races that are going to be decided with hundreds of votes every day, there are people we know that are not going to vote unless we nudge them to vote,” Petersen said. “About one third of the Republicans are not going to vote. That means a third of the people in your phone are not going to vote unless somebody nudges them or someone they trust helps get them out there and get them to the polls every day.”
Petersen also reiterated that they could not rely solely on Election Day votes. “We don’t want to be so far behind that we need to just crush it on Election Day. We want to just go into Election Day where we can have a good Election Day, good turnout, and win,” Petersen said. “We don’t want to have to have a Herculean Election
