Blake Masters is running against incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. In our interview with him he explains how he wants to get state and nation back to normalcy.
Blake Masters is the Republican challenging incumbent Democrat Arizona Senator Mark Kelly in the November 8 mid-term election. Democrats have dumped more than $80 Million into Kelly's campaign while Masters has raised around $12 Million. This funding imbalance manifests itself in the large number of negative attack ads being streamed into Arizona households on behalf of Kelly and against Masters. In their debate, Masters appears to have clearly prevailed over Kelly. Libertarian Marc Victor, who also took part in this debate, recently dropped out of the race and endorsed Masters.
In our phone interview, Blake Masters told us about his priorities and his plans to stop the agenda of the Biden-Harris administration.
If elected, and if Republicans take the Senate, what are your top 3 priorities?
Well, we've got to stop this crazy inflation. We've got to secure the border and I also want to put an end to the weaponization of the DoJ under Joe Biden and Merrick Garland.
How can a Republican Senate majority lower inflation?
Well, the good news is just by winning, just by retaking the House and the Senate, we can immediately put the brakes on Biden's inflation. Kind of at a structural level because Biden won't be able to pass any more crazy multi trillion dollar spending bills that are fully half of the inflation. It's this undisciplined crazy spending spree. They've printed $6 Trillion in the last 20 months. We're going to have to fight to reverse these America last energy policies under President Biden. That's going to be a little bit harder. But relief is on the way because we'll just stop the crazy spending spree right off the bat.
Can the Senate do anything about the weaponization of some of the federal agencies?
Well, we have to try, we have to do all we can, it'll be very frustrating because obviously Joe Biden wants it this way. He's presided over this crazy weaponization of these agencies and so we need the White House back. You know, there's only so much we can do in 2023 and 2024. That's why I always say the 2022 election next week and 2024 they go together, we need to win both. And the first task of the next Republican President in January 2025. Once sworn in is to really reign in the DoJ and the FBI and make sure that they return to being neutral. We don't want a conservative DoJ or a Republican FBI. We just want these organizations to follow the law and enforce it neutrally. There is a lot Congress can do though, and we can do in the Senate. In 2023 and 2024 we will have investigative power, subpoena power. We can hold hearings and and really try to get to the bottom of this, try to expose who in these organizations is playing partisan politics versus who's actually enforcing the law in a neutral manner and doing their job.
Can the budget be used to limit the power of the federal agencies, e.g. the 87,000 IRS agents that Biden wants to hire?
Yeah, we can do a lot of that. You know, the inflation reduction act did pass into law. So that's a law now. Congress can't simply unwind it because you'd need Biden to sign a new law. But Congress has tremendous investigative powers and oversight powers. And that's something I'm actually interested in exercising. For too long I think Congress, I blame Democrats, but also, sometimes Republicans, has just kind of not wanted to do their job. They've ceded the authority of actually overseeing these agencies to the agencies themselves. That doesn't work. You need someone to police this administrative branch of government. It's, it's become enormous. And so I think Congress needs to regain its role and actually exercise legislative oversight of this giant executive administrative branch that's just sprawling out of control violating people's rights.
How about the wide open Southern border? What can the Senate do?
Well, we have to use every bit of leverage we can to extract concessions from Biden. Obviously, the House should and will pass a good border security bill. And the Senate will, we'll do that as well. We know what that would look like. It would look like finishing the border wall, doubling the size of border patrol at least. I'm a tech guy. I believe we should use technology to help drive smuggling down to zero, use drones, thermal imaging cameras. This works. And we also need to reimplement the policies, policies that were working that we had just a few years ago, Biden's canceled most of them. He's made it very hard to deport anybody, has made it very hard for border patrol and ICE to do their jobs. The problem is as soon as the House and Senate pass that bill goes to Biden's desk. Biden, of course, will not sign it. Biden wants this wide open Southern border. And so we're gonna have to play hardball.
It gets easy in January 2025, when we get a strong Republican president back in the White House. For the next two years, 2023 and 2024, we're just going to have to play hardball and my pledge is to not vote for whatever Biden wants: new spending, even a continuing resolution, even judicial appointees. I won't vote for what Biden wants unless and until we get border security. Unless he agrees to finish the wall, we need to extract concessions from him by working together as Republicans. I'll try to whip the Republican votes in the caucus. We have to stand united against Biden. That's the only way to get border security when you have a President that's hell bent on open borders.
That sounds like a negotiation approach?
I mean, negotiation almost sounds too weak. I mean, playing hardball, we have to be willing to grind Biden's agenda to a halt unless he's willing to give border security. I mean, Biden's not just failing. He's not trying to do a good job and failing at it. He's just not enforcing federal law at the border. That's absolutely unacceptable. It's a violation of his oath of office. It's unconstitutional. And Mark Kelly, my opponent in this race, he rubber stamps, Biden's policies. He is right there signing on to Biden's open borders policies. These Democrats in charge, Mark Kelly, Joe Biden have caused this border crisis. And so we need to do absolutely everything we can to secure the border.
If a Republican President is elected in 2024 and you are in the Senate, what should be done about the millions of illegal immigrants that are already in the country, especially those that came here in the last 2 years?
Well, I think we need to find out who they are, first of all. I'm not sure that we know exactly how many? Who they are? Where are they? We need to know that. It's a national security threat. We've already caught more than 100 people trying to cross in the last few months who have been apprehended on the known terrorist watch list. Those are the terrorists who got caught. What about the ones that must have come through but escaped detection? So this is a giant national security threat. We also have to get comfortable with deporting people. If you're unwilling to deport anyone ever, then you don't have border security. My opponent Mark Kelly, he literally voted against deporting criminal illegal aliens with violent felony convictions in their background.
And I just don't understand that. It makes no sense these people aren't here legally. We know they've committed violent felonies. And Mark Kelly doesn't want to send them home to their home country. He wants to let them roam the streets so they can be free to victimize somebody else. No, I think you start by deporting those illegal aliens who have criminal felony convictions. You start there, you figure out who everyone else is and then you go from there. But I think that would be a tremendous progress to deport the criminal illegal aliens with violent felony convictions.
The Obama administration deported many illegal immigrants and not just criminal ones. Why are we so afraid today to mention deportation? Isn't the open Southern border unfair to immigrants who come here legally?
That's right. I think the the way the whole system works right now. Yeah, and Biden's open borders. Yes, it's massively unfair to the people who come here legally. And you're right. Obama, I don't think he was nearly as good as President Trump on the border. But he tried, he deported a lot of people and that was that was good.
Biden refuses to deport anybody. Obviously, you start with the criminal illegal aliens. You got to figure out who everyone else is. I don't think that anyone who breaks into our country illegally has a right to be here. I mean by definition, legally they do not. That's why illegal immigration is illegal. So this isn't complicated. But the first thing to do is to secure the border, stop taking in new illegal immigrants. When a boat is taking on water and sinking, the first thing you do isn't to stress out about the water, that flooding the boat, it's just to plug the darn hole, right? You stop taking in new illegals and then we figure out how to deal with that when the dust settles.
Which officials of the Biden administration would be on your short list for congressional oversight and investigation?
Wray at the FBI at this point is clearly a nakedly partisan political operative. I think Merrick Garland. Merrick Garland literally, his DoJ considers parents who attend a school board meeting and have the audacity to demand transparency into their kids curriculum. Hey, what are my children being taught? If you show up at a school board as a concerned parent like that, Merrick Garland's DoJ considers you a potential domestic terrorist. I'm sorry, that's absolutely inexcusable. So I think Merrick Garland is, you know, he might be the worst attorney general we've ever had in this country. Maybe there's some others that have been worse. But I put Merrick Garland at the bottom, somewhere, somewhere very near the bottom what we're seeing from him is just nakedly partisan political activity and that's it's corrosive to the rule of law. You just can't have that. Again, I don't want an attorney general who's going to play Republican politics and only prosecutes Democrats. I mean that that's intolerable as well. We need a DoJ that's neutral and that actually enforces the law equally with respect to everyone. That shouldn't be a partisan statement in 2022, but it's amazing how it is.
Is there anything the Senate can do to reduce the influence of the Departments of Education and Justice on education, especially K-12 education?
One thing I want to do is minimize the size and shape, footprint of the Federal Department of Education. You know, I've called for its abolition. I don't think it's constitutional. I don't think it's particularly effective. Certainly schools are getting worse and worse the bigger the federal Department of Education gets. So I would love to send power from D. C. back to the states right back to localities, ultimately, back to the parents. I believe in school choice. I believe parents are the experts, They know their children best they care about their children the most more than any government bureaucrat in Washington D. C.
Of course, you need 60 votes to do that. That's not happening anytime soon. And so my job when I get in there is to try to bear hug the Department of Education, make sure that it's not sending all these block grants for horrible left wing ideology programs like when the Federal Department of Education sends $100 Million to a public school district, they don't do it to reward educational excellence or incentivize educational attainment. No, they do it like here's a big block grant, you can set up a diversity equity and inclusion center with this money. The money that comes back to the states where it probably never should have left via the Department of Educational grants, it has all these strings attached. It has all these conditions. More often than not, those conditions, I think are very harmful and and involve left wing ideology, indoctrination of our kids. And we just got to get back to decentralization power to the people, power to the parents. And when you let parents choose, parents will invariably choose reading writing, arithmetic, history, discipline, shop class, home economics, a useful education.
What parents won't choose is toxic left wing ideology like Critical Race Theory or the 1619 history curriculum or this perverse gender ideology that's in so many of our schools. The left knows this and that's why the left hates school choice. That's why the democrats in charge, I think they're all beholden to the teachers unions, they pursue a one size fits all model. They want to standardize everything. They want to run it out of the left wing education bureaucracy in D. C. And I think we've seen that doesn't work so well. We need to go hard in the other direction: power back to the parents.
If Republicans take House and Senate, Democrats will presumably pivot immediately and blame Republicans for the problems that Democrats have caused in the last two years. How do you suggest handling those political attacks?
We have to be better on the messaging. You know, we have the luxury of only needing to tell the truth. The Democrats have to lie. I agree with you. As soon as we get in, they're gonna start blaming all this on us: It's because we can't pass by Biden's agenda. No, they had the house, the Senate and White House for two years. They took inflation from 1% to 9%. They surrendered our energy independence. There are the ones that declared war on American oil production. The Democrats caused this inflation. We're going to go in and put the brakes on it. So we can't accept their frame. We can't be playing defense. We have to remind people of the truth, which is that Joe Biden, Mark Kelly and their bad economic policies created the economy we have today, they torpedoed it. And the Republicans are here to stop the bleeding and to heal the patient, right to get back a healthy economy where we're actually looking out for working class and middle class Americans.