Perhaps AZ-08 Will Be The Reddest Seat To Flip Red To Blue This Year

Trent Franks was a crackpot extremist-- and a pervert. When he got caught in a sex scandal this year, the GOP House leadership forced him to retire immediately. Not many people in Congress were sad to see him go. And his uptight suburban little district in Phoenix's West Valley has been too confused to absorb what happened to their 7-term congressman who never had a serious challenge for reelection. In fact there ws no Democrat running against him in 2016, 2014 or 2012. The district includes Sun City, Surprise, Peoria, Surprise and Litchfield Park and the PVI is R+13. Trump beat Hillary there by a massive 58.1% to 37.0%.

This cycle, with Franks out and in disgrace, there are two serious Democrats competing for the Democratic nomination, Hiral Tipirneni (a self-funder who gave her campaign $93,443) and progressive Brianna Westbook. The Republicans, on the other hand, have 14 candidates in the hunt! The three raising serious money (over $200,000) are former state Rep. Phil Lovas, former state Senator Steve Montenegro and former state Senator Debbie Lesko. Montenegro is about as right-wing as you can be without actually running around in clothes adorned in Nazi symbols. Franks picked him to run and he's been endorsed by every right-wing crackpot from the neo-fascist wing of the GOP interested in the race, from Joe Arpaio, Steve King (R-IA), and JD Hayworth to Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum. He's running on a Make America Great Again Platform and was considered the frontrunner-- until yesterday.

Montenegro is a married man and a "minister" in his father's church whose campaign emphasizes all the typical mealy-mouthed pious GOP hypocrisy about his "virtue, honor and integrity." But his own little scandal just broke and it will derail him-- either now, for today's primary, or in the general. A series of text messages between Montenegro and a female staff member in the legislature puts the lie to all the integrity nonsense. After the staffer sent Montenegro a topless photo via text message, he responded by encouraging her to use a messaging app [Snapchat] where photos vanish after being viewed by the recipient.

Montenegro hid from the media and the public for a few days, deleted his Snapchat account and then emerged to term the charges "tabloid trash." This was his pathetic statement on Facebook:

Tonight I saw a despicable example of the tabloid trash that conservatives around this country have to deal with on a regular basis.

As a Hispanic conservative I knew they would stop at nothing to prevent me from going to Washington DC and fighting for the working families of our district just like I fought for the people at the State Capitol. They have always worked hard to stop me and I knew that this race would be no different. But I assumed the distortions would be limited to my votes or positions on issues.

I am blessed with an amazing wife and marriage. The media wants to drag us down with just a week to go, but we are not going to dignify this false tabloid trash with any further response.

I am proud of my campaign and team of supporters. We will carry on in a manner that respects the process and the voters, and we are confident that our message and commitment will win the day.

UPDATE

Montenegro lost.