Congressional candidates Abe Hamadeh's and Blake Masters' rivalry gets ugly with attack ads

An escalating rivalry between two Arizona Republican congressional candidates competing in the upcoming 8th Congressional District primary has become even more intense with recent dueling campaign attack ads.

In ads on social media, TV, and roadside campaign signs, U.S. House of Representatives candidates Abe Hamadeh and Blake Masters make claims ranging from Masters' alleged involvement in a nudist colony to the legitimacy of Hamadeh's religious and political beliefs.

The candidates, who both had recent unsuccessful statewide bids in 2022, are running to fill retiring U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko’s seat in Congress from a Republican-friendly district.

Masters recently launched the ad campaign via dishonestabe.com that attacks Hamadeh’s religious and cultural identity.

Campaign signs paid for by Masters with Hamadeh's photo and the quote "America Was Founded on Islamic Principles" also cover street corners of the district. In the photo, Hamadeh is seen in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, while he was deployed with the U.S. Army.

A similar social media ad by a conservative PAC backing Masters says, "We have enough terrorist sympathizers in Congress."

Hamadeh's quote that "America was founded on Islamic principles" dates to 2009 on a Republican online forum. Hamadeh wrote "America was founded on Islamic principles" on the forum when explaining the U.S. Constitution has some callbacks to Abrahamic religions, which are Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

“You claim Islam is a religion of hate, and should be feared yet our own Constitution of the United States was based off of Abrahamic religions, Including Islam,” Hamadeh wrote in 2009 on the forum.

Hamadeh hit back last week, releasing a string of digital ads claiming that Masters is a leftist and a “snake.”

“It's sad that after being the worst performing Senate Candidate in the country in 2022, the ‘Blake Masters redemption tour’ takes its second try at dragging down the entire Republican ticket, not only by spreading falsehoods and vicious lies that go beyond the pale but also by denigrating the service of veterans who have actual ‘skin in the game,’” Hamadeh spokesperson Erica Knight told The Arizona Republic in a written statement.

Ryan Girdusky, a Masters spokesperson, said all of Hamadeh’s claims in his ads about Masters, including that he was part of a vegan nudist colony and played on a women’s basketball team, are false.

Masters, who graduated from Stanford University in 2008, reportedly lived in an undergraduate living co-op called Columbae. Columbae is a "vegetarian, social justice-focused co-op run on the principle of consensus," according to its website.

“I believe that everybody should, including President (Donald) Trump, be aware of what he has said,” Girdusky said about Hamadeh. “He has said things that he is for. He's a radical Republican who wants to cut Social Security. At the same time, he's a liberal, and at the same time, he's a wild libertarian. He has made up every kind of invention possible to try to fool voters, not to lie to voters. And what he is doing is narrating to voters quotes from Blake, or old quotes about Blake, or life experiences from Blake that are not true.”

Hamadeh and Masters are joined in the Republican primary race by political newcomer Patrick "Pat" Briody; former U.S. Rep. Trent Franks; state Sen. Anthony Kern; and state House Speaker Ben Toma.

The congressional race gained national attention after former President Donald Trump and Republican Senate front-runner Kari Lake endorsed Hamadeh. At his town hall in Phoenix last Thursday, Trump praised Hamadeh.

Hamadeh previously ran for Arizona attorney general in 2022 and lost by a slim margin to Democrat Kris Mayes.

Masters ran for U.S. Senate in 2022 with Trump’s endorsement, but he lost to Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.

The feud between the opponents has gone further than ad campaigns.

The rivalry heated up last month when texts dating back to January 2023 between Hamadeh and Masters were leaked. Hamadeh told Masters in texts obtained by The Arizona Republic that he isn’t lumped in with "crazies” who think the election was stolen.

Hamadeh told Masters at a debate in early May that he doesn’t believes he really cares about Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.

“We campaigned together in the last election and you claimed we were friends back then. And now you’re running hundreds of thousands of dollars of negative ads, because you’re being funded by your Big Tech, billionaire friends,” Hamadeh said during the debate.

Are negative political ad campaigns productive?

John Geer, Vanderbilt University dean of the College of Arts and Science and author of the 2006 book "In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns," said some negative campaign ads can help uphold the democratic process if they are based on facts about the opposing candidate.

“When you decide to play a race card, or ethnic card, or something like that, that definitely undermines the process,” Geer said. “And it tends not to happen. It tends to be very subtle. It rarely is explicitly; (Masters) is being pretty explicit."

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Blake Masters and Abe Hamadeh race for Congress heats up in attack ads