Tech billionaire Peter Thiel will reportedly back Republican Blake Masters’ challenge of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) in the Arizona Senate race.
Masters, who is president of Thiel’s foundation and chief operating officer of his company, will receive a portion of Thiel’s ten million dollar Saving Arizona PAC to win back the Arizona Senate seat from Kelly, who has reportedly raised $4.4 million, according to Politico.
Masters graduated from Stanford and is an attorney. In January 2020, he nearly decided to primary then-Sen. Martha McSally but apparently chose to wait for a better opportunity.
Other Arizona Senate candidates who may vie for the seat include state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Jim Lamon, and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ). “The anti-tax Club for Growth has signaled it would likely back Biggs, the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump, should he enter the contest,” Politico reported.
Thiel is also supporting J.D. Vance with ten million dollars for Ohio’s open Senate seat, along with considering supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) reelection campaign and Joe Kent’s primary challenge to Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA).
Thiel was a previous Trump supporter and a “big Republican donor.” In early April, he weighed in on tech amid politics, saying American tech corporations do not view themselves as “American companies” because of their woke politics and Communist China synergy.
“But then, there’s something about the woke politics inside these companies, the way they think of themselves as not really American companies. And it’s somehow very, very difficult to, for them to have a sharp anti-China edge of any sort whatsoever,” Thiel said during a virtual discussion, reported by Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong.
