Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, announced his bid for the U.S. Senate on Thursday, portraying himself as a trusted and proven leader who would fight for secure borders, oppose defunding the police, and defend civil liberties.
Brnovich, who has served as the state’s top prosecutor since 2015, said in a June 10 campaign video that “mistrust runs deep” among voters because they have “entrusted elected officials to protect us and our freedoms, and they failed,” with the barb apparently aimed at Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), whose image serves as the backdrop for that fragment of the video.
“Our very freedoms—from the Second Amendment to Life to practicing our faith—are at stake,” he said in a statement. “Mark Kelly would rather hide in a corner waiting for orders from Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi than lead for Arizona.”
The son of immigrants who fled communism in the former Yugoslavia, Brnovich said in the video he has dedicated his career to upholding the rule of law and fighting for justice, while touting his record of pushing back against government overreach, tackling “crony capitalism,” and “standing up against woke corporations and boardrooms that try to tell us how to live our lives while shipping jobs overseas.”
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, in an undated photo provided on June 10, 2021. Mark Brnovich
With the announcement, Brnovich becomes the third Republican to throw his hat into the Republican primary race, alongside Michael McGuire, a former adjutant general of the Arizona National Guard, and solar-business executive Jim Lamon.
“Trust and freedom aren’t just buzz words for me,” Brnovich said in a statement. “Every day, I fight on behalf of Arizonans, going toe-to-toe with elected officials, bureaucrats, agencies, and corporations. I’ve spent my career taking on the hard fights,” he added.
Brnovich has been among the Republican attorneys who have mounted high-profile legal fights involving border security and election integrity. His office has been part of lawsuits challenging the Biden administration’s pause on deportations and opposing the rollback of Trump-era immigration policies.
“We have a crisis at the border,“ Brnovich said in the statement. ”Arizonans want safety and security for their families,” says a policy note on his campaign website. “Ensuring that is one of the responsibilities of government, but one our elected officials routinely ignore, choosing instead to politicize our safety with politically motivated calls for open borders and the defunding of police. Enough is enough.”
The winner of the GOP primary will face Kelly in the 2022 general election, where Republicans hope to flip the seat back to red after consecutive losses to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) in 2018 and Kelly in 2020.
Tom Ozimek
Reporter
Tom Ozimek is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times. He has a broad background in journalism, deposit insurance, marketing and communications, and adult education.
