Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake is holding a fundraiser in Scottsdale on Monday, and he’s bringing a fellow Republican to town. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida will join Flake at the Omni Scottsdale.
A ticket to attend the lunch is a hundred dollars. It’s a thousand dollars for a seat at the VIP table.
But bringing in a colleague from Washington is a bit of a risk for Flake. His top challenger in the primary, Kelli Ward, wants to paint him as an establishment figure.
Kim Fridkin, ASU Professor of Political Science, said there’s not much Flake can do about that.
“I think that he’s kind of between a rock and a hard place,” she said. “He needs to raise money and he probably needs to use his colleagues from Washington to do it.”
Fridkin said if Flake can convince voters and donors that Ward isn’t a good general election candidate, he can tap into their desire to keep the seat in Republican hands.
"If Flake doesn’t win the primary, there’s a lot less chance that Republicans will retain the seat,” she said. “I do think that we’ll have a lot of high-profile Republicans coming to raise money for him.”
Ward is busy fundraising too. She has conservative radio host Laura Ingraham headlining a Scottsdale eventnext week.
