Grand Canyon Times

In July 2021, Arizona native son Blake Masters said he was officially running for the United States Senate in the 2022 elections.

Having grown up in Tucson since the age of 4, Masters attended Green Fields Country Day School and upon graduation, did his undergraduate work in political science at Stanford.

After a year at Duke’s Law School, Masters transferred back to Stanford Law School, graduating with his law degree in 2012.

It was while at Stanford Law that Masters met venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who invited him to attend a class Thiel was teaching in the spring of 2012.

It was during that class that Masters took copious notes of Thiel’s lecture, posting them to his blog for others to see.

Out of those notes came the No. 1 New York Times bestseller, "Zero to One," released in 2014 and co-authored by Thiel and Masters.

The success of the book would launch Masters to national recognition, with Forbes including him on its 30 Under 30 list.

Masters would eventually become the COO of Thiel Capital and the director of the Thiel Foundation.

In 2016, in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, Thiel tapped Masters and a small team of Thiel employees to help with the management of the Trump transition.

Now a successful venture capitalist and author, Masters and his wife, high school sweetheart Catherine, returned to Tucson where they are currently raising their three sons.

It was in the fall of 2019 that Masters began publicly considering running for the U.S. Senate, voicing his concerns about the weakness of the current U.S. senator, Martha McSally.

While Masters declined primary McSally in 2020, his concerns were well founded: McSally would lose reelection to Democrat Mark Kelly in November 2020. On July 12, 2021, Masters made his political ambitions official, declaring his run for the Senate as he threw his hat into the Republican primary.

Supported by his former boss and mentor Thiel’s funding of the Saving Arizona PAC, Masters gained traction quickly in the race, where a recent poll shows him in the lead.

In his announcement, Masters made it very clear what his priorities would be, pledging to “completely end illegal immigration,” embracing an "America First" agenda and fighting “indoctrination” in the school system.

When The Washington Examiner asked Masters why he was running, Masters, citing concerns about election integrity, inflation and illegal immigration, responded, “We’re losing our country, as cliché as it may sound. I just feel called to do it.”

With the Republican primary on Aug. 2, Masters continues to display strong fundraising numbers quarter after quarter as he competes for the right to run against the incumbent Kelly in the fall elections.

With the majority in the U.S. Senate hanging in the balance, all eyes will be on Arizona during the summer Republican primary and fall elections.