The 2024 Arizona Senate Race Just Got a Lot Weirder
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Mark Lamb, a Trumpy, far-right county sheriff, has declared his candidacy to be Arizona Republicans’ nominee to replace Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate. He is the first big-name Republican to throw his hat — a broad-brimmed stetson — into the ring.
Lamb, 50, looks like a Playmobil sheriff brought to life. He’s the top lawman in Pinal County (think: exurban to Phoenix) and a lightning rod for controversy. Lamb is a big fan of militias, and even formed a civilian “posse” aimed at “suppressing lawlessness” in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
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Lamb has, for years, been allied with a fringe movement of “Constitutional Sheriffs.” These extremist lawmen are effectively conspiracy theorists with guns. They hold that sheriffs are the supreme constitutional authorities in their jurisdictions, and therefore they can pick-and-choose what laws to enforce on that basis. They’re infamous for flouting enforcement of state-level gun-control and Covid public-health measures. And they number in the dozens nationwide.
The founder of the movement, a former sheriff and former Oath Keeper named Richard Mack, has personally praised Lamb as “one of the best sheriffs in America.” Lamb was a featured speaker at the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association meeting in 2020. But he’s more recently eschewed the label — while still touting the brotherhood.
Lamb has instead become the face of a slightly more mainstream group called Protect America Now, which insists that sheriffs are the country’s “last line of defense” against “an overreaching government” that “wants to make America less safe, less secure, and less free.”
In one video, Lamb invites “freedom-loving” compatriots to join for “just $17.76 a month.”
Lamb will be running for the seat currently occupied by Sinema, a centrist and recent former Democrat now reportedly preparing for an independent run. On the Democratic side, Rep. Ruben Gallego is the leading contender — and has wasted no time trolling Lamb: “Arizonans deserve serious candidates who respect our democracy and rule of law,” he declared Tuesday. “Luckily, there’s still plenty of time for the GOP to produce one.”
Lamb is running on a “God. Freedom. Family.” agenda, calling himself a “conservative fighter” who will confront the “woke left and the weak politicians in Washington.” His social media avatar is literally a photo of the sheriff draped in an American flag. An Instagram post Tuesday showed Lamb on a white horse, toting a rifle, backed by a distant desert mesa.
Sheriff Lamb is an avowed Trump loyalist whose Twitter feed includes a snapshot of him grinning next to a thumbs-up-ing former president. In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Lamb was quick to deflect blame from Trump insisting: “This is about the other issues that have happened — the Hillary Clintons that have gone unpunished.” He added: “I don’t know how loud we have to get before they have to listen to us and know we will no longer tolerate them stripping our freedoms away.”
In recent days, Lamb has proven himself an eager parrot of GOP talking points on Trump’s legal woes. “While violent felonies are being pled down or even dismissed in New York,” the Arizonan wrote March 31, “the Soros-backed DA decided to upgrade a misdemeanor to a felony to indict a former President who posed no threat to his community. Shameful!”
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