| NEWS | Blizzy’s Blunders Blake Masters plays dress up in the racist ways you’d expect. BY ELIAS WEISS B lake Masters, Arizona’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, has a penchant for spouting provocative takes. But a new host of racist mate- rial advocating for his campaign has cropped up online and on the streets of Phoenix. It’s more controversial than his typical bombast — and he’s even raising money from some of it. The material is a far cry from his maiden campaign ad released a year ago in which Masters appeared urbane. “We’ve got to take care of each other,” Masters says in that ad as his three sons cavort in the Sonoran Desert brush. In the distance is the towering steel fence along Arizona’s border with Mexico. In the new material, from supporters outside his campaign, Masters mocks Native Americans and appropriates Black culture. He also is backed by Jews for Blake Masters, a Twitter account with 145 followers, despite his antisemitic statements. Masters bills himself as an altruistic champion of safety, prosperity, and freedom. But his run for office is tethered to racist campaign materials from alt-right trolls. Rap Sheet Last month, a one-minute clip of Masters rapping while wearing what was meant to resemble Native American war paint made its way to Twitter. “I’ve got the war paint on, as you can see,” he rhymes over a superimposed beat in the video. “Who said what about cultural insensitivity?” The footage in the video dates back to 2008 during his years as a student at Stanford University. At the time, Masters was a self-styled Libertarian who preached the gospel of open borders and belonged to a left-wing vegetarian co-op with socialist ideations. He has since about-faced, joining the Republican Party he once criticized amid an existential pivot away from the fiery populism that previously defined him. “I dress up as an Indian,” Masters says in the video. “If you don’t like it, I’m going to … throw you in jail.” A poorly photoshopped image of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, wearing a traditional Native American war bonnet pops up on the screen as he raps that line. The video is littered with other right- wing memes: Barack Obama dancing in the Oval Office, former Virginia governor Ralph Northam in blackface, and British porn actress Belle Delphine with the Ari Bradshaw via Twitter A “Blizzy 4 Sizzy” sign at 32nd Street and Bell Road in northeast Phoenix. caption “he’s mad, BIG MAD!” “Blake Masters’ decision to mock Native American culture is off-putting, disqualifying, and shows Arizona voters exactly who Blake is,” Rachel Hood, deputy political director of Native engage- ment at the Arizona Democratic Party, told New Times. “Tribal voters make up a large and powerful part of this electorate, and we’ll definitely make our voices heard this November.” The video closes with Trump saying, “Blake Masters has my complete and total endorsement.” Then a statistic flashes on the screen: “Mark Kelly votes 100% of the time with Joe Biden.” The stat is wrong. According to pollster FiveThirtyEight, Kelly votes with Biden 94 percent of the time. Of the 48 Senate Democrats, 43 of them vote with Biden more often than Kelly. He’s one of the five Democratic senators least allegiant to Biden, in reality. A spokesperson for Masters said the video didn’t come from them. “This isn’t from the campaign,” spokes- person Katie Miller told New Times. She declined to answer any of our questions. A spokesperson for U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, the Democrat Masters faces in November, declined to comment. Blizzy 4 Sizzy Spend any time paying attention to campaign signs filling roads in Phoenix and you might spot a flashy one featuring “www.blizzy4sizzy.com” in oversized rainbow-colored letters. The signs depict Masters wearing a gold chain, sunglasses, and a flat-brim hat with the name “Khabib” on it. It’s a reference to Russian ultraconservative influencer Khabib Nurmagomedov. Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons No, “Blizzy” doesn’t allude to the slang term for a hollowed-out cigar full of weed, nor does it refer to the Atlanta rapper who was murdered in 2016. The emergent “Blizzy 4 Sizzy” moniker is a play on “Blake for Senate,” evoking the “izz” affix popularized by Black rappers in the Bay Area in the 1990s. That affix is a part of African-American Vernacular English and was born from the Harlem Renaissance in the early 1900s. In 1931, jazz legend Louis Armstrong talked about smoking “shuzzit,” slang for weed. The affix was further developed as poor, young Black girls improvised chants and nursery rhymes while jumping rope, with the -izz phraseology serving to add sylla- bles to maintain the rhythm. Snoop Dogg gave more popularity to the uniquely Black dialect around 2000, which he later said he heard from pimps and jive hustlers in the 1970s, with his classic catchphrase, “Fo shizzle, my nizzle.” The signs supporting Masters haven’t gone unnoticed. Scott Neely, a Tempe Republican who recently ran for governor, cited one in a July tweet. Others on social Blake Masters speaks with attendees at a “Save America” rally at Country Thunder Arizona in Florence early this year. media criticized the signs for appropri- ating Black culture. The Blizzy 4 Sizzy landing page is a gaudy, visually accosting mess of animated blue slime dripping behind two large letters: BM. The site says, “Blake Masters is running for U.S. Senate in Arizona. He is extraordi- narily based and freedom-pilled.” That’s a reference to the alt-right meme “based and redpilled,” born out of the white suprema- cist hotbed 4Chan in 2013 and popularized in a Reddit forum called “The Red Pill,” which was for men who aspired to trick women into sex using psychological manipulation. There is no other content or informa- tion on the website, save for the hashtag #OneFamilyOneIncome, a tagline for Republicans who want to see women quit working and resume homemaking, and a button to donate to Masters’ campaign. Money collected through the site is facil- itated by WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform. Masters has received more than $2 million in donations through WinRed this election cycle, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. His official campaign website averages 40,000 page views per month, according to New York-based web analytics company Similarweb. The Blizzy site is pulling in 30,000 page views per month. The Masters campaign declined to answer whether or not it created the site. Phoenix-based Republican consultant Chuck Coughlin told New Times that it’s difficult for candidates to control their own narrative in the heat of campaigns. “The only way a candidate can control that narrative is to not accept money. 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