There are significant reasons for the razor-thin race in Arizona between two Congresswomen. Martha McSally and Kyrsten Sinema are focused on getting the votes of the 3 to 6 percent still undecided. Martha McSally’s basic problem is overcoming the dead weight of the past two Republican Senators, who damaged the party brand for that critical subset of voters. I have urged Martha McSally to clearly declare herself on the side of the MAGA agenda, including the 2020 election, as Ambassador Nikki Haley did. Unfortunately, Congresswoman McSally has not. So what are these voters to do?

Arizona, as with many other states, has moved heavily towards mail-in ballots, and early voting at physical polling places. The fight, now, may be over only about 20 percent of votes in the election, if an estimated 80% cast early ballots. The currently counted early ballot statistics, by party registration, look similar to past years, so gives no strong support to any candidate approaching the winner’s circle. Since undecided voters have held off, there is a real fight to gain the election-winning votes.

Provided that there is near certainty of holding and growing the Republican majority in the Senate. There are reasonable grounds to reject Martha McSally, as the Arizona GOP favorite, punishing them for a primary and general campaign that suggests more of the same betrayal on core promises. There is a case to be made for a Senate election strategy of “elimination as addition,” that produces a more coherent majority, more faithful to the core promises made for the past 10 to 40 years.

Dear Congresswoman McSally,

I deeply admired your true courage and integrity in your long fight to force the Department of Defense to live up to the Constitution, not subjecting military women to the outrageous demand they conform to a 7th Century dress code in a country we were keeping free from Iraq and Iran. I was pleased to cross your path in the Davis-Monthan photo facility, as I was taking another Army board photo, and you were getting a command photo. The Air Force did the right thing, eventually, despite your righteous, eventually public, fight against bad policy.

You seem stuck a week out, still unable to persuade about three to six percent of Arizona voters to commit, but you can overcome this reticence, if you show your military career courage and integrity. The weight holding you down is the recent history of the past two Republican Senators. You must show, not say, that you will not stray from your campaign promises.