Former allies now competing in bitter primary in solidly Republican Arizona district

The Republican primary for Arizona ’s 8th Congressional District is growing crowded as one-time GOP allies are forced to campaign against each other.

Former U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters and former state attorney general candidate Abraham Hamadeh, alongside other notable Arizona Republicans, are in the running to become the Republican nominee to replace Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), who is retiring. The district, which encompasses the northwest part of the Phoenix area and has a large population of retirees, is heavily Republican, so the winner of the primary will likely win the House seat.

Both Masters and Hamadeh were endorsed by former President Donald Trump in 2022 and lost their respective races. Now, Hamadeh has received Trump’s endorsement, and both have waged intense campaigns against the other.

“Blake Masters is a desperate, power-hungry coward attempting to divide MAGA to appease his Silicon Valley puppet masters," a Hamadeh campaign spokesperson said in a statement to Axios .

Masters’s campaign has painted Hamadeh as " dishonest Abe ," claiming that he believes the United States was "founded on Islamic principles" while displaying a photo of him wearing traditional Muslim attire at the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. His campaign has also said Hamadeh’s father was in the U.S. illegally at the time of Hamadeh’s birth and overstayed his visa, implying that Hamadeh supports amnesty.

A Hamadeh campaign spokesperson said Masters's attack ads were "baseless and obnoxious lies from a bitter opponent."

Hamadeh’s campaign has waged its own attack campaign on Masters, claiming he lived in a vegan nudist colony while attending Stanford University. Masters lived in a co-op called Columbae, which is "vegetarian, social justice-focused co-op run on the principle of consensus," according to its website .

During a debate in May, Hamadeh said he believed Masters did not care about the district due to the ads.

“We campaigned together in the last election, and you claimed we were friends back then,” Hamadeh said during the debate. "And now you’re running hundreds of thousands of dollars of negative ads because you’re being funded by your Big Tech, billionaire friends."

Others in the running include former Rep. Trent Franks, state House Speaker Ben Toma, and state Sen. Anthony Kern.

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As of March 31, the last time campaign finance documents were reported, Masters was leading the race in terms of fundraising with $3.8 million in the bank, which includes $2.7 million of his own money. Hamadeh’s campaign had $600,000, which was slightly more than Toma's.

Arizona’s primary election is July 30, and early voting begins July 3.