Blake Masters: ‘Political leaders should have children’

Most Republicans want nothing to do with Sen. JD Vance’s resurfaced attack on Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats as “ childless cat ladies .” But it fits right into one House candidate’s playbook.

“Political leaders should have children. Certainly they should at least be married,” Blake Masters, a venture capitalist locked in a tight race for an Arizona House seat, wrote Wednesday on X . “If you aren’t running or can’t run a household of your own, how can you relate to a constituency of families, or govern wisely with respect to future generations? Skin in the game matters.”

The post, referencing a headline about Vance’s 2021 comments to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, quickly went viral. It came as Masters battles Abe Hamadeh to succeed outgoing Rep. Debbie Lesko in a Republican primary next week in Arizona’s deep-red 8th Congressional District. Masters has been endorsed by Vance, while his opponent has the backing of Vance’s running mate, former President Donald Trump.

Trump endorsed Masters during his failed 2022 Senate campaign, and he’s still coasting off of it. Earlier this month, Masters ran an ad touting the former president’s endorsement , and Trump’s campaign has reportedly urged Masters to pull it.

Masters’ rhetoric about family isn’t new. “I’ve got a wonderful wife. I’ve got four beautiful boys. That’s called skin in the game. ... What we don’t need is someone with no wife and kids, no skin in the game,” he said in April , referring to Hamadeh.

Masters’ campaign has also aired an attack ad showing Hamadeh — whose parents immigrated from Syria — wearing an ihram in Mecca and calling him an “anchor baby.”

Vance’s comments, which began recirculating after he was named Trump’s running mate at the Republican National Convention, came from a 2021 interview when he was campaigning for an Ohio Senate seat. Vance called Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Buttigieg adopted twins in August 2021, and Harris has two step-children who have rushed to quell that attack. “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like cole and I ,” step-daughter Ella Emhoff wrote Thursday on Instagram. “I love my three parents.”

“Trump, Vance and their entire party have made it clear that they stand against women and their ability to start a family when and how they choose,” Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement to POLITICO.

On Thursday, Harris' campaign posted a clip on X of Vance at a speech saying: “When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids.”

Madison Fernandez contributed to this report.