Republican Jim Lamon puts money where mouth is in Arizona’s US Senate race

PHOENIX – Arizona businessman Jim Lamon said he’s pouring millions of his own dollars into his U.S. Senate campaign because he doesn’t think any other Republican candidate can defeat incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly.

“From a financial resource standpoint, I’m putting in a small fortune because I love my country,” Lamon told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show on Monday.

The energy executive said he and his companies have spent millions through the years supporting conservatives. But he’s spending on himself now because he thinks he has the best chance to overcome the Kelly fundraising juggernaut in a race crucial to GOP hopes of winning control of the Senate.

“So my fear is that we will not have a country if we don’t get control of that Senate and stop this crazy left-wing Biden-Kelly-Harris agenda and put it on full stop and do everything we can to start getting back to sanity,” he said.

“Things like crazy inflation, printing money we don’t have, being a woke military instead of lethal one, and hold the tide until we can get a Republican president in two years.”

Lamon loaned his campaign $8 million in 2021, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission reports, and entered this election year with nearly $6 million cash on hand. That war chest was about twice the combined size of the other four GOP candidates – Mark Brnovich, Blake Masters, Mick McGuire and Justin Olson — but only a third of Kelly’s cash on hand.

A self-described “America First” candidate, Lamon said that if elected he’ll donate his salary in Arizona, won’t take a pension and won’t serve for more than two terms.

“I’m not taking any lobbyist dollars or PAC dollars,” he said. “Republican guys already are loading up on it. Of course, that’s all Mark Kelly is.”

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