Blake Masters’ battle with Abe Hamadeh in the Republican congressional primary has turned nasty.
PHOENIX — For this Decision 2024 Verify, we’re answering a question from 12News viewer Mary Long of Goodyear:
“Does Abe Hamadeh have Islamic connections that Blake Masters claims in recent TV ads?”
Let’s start with some background on their campaigns.
Hamadeh and Masters are competing in a five-person Republican primary in the West Valley’s solidly Republican Eighth Congressional District.
The seat is being vacated by retiring Congresswoman Debbie Lesko of Peoria.
The district stretches from Phoenix, north to Lake Pleasant and New River. It takes in Peoria, parts of Glendale, and the senior living communities of Sun City and Sun City West.
Hamadeh is the Donald Trump-endorsed candidate. The former junior Maricopa County prosecutor lost the 2022 election for Arizona attorney general to Democrat Kris Mayes by 280 votes.
Masters won Trump’s endorsement in his 2022 races for the U.S. Senate. Masters lost that election to Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.
The three other GOP primary candidates are:
Former eight-term Congressman Trent Franks, who resigned his seat in 2017 amid an office scandalState Sen. Anthony Kern of Glendale, who is charged with nine felonies in the Arizona “fake electors” scheme after the 2020 presidential electionArizona House Speaker Ben Toma of Peoria
We’re verifying two claims in a Masters TV ad that targets Hamadeh.
The first claim is that Hamadeh defended the terror group Hezbollah, “saying its terrorist attacks against Israel were justified.”
The claim is derived from a 2007 blog post by Hamadeh on the libertarian Ron Paul Forums website.
“Israel is demolioshing homes in palestine,” Hamadeh wrote (typos included), “and hezbollah fought back.”
Masters’ ad also makes this claim: “Hamadeh claimed that America was founded on Islamic principles.”
That statement is from a 2009 Hamadeh post, also on the Ron Paul site.
Hamadeh did make the statements. We can verify that both claims need context:
When he wrote the blog posts, the 33-year-old Hamadeh was a teenager – 15 and 17 years old.The second claim is pulled from a longer post by the teenage Hamadeh about Islam’s place in American history. The post also cites a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad on a wall of the U.S. Supreme Court.When confronted with his statements earlier this year, Hamadeh told an interviewer he grew up. He went on to serve as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserve.
According to the Daily Wire interview, Hamadeh said he started to “understand how the world actually works” and struggles to “get into the brain” of his teenage self.
Israel, Hamadeh said, has “no bigger ally.”
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