As always from DailyKos Elections, and as always my bolding:
• AZ-09: Thanks to some decent fundraising, physician Steve Ferrara has run a more credible campaign than your typical Republican swimming upstream for a Democratic-held open seat this year. But in newly published remarks about government assistance programs that he made to a group of college Republicans last month, Ferrara showed he’s just like every other member of his party in his contempt for the less fortunate:
“It’s worse than a child, you’ve relegated them to the status of a pet. Right? I mean, honestly. Because if you can’t feed yourself, like—we all love our pets. But if you don’t put the food down for them, you don’t put the roof over their head, they would starve, right? And that’s essentially what you’ve done to poor people with these programs.”
Ferrara is a serious underdog against Democrat Greg Stanton, who stepped down as Phoenix mayor earlier this year, particularly since Arizona’s 9th reacted badly to Trump, voting for Hillary Clinton by a 55-38 margin after supporting Barack Obama by a considerably narrower 51-47. Daily Kos Elections currently rates this race Safe Democratic, and with Ferrara making comments like these, that’s not about to change.