Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly and his rival, Republican Blake Masters, a millionaire venture capitalist, held their only debate of the election season last night.

It was striking that both Kelly and Masters agreed the Southern border is a national catastrophe.

Masters says five million illegal immigrants from around the world have come to the border in just 22 months.

Kelly said he has worked to get more Border Patrol staff and to expand technology to screen for drugs at the border.

The major media, including the New York Times, covered the debate but led with abortion and the 2020 election, two issues that favor Democrats. The NYT glossed over concerns about the Southern border, which is arguably the biggest issue in Arizona.

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So here are some highpoints from the debate:

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly:

• “When Democrats are wrong, like on the border, I call them out on that.”

• “I’ve spent a lot of time at our Southern border and let me say, it’s a mess. It’s chaos. It’s crisis after crisis.”

• “Democrats don’t understand this issue and Republicans just want to talk about it and complain about it but actually not do anything about it.”

• “We have tens of thousands of dreamers here in the state of Arizona that are as American as my own two kids… [Masters] said he would never offer citizenship to dreamers. I think its mean and fundamentally unAmerican.”

• “I got a billion [dollars] more for border patrol agents for staffing, for technical systems to monitor the border. And where they make sense, to build more border barriers… “

• “Washington DC has failed on this issue of border security for decades. It’s been crisis after crisis.”

GOP Candidate Blake Masters:

• “He’s the 50th vote in the U.S. Senate. Mark Kelly a year ago could have said Mr. President I’m not supporting a single thing… not a single piece of your agenda, unless and until we get border security. Biden would have had to secure the border.”

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• “Our border is in chaos. We’ve got drugs and illegal aliens just pouring in.”

• “He rejected hiring 18,000 more border patrol agents. Mark Kelly said no… But yes to 87,000 new IRS agents.”

• “The correct amount of illegal immigration is zero. That’s what federal law says. The problem is that Joe Biden and Mark Kelly are willfully ignoring federal law. They’ve surrendered our Southern border. They’ve given it up to the Mexican drug cartels…we had operational control two years ago. Now it’s just a complete disaster.”

• “This is the greatest country in the history of the world. If you invite everybody to come here you’ll create a crisis. and so five million illegals, literally five million, have come here in the last 22 months.”

• “When these people cross they know not only that they will not be deported but they are given envelopes with cash, plane tickets… here’s a hotel room in Scottsdale.”

• “300,000 come through every month. It’s a humanitarian disaster. The women and children are raped. The men are indentured servants, sold into some kind of slavery.”

• “We should secure the border. That means a wall. It means doubling the size of border patrol. And it means lets get back to deporting people who break into our country…”

• If this is the result of Sen. Kelly being focused on the border, my gosh he’s the most ineffective and worst Senator of all time. The border’s wide open. People are walking through by the hundreds of thousands.

About Fentanyl

Republican Blake Masters:

• “The fentanyl that’s coming through. Its killing kids. We’re losing 2,000 Arizonans every year to Fentanyl. This stuff is poison and its coming right there up through the border. And Mark Kelly and Joe Biden have not done a single thing to stop it. It is carnage.”

• “If the Mexican drug cartels, these terrorist narcos, if they could vote in this election, everyone one of them would vote for Sen. Kelly. Because they get what they want from him. Which is a complete wide open border.”

• Democrats like Kelly “apparently don’t believe in our national sovereignty because they’ve turned over our entire border zone to Mexican drug cartels and it is killing people. It is killing Arizonans. It’s ruining our state. Its ruining our country.”

Democrat Mark Kelly:

• “The fentanyl is out of control and its heartbreaking.”

• “I got the money appropriated to rebuild our ports of entry…. There’s 12 lanes in Nogales, only one of those lanes has the technology, the Xray machines, to detect the fentanyl. When we rebuild these ports of entry, because of the work I’ve done in the U.S. Senate… every single one of the lanes will have the technology.”