Election denialism and conspiracy theories have taken root in Arizona like nowhere else.
Two years later, halfway through President Biden’s term, Arizona Republicans are still obsessed and driven by election results no serious person would question. Is the desert sun baking their brains?
Anyone involved with public policy in Arizona has far better things to do. The state faces serious water shortages and wildfire threats (see stories here and here), and arguably has the nation’s worst public schools as a result of chronic underfunding (but not for want of tax revenues, see article here).
The state reflects the urban-rural partisan divide on steroids. Most of its population is concentrated in the Phoenix metro area, and Maricopa County has over 60% of the state’s voters. That’s why, in November 2020, violent Trump supporters mobbed that county’s elections building, and Republicans in the legislature targeted its ballots for an ersatz “audit.”
Arizona held its midterm primaries on August 2, 2022. That day Vox published an article (here) saying,
“There seem to be an endless number of Republican primary races in Arizona that all hinge on two things: The legitimacy of the 2020 election, which was challenged more dramatically in Arizona than any other state, and fealty to Donald Trump.”
Breaking it down, Vox said,
“State House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified to the January 6 committee about pressure he faced from Trump associates to unwind the 2020 election, has a serious primary challenge. The race to challenge Sen. Mark Kelly (D) features five Republicans — including state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, whom Trump supporters are still hounding to challenge election matters, and the Trump-backed election denier Blake Masters.”
Bowers lost; Masters won. Vox continued,
“And Kari Lake and Mark Finchem have made Trump’s election lies a centerpiece of their campaigns for governor and secretary of state, respectively, the two offices that have the most direct influence on elections.”
Finchem is an election denier who claims, against all evidence, that Trump won Arizona; and, as a state senator, he’s argued the legislature should overrule the voters. He won. Lake, a Trump-endorsed populist who’s well known to state voters as a former local Fox News anchor, has about a 12,000-vote lead in a tight race against a well-funded opponent from a prominent Arizona political family. Both these candidates represent a very real threat to democracy in Arizona.
A Trump-endorsed extremist, Blake Masters, also won the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Mark Kelly (D), who’s running for re-election. Kelly is a former astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D), who was seriously wounded by a would-be assassin. In a high-profile state senate race, Trump attacked Rusty Bowers, who was defeated by a candidate who argues the election theft was orchestrated by Satan.
The question now is whether GOP primary victories by extremists like Masters, Finchem, and Lake will put the Democrats in a better position to hold Kelly’s Senate seat, retain the secretary of state position, and flip the governor’s office in November. The current secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, is a Democrat who is now her party’s nominee for governor. The current governor, Doug Ducey, is a term-limited Republican who earned Trump’s ire by certifying Biden’s Arizona win, as the law required him to do.
The Arizona results are consonant with a pattern that has emerged in the Midwest: Election deniers and extremists favored by Trump have prevailed in many of the GOP primaries, riding a tide of Republican grassroots grievance and anger, with no real program for governing. Journalists, political strategists, and pundits think this has weakened the GOP’s prospects in November, and will help Democrats gain U.S. Senate seats and win key governorships, although Republicans are still favored to win the House. But that could be in jeopardy, too, as abortion backlash grows.
The question is whether the GOP has overplayed its hand by nominating extreme candidates, who at times appear downright crazy, and pursuing extreme policies that a majority of voters are uncomfortable with. In few places will this be tested more than in Arizona, where Republican primary voters have nominated a slate of election deniers and nutjobs.
Arizona is a fast-growing state whose sunshine and low taxes attracts legions of retirees who like to play golf year-round and don’t care about lousy schools. Functional government isn’t a priority for these folks. If any state is likely to prolong Trump’s obsessions, this is the place.
Photo below: Arizonans divorced from reality celebrate election deniers’ primary wins
