Two years ago, a group of election deniers ran in Arizona, and Kari Lake's campaign came out on top in the gubernatorial race. When many of them were defeated, it seemed like a convincing rebuke to the conspiracy theory-tinged Republicans who want to control the levers of electoral power in 2024.
But it turns out the small issue of defeat won't keep election deniers out of the spotlight or away from important roles in the Arizona Republican Party and other parties.
And it appears that no charges will be filed.
Arizona's Democratic attorney general last week indicted 17 people on charges including conspiracy, fraud and forgery in an effort to overturn former President Donald Trump's narrow defeat in the 2020 presidential election, which amounted to a crime. Eleven of the people indicted cast fake electoral votes to support Trump.
The most high-profile defendants were those closest to Trump at the time, including former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and one of Trump's legal advisers, Boris Epshteyn. These are people. (Their names were redacted in the indictment, but their identities were easily discernible from detailed descriptions included in the indictment.)
But the trajectory of some of the 11 low-profile local defendants is even clearer. Their story is about how Republicans who tried to challenge the 2020 election results continue to face little political repercussions, and how their philosophy will influence 2024 politics in Arizona and elsewhere. It shows how deeply woven it is.
“Not only has the party not distanced itself from the election deniers, it has continued to emphatically embrace them,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Phoenix.
Where are the fake electors now?
One of those defendants, state Sen. Jake Hoffman, on Saturday chosen to serve as one of the state's two national commissioners. This would make him a member of the Republican National Committee representing Arizona, giving him the power to decide the direction of the party.
“We're trying to take over the Republican Party. Call us pro-Trump, America First, grassroots, ultra, whatever you want,” Republican state committee member R.C. Maxwell, who supported Hoffman, said before the vote. He told The Arizona Republic. (Mr. Hoffman said this in a paper) Post to X He claimed he had “not committed any crime.” )
The other, Tyler Bowyer, is a high-ranking official at Turning Point USA, an influential conservative group with close ties to the state party. My colleague Nick Colasaniti recently wrote about Bowyer's role in efforts to get Republicans to vote early in November. (When asked for comment, a Turning Point spokesperson directed me to the following link. ×post Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk said Bowyer and the others charged did nothing wrong.
The third defendant, state Sen. Anthony Kern, was photographed outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Trump supporters stormed the building, and was photographed over the weekend at this summer's Republican National Convention. He was elected to the Arizona State Delegate. He is also running for Arizona's 8th District Congress in a crowded primary filled with election deniers. (in statement“When President Trump asked me for assistance, I responded,” he said, suggesting the charges were politically motivated.
And in addition to the fake electors, one of the defendants whose names were redacted is right-wing cable personality and attorney Christina Bobb. Bob was a promoter of Trump's false claims of 2020 election fraud, and she is a senior adviser to the RNC's Election Integrity program. The commission says its efforts will involve more than 100,000 volunteers and attorneys located across battleground states. (She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
2022 election denialists try again
Election deniers directly involved in 2020 planning are not the only ones who play important roles in state and national political parties. The Arizona Republican Party is headed by Gina Swoboda, a party activist who has made unsubstantiated claims that a nonprofit group has found fraud in voter rolls across the country.
And the naysayers are still running for office. Lake also has the full support of key Republicans in his bid for the Senate. She has at times toned down her denialist rhetoric in an attempt to win over the state's moderate voters, even though she still contests her loss in the 2022 gubernatorial race. Ta. She also falsely claims that Democrats intend to rely on the votes of illegal immigrants to change the landscape this year.
Two candidates who have made a series of negative statements in the 2022 midterm elections, Sen. Blake Masters and Attorney General Abe Hamadeh, joined Mr. Khan in the 8th Congressional District primary. And Mark Finchem, who ran for secretary of state in 2022, deeply alarmed democracy experts with the depth of his denialist rhetoric, is running for state senate. .
where do we go from here
The return of so many candidates and party ideals rejected by voters is welcome news for Democrats, who have been able to make gains in the state as the Republican Party moves away from its moderate roots.
“The Republican Party is just the gift that keeps on giving,” former Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, who ruled in the early 2000s, told colleagues Jack Healey, Kellen Browning and Michael Wines over the weekend. . “They're really controlled by the far right and election deniers. And boy did that help in 2022. And I think it might help this fall as well.”
But democracy and constitutional law scholars are concerned that the same people who tried to help President Trump overturn the 2020 election results may try to do it again.
“Our political culture cannot tolerate this election denialism for long,” said Edward Foley, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State University. “If Trump loses fair and square, but refuses to admit defeat this time, the question is how all the other parties will behave.”
Most Arizona Republicans who faced political consequences from the turmoil of 2020 signed on to sham schemes, pressured local election officials to overturn the results, or repeated false claims of election fraud. It is surprising that it is not a person.
Rather, it's people who have refused to support the effort, like former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who lost the 2022 state Senate primary to a pro-Trump candidate.
What Trump rallies sound like now: Less 'us' and more 'them'
my colleague charles homans He has been attending Trump's rallies for years and wrote a deeply observed message about what has changed since Trump first became a candidate. I asked him to summarize the key findings, and he can't recommend it enough to read or listen. whole part.
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Trump's comments regarding his 2024 campaign have escalated from his past speeches. During the first months of last year's active campaign, the former president told his supporters, “I am revenge for you.” He later vowed to “eradicate the communists, Marxists, fascists, and far-left thugs who live like vermin within our borders,” and said the most serious threat facing the United States was “the threat from within.” ” he warned. ” Even for a former president who has always tested the limits with his speeches, this is a step beyond what he has said before.
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“This is how fascist campaigns work.” Federico Finchelstein, chair of the history department at the New School for Social Research, said of President Trump's recent speech. Finchelstein is one of several authoritarianism scholars who argue that Trump has moved beyond the populist politics of his presidency to what he calls a “fascist orientation.” This is partly due to his efforts to remain in power as of January 6th. But his speeches also use metaphors clearly associated with fascism, such as declaring his rivals “vermin” and accusing immigrants of “poisoning their blood.” American.
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President Trump's claims about immigration also add to the conspiracy theory. The threat of violent crime posed by immigrants has been a mainstay of President Trump's politics since the beginning of his candidacy in 2016. But where he once branded illegal immigration as evidence of Democratic incompetence, he now claims, without evidence, that it is part of a Democratic conspiracy. In a recent speech, President Biden claimed to have committed a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States” at the border and “deliberately unlawful acts to undermine the American system, override the will of the actual American voters, and establish a system of nation-states.” “We're accepting immigrants,” he said. A new power base that will give them control for generations. ”
Read the full text here.
charles homans Contributed to the report.
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Where RFK Jr. is eligible for voting
In a close election, just like in a presidential election, every vote counts. Therefore, whether people can choose who to vote for is very important.
My colleague Rebecca Davis O'Brien did a deep dive into independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s attempts to get on the ballot across the country. The attack is an aggressive effort that relies on a group of paid operatives, and has already drawn some criticism. Fraudulent. He has controlled at least three states so far, including the battleground state of Michigan, and he has his sights set on other narrowly divided states such as Nevada, North Carolina and New Hampshire.
See more states where third-party and independent candidates are on the ballot.