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Arizona’s combative GOP focus has delighted most staunch Trump supporters and worried Republican insiders who have seen the party lose ground in the suburbs as the influence of its traditional conservative establishment wanes in favor of Trump. A growing electorate of young Latinos and newcomers bringing their more liberal policies from home has further hurt the GOP.
“Now is the time to choose Republicans. Are we going to be the Conservative Party? Said Kirk Adams, former president of State House and chief of staff to Ducey. “Or is it a party … true to one person?”
It’s a question of Republican identity faced by party officials and activists across the country after Trump’s defeat in 2020, and especially after a crowd of his supporters besieged the U.S. Capitol on the 6th. January.
Nowhere is the issue more acute than Arizona, where the state’s unwavering GOP loyalty to Trump stands out even in a party that has been remade everywhere in the image of the former president.
Ward relentlessly – but unsuccessfully – took legal action to overturn the election results. The party has used its social media accounts to urge its supporters to fight and possibly even die to support Trump’s false declarations of victory. Two of the state’s four Republican congressmen are accused of playing a role in organizing the January 6 rally, which turned violent.
After dominating Arizona politics for decades, Republicans now find themselves on their heels in the top positions of state. President Joe Biden narrowly scored a victory here, becoming just the second Democrat in more than five decades to win the state. Back-to-back victories in 2018 and 2020 gave Democrats control of both seats in the US Senate for the first time in nearly 70 years.
Ward, a doctor and former state lawmaker who lost two Republican primaries for the US Senate, beat three challengers to win a second term.
In a brief interview, Ward acknowledged “her disappointment at the top of the ticket,” but said she and many other Republicans still questioned the results showing the victories of Biden and Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. Judges dismissed eight lawsuits challenging the Arizona election results.
Ward highlighted the GOP’s successes on the ballot, noting that Republicans have defied expectations in local races.
Ward said she was a “Trump Republican” who “will always put America first, who believes in faith, family and freedom.” The way forward for the GOP, she said, is to keep Trump’s 74 million voters engaged.
“Yeah, I’ll be radical on these things because these are the things that keep this country great,” Ward said. “The people who are complaining are the ones who put us in this place where we are in Arizona, the people who have been mamby pamby, lay down and let the Democrats walk everywhere.”
Censors target some of Arizona’s most prominent Republicans,
Cindy McCain endorsed Biden and became a powerful deputy for the Democrat after years of Trump’s attacks on her husband. After the vote, she wrote on Twitter that “it is a great honor to be part of a group of Arizonans who have served our state and our nation so well.”
“I will wear this as a badge of honor,” she wrote.
Also after the vote, Flake tweeted a photo of himself with McCain and Ducey at Biden’s inauguration and wrote, “Good company.”
Flake was one of the few Republicans in Congress to openly criticize Trump for not embracing conservative values. He refused to run for office in 2018 and endorsed Biden in last year’s election.
“If you have to forgive the president’s behavior to stay in the good graces of the Party, I am very well on the sidelines,” Flake wrote on Twitter before and after the vote.
Ducey is being targeted for his restrictions on individuals and businesses to contain the spread of COVID-19. While not mentioned in the proposed censorship, he had a high-profile rift with the president when he signed Biden’s certification of victory.
“These resolutions are of no consequence and the people behind them have lost every
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