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“The madness of the Republican Party in the state… it’s pretty embarrassing,” said Kirk Adams, former Speaker of the Republican House of Representatives and former chief of staff to Ducey. “We have been fed a steady diet of conspiracy theories and stolen election rhetoric and, really, QAnon theories of the State Republican Party since before the election, but certainly after.
He said, “What is … consequent is the effect that the state Republican Party has on the Republican brand in the state of Arizona.”
The fallout was quick. Several thousand Arizona Republicans have abandoned the party Since the U.S. Capitol Riot Trump helped instigate, the majority of defectors re-registering without a designated party, state election officials say. Business leaders are publicly backing down from the GOP after party officials put Arizona at the center of Trump’s failed effort to reverse election results, further dividing an already fractured party.
“Let’s be clear: we find the weeks of disinformation and outright lies to reverse a fair and free election by Arizona Republican leader and some elected officials to be reprehensible,” read a full-page ad in The Arizona Republic. Greater Phoenix Leadership Week, a group of CEOs. “The political party organization and these elected officials, which some of us have supported in the past, have embarrassed Arizona again on the national stage.”
The far-right pull of the Arizona GOP was evident long before the rise of Kelli Ward, the current president of the state party and fierce ally of Trump. Arizona is the state of Joe Arpaio and Evan Mecham; in 2014, the party censored Senator John McCain.
Ward is not the first president to quarrel with moderate elected officials in her party. But for a party that lost so much ground during Trump’s tenure, the Arizona GOP now operates as an almost 100% subsidiary of the incumbent president. Representative Andy Biggs, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, has been at the forefront of Republican congressional efforts to challenge the electoral vote count in Arizona – undermining the vote in his own state. Following the riot by Trump supporters on Capitol Hill, the official Arizona GOP Twitter account referred to Trump as the #PresidentofPeace.
“Ignore the false allegations against President Trump and against President Trump’s supporters,” Ward said in an video address this week, at a time when at least some establishment Republicans were starting to break with Trump. “President Trump has never, ever called for violence. All he called was a peaceful protest to demand the integrity of the vote.
In an email Friday, Zachery Henry, a spokesperson for the State party, denounced what he called “a concerted effort by the left and numerous media to label all Republicans as national terrorists because of the destructive actions of a few bad apples – including Antifa enthusiast John Sullivan, whom our Republican Party has already totally condemned.
Bill Gates, a Republican supervisor from Maricopa County, said, “We have always had different members in different places on the spectrum and we have always had what you would call an absolute right-wing contingent. But here in recent years we have seen this contingent come to the point where they lead the party apparatus.
In this climate, Arizona Republicans who fail to follow the pro-Trump line are finding knives in their backs. Ward told Ducey on Twitter of “#STHU”, or shut up, when he defended the integrity of the state vote, and the party is considering censoring him for enacting restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic, which is raging in Arizona.
Flake, according to the proposal to censor him, “has joined those who condemn President Trump.” Cindy McCain’s sins, in addition to supporting Joe Biden, include supporting “left-wing causes such as gay marriage, the growth of the administrative state, and others that go against Republican values, a form of Republican government and the US Constitution.
Given the party’s losses, more traditionalist Republicans are dismayed that the GOP has nothing better to do.
“So the state party is fighting with the party’s standard bearers for no good reason other than to show an incumbent president that Kelli Ward has his back,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican political strategist in Arizona. “The Republican Party must have some account with itself. Will it be the party that follows a demagogue or will it be the party that follows Conservative principles? And so far, some members of the leadership have chosen demagoguery over conservative principles.
In many states, the Republican and Democratic parties are controlled by their more militant wings. Intra-party quarrels are not uncommon. And in the past, when Arizona was reliably more conservative, State Republicans may not have paid the price for disunity within their ranks.
But that no longer seems to be true. The Arizona Republican Party has regressed amid the state’s changing demographics. In addition to losing the November presidential election, Republicans saw Democrat Mark Kelly oust Senator Martha McSally, just two years after Kyrsten Sinema placed Arizona’s other Senate seat in the Democratic column.
McCain, in a statement, said she was “not surprised by the continued insults and personal attacks from Arizona GOP Chairman Kelli Ward. She showed how attacking Republicans like me can impact elections – her involvement in both Senate elections to replace Jeff Flake and my husband John McCain, two regular targets of her personal attacks, resulted in Democratic victories.
As party chairwoman, McCain said, Ward “managed to turn Arizona blue in November for the first time since 1996. Maybe she should remember my husband never lost an election in November. Arizona since its first victory in 1982; he and Governor Ducey are the last two Republicans to win races across the state of Arizona.
Censoring her – or any winning Republican – may not have the intended effect.
TJ Shope, a Republican state senator, said politicians targeted by the GOP “tend to have a lot more in common with the average person on the streets than the people who censor.”
He said, “We have to move forward and get to a point in time where we are going to realize that we have to develop the party in a positive way again.”
The electoral cycle was not all bad for the Arizona GOP. Registered Republicans in the state still outnumber Democrats by about 3 percentage points. Republicans held their majority at the Statehouse despite some projections that Democrats were likely to take it back. And some Republican Party officials believe the controversy surrounding the counting of the ballot boxes in the state will further boost the grassroots.
More than before, said Shelley Kais, President of the Republican Party in Pima County, Arizona, local Republicans “apply to be constituency committees, they offer to sit on committees, they plan to run for office.
Regarding the resolution to censor McCain, Kais said: “It’s always a good thing people spend their days in court, let’s be sure of that, whether it’s the… diehard party activists or it’s Cindy McCain. .
But after losses inflicted on the party last year, other Republicans say it would be better for the GOP to leave internal conflicts alone.
“My personal opinion is that we should just sit back and regain our strength and start from scratch,” said Delos Bond, chairman of the Apache County Republican Party. “I think we should try to heal ourselves… stop worrying about McCain’s problems and Flake’s problems and try a unit there.”
“We just need to get down to business and work on the issues that our platform represents,” Bond said. “We got away from these issues and worried too much about the issues between our fellow Republicans… McCain is gone. Let’s get it over with. And Flake is gone. Let’s get it over with. “
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