“The state Republican Party madness … is very embarrassing,” said Kirk Adams, a former Republican state mayor and Ducey’s former chief of staff. “We have been fed a steady diet of conspiracy theories and stolen electoral rhetoric and, in fact, state Republican Party QAnon theories since before the election, but certainly after.”
He said, “What is … consequential is the effect that the state Republican Party is having on the Republican brand in the state of Arizona.”
The precipitation was fast. Several thousand Arizona Republicans abandoned the party since the US Capitol riot that Trump helped incite, with most defectors registering again without a designated party, according to state election officials. Business leaders are publicly retreating from the Republican Party after party officials pushed Arizona to the center of Trump’s failed effort to overturn election results, further dividing an already fragmented party.
“Let’s be clear: we consider the weeks of disinformation and blatant lies to reverse a fair and free election for the head of the Arizona Republican Party and some elected officials are reprehensible,” said a full-page ad in The Arizona Republic on Greater Week Phoenix Leadership, a group of CEOs. “The political party organization and these elected officials, which some of us have supported in the past, have once again shamed Arizona on the national scene.”
The extreme right-wing trend of the Arizona Republican Party was evident long before the rise of Kelli Ward, the current president of the state party and Trump’s fierce ally. Arizona is the state of Joe Arpaio and Evan Mecham; in 2014, the party censored Senator John McCain.
Ward is not the first chair to fight with moderate elected officials in his party. But for a party that lost so much ground during Trump’s term, the Arizona GOP is now operating as an almost wholly owned subsidiary of the outgoing president. Deputy Andy Biggs, president of House Freedom Caucus, played a leading role in Congressional Republicans’ efforts to challenge the counting of electoral votes in Arizona – undermining voting in their own state. Following the riot perpetrated by Trump supporters on Capitol Hill, the Arizona GOP’s official Twitter account has referred to Trump as the #PresidentofPeace.
“Ignore the false allegations against President Trump and against supporters of President Trump,” said Ward in a video address this week, at a time when at least some establishment Republicans were starting to break away from Trump. “President Trump never, never asked for violence. All he asked for was a peaceful protest to demand the integrity of the vote ”.
In an email on Friday, Zachery Henry, a spokesman for the state party, lamented what he called “a concentrated effort being made by the left and many in the media to label all Republicans as domestic terrorists because of destructive actions. of some bad apples – including Antifa enthusiast John Sullivan – that our Republican Party has already totally condemned. ”
Bill Gates, Republican supervisor for Maricopa County, said, “We have always had different members in different places on the spectrum and we have always had what you would call a radical right contingent. But here, in recent years, we have seen this contingent reach the point now where they are commanding the party apparatus ”.
In this climate, Arizona Republicans who don’t follow the pro-Trump line are finding knives in the back. Ward told Ducey on Twitter to “#STHU,” or shut up, when he defended the integrity of the vote in the state, 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, “joined those who condemn President Trump”. Cindy McCain’s sins, in addition to supporting Joe Biden, include supporting “causes of the left, such as gay marriage, growth of the administrative state and others that go against Republican values, a Republican form of government and the US Constitution.”
Given the party’s losses, the more traditionalist Republicans are appalled that the Republican Party has nothing better to do.
“So the state party is stirring up fights with the party’s standard bearers for no good reason except to show a president that he is leaving office that Kelli Ward has his back turned,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican political strategist in Arizona . “The Republican Party needs to have a little reckoning 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 in the leadership apparatus have chosen demagogy over conservative principles. “
In many states, the Republican and Democratic parties are controlled by their most activist wings. Intraparty fights are not uncommon. And in the past, when Arizona was more conservative and reliable, state Republicans may not have paid a price for disunity in their ranks.
But that no longer seems to be true. The Republican Party of Arizona has regressed amid demographic changes in the state. In addition to losing the presidential election in November, Republicans saw Democrat Mark Kelly overthrow Senator Martha McSally, just two years after Kyrsten Sinema put another Arizona Senate seat on the Democratic column.
McCain, in a statement, said he “was not surprised by the continuing insults and personal attacks by Arizona Republican Party President Kelli Ward. She showed how attacking Republicans like me can impact the elections – her involvement in the two Senate elections to replace Jeff Flake and my husband John McCain, two regular targets of his personal attacks, resulted in Democratic victories. “
As party president, McCain said, Ward “managed to make Arizona blue in November for the first time since 1996. Perhaps she should be reminded that my husband has never lost an election in Arizona since his first victory in 1982; he and Governor Ducey are the last two Republicans to win state disputes in Arizona. “
Censoring it – or any other winning Republican – may not have the intended effect.
TJ Shope, a Republican state senator, said that the politicians targeted by the Republican Party “tend to have much more in common with the average person on the street than with the people who censor”.
He said: “We need to go ahead and reach a point in time when we will realize that we need to grow the party in a positive way again.”
The electoral cycle was not at all bad for the Arizona Republican Party. Republicans registered in the state still outnumber Democrats by about 3 percentage points. Republicans retained their majority in the House, despite some projections that Democrats would likely resume it. And some Republican Party officials believe that the controversy over vote counting in the state will further energize the base.
More than before, said Shelley Kais, president of the Republican Party in Pima County, Arizona, local Republicans are “running for membership on district committees, are offering to sit on committees, are trying to run.”
Regarding the resolution to censor McCain, Kais said: “It’s always good for people to have their day in court, let’s make sure of that, whether it’s the … die-hard party activists or Cindy McCain.”
But after the losses inflicted on the party last year, other Republicans say it would be better if the Republican Party just left internal conflicts alone.
“My personal opinion is that we should just settle down, pick up our pieces and start from scratch,” said Delos Bond, president of the Republican Party in Apache County. “I think we should try to heal ourselves … stop worrying about McCain and Flake’s issues and try to drive some unity there.”
“We just need to engage and work on the issues that our platform represents,” said Bond. “We have distanced ourselves from these issues and are very concerned about the issues between fellow Republicans … McCain is gone. Let’s get over it. And Flake is gone. Let’s get over it. “