GOP congressional contenders push election conspiracies
Veering from COVID-related conspiracies to maintaining the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, three Republican candidates vying for a seat in Congress jockeyed Monday for the narrowest vision of the federal government.
By turns, Jerone Davison, Dave Giles and Rene Lopez said they wanted to end the federal government’s involvement in education, end early voting for most Arizonans and clamp down on the southern border before addressing undocumented immigrants who are already here.
“Government never really does anything very well,” Lopez said at one point, reflecting a broad pessimism of the government he hopes to join.
Tanya Wheeless, perhaps the GOP frontrunner in the race for Arizona’s new 4th Congressional District that covers part of Phoenix and the southeast Valley, and Kelly Cooper didn’t participate in the debate on Arizona PBS.
Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., who currently represents a Phoenix-based district that spans much of the new 4th District, never came up. Instead, three of the lower profile candidates in the Republican primary field focused on a government unwilling to protect its people and riddled with waste.
Lopez lamented inflation and the threat of water scarcity in Arizona but joined in the calling for a border monitored so closely that “we don’t have people sneaking in.”
Davison blamed nationwide inflation in part on government subsidies for illegal immigrants and called for a rollback in early voting for most people and claimed popular support for a return to a voting style Arizona already uses.
“They want to get rid of the machines and go back to the paper ballots. They want honest and true elections,” Davison said.
Giles, a perennial self-funded candidate, complained that the federal government has any role in education at all. With props like a copy of the Constitution, a segment of barbed wire, and a lapel badge pronouncing his candidacy, Giles urged a more limited approach to government.
“If it’s not in the Constitution, the federal government shouldn’t be talking about it at all. That reverts to the states,” Giles said. “Personally, I don’t want this (critical race theory) stuff going to our kids. I don’t want them brainwashed. I don’t want them talking about all this junk.”
The Republicans generally agreed in varying degrees there were significant problems in the 2020 election in Arizona, preventing former President Donald Trump from being named the winner.
Davison, for example, said Trump did win. Giles said fraudulent ballots were inserted into the totals giving the appearance that President Joe Biden won. Lopez said the election had problems but didn’t want to “rehash that election.”
They also blamed the federal government for shutting down the economy during the pandemic, accusing medical and government officials of lying and shading information to extend quarantines and suppress freedom.
The candidates are competing for a chance to challenge Stanton, a twoterm incumbent, in a district that leans narrowly to Democrats.
The primary is Aug. 2, with early voting getting underway about a month before that.