Volunteer for Ward posted racist tweets

Worker blames past remarks on immaturity

Kelli Ward, the new chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, has enlisted the help of a volunteer with a history of writing racist and homophobic comments.

Ward, a loyalist to President Donald Trump who has made two unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate, brought on Shialee Grooman as an unpaid worker after winning her election in January to lead the state party for the next two years.

Grooman has been helping Ward’s transition team with logistics, office cleaning and paperwork-sorting, said Zachery Henry, who has been speaking on Ward’s behalf during her transition to state GOP chairwoman.

Grooman has a state-party email address and has been helping coordinate meetings with party activists.

Henry declined to make Ward available to talk about her association with Grooman. Henry did not respond to the The Arizona Republic’s request to talk about how Ward and her transition team were vetting volunteers and staffers, or if that process had occurred.

In an email Tuesday to The Republic, Grooman, who is now in her early 20s, wrote that the tweets, which are

years old and date to her days in high school, do not reflect who she is today.

“I’m one of the people who now have their childhood mistakes opened to public debate and are not allowed to grow or mature,” wrote Grooman, whose LinkedIn.com profile lists Glendale as her hometown. “Those tweets don’t reflect who I am and I won’t allow them to define me as a person. My focus is on school, my family, and volunteering in my community.”

She added that she is a part-time student who wants to “help out my local government” in her spare time.

Grooman’s tweets include the Nword and a derogatory term for Hispanics. She also repeatedly tweeted homophobic slurs.

Grooman recently was associated with Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit organization with a mission of training and organizing students around the principles of limited government and a free market. The group’s popularity has exploded in the Trump era.

Two Turning Point USA officials, Tyler Bowyer and Jake Hoffman, served as unofficial advisers to Ward’s campaign for state GOP chair.

The group, led by Charlie Kirk, has come under fire for allegations involving racial bias. Earlier this month, the group’s communications director, Candace Owens, came under fire for remarks she made about nationalism and Adolf Hitler.

As recently as earlier this week, Grooman’s LinkedIn page listed her as a field-operations manager for Turning Point, although Kirk referred to her in a story by HuffPost as a “former employee.” The reference to the Turning Point USA position was removed after

contacted Grooman about her social-media posts.

Grooman also lists a stint running Arizona’s millennial coalition for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during his 2016 bid for the GOP presidential nomination. She also worked as an intern for former U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, the Arizona Republican who resigned his seat in 2017 over sexual-misconduct allegations.

Grooman’s social-media activity came to light in 2018 through reporting by HuffPost, which published her old Twitter posts. In past posts, she wrote racial slurs about black people and Latinos, as well as homophobic slurs.

The tweets were associated with her old Twitter accounts, according to HuffPost: @shiiialee and @FreezingArizona. The accounts are no longer active, but the tweets are documented in HuffPost’s reporting, and portions of her posts are still online.

“I love making racist jokes,” Grooman wrote on Twitter in March 2012, according to tweets published by HuffPost.

Nine months later, Grooman followed up with another tweet: “If you’re a race other than white I promise to make racist jokes towards you.”

In an April 2013 posting, she wrote, “I am always making racist comments lol.”

Ward’s affiliation with Grooman continues another example of her associations with some controversial and fringe figures from the right, which could complicate her efforts to unite the party and successfully grow Republican turnout for Republican candidates during the 2020 cycle.

“I think we need people hired that will solidify our party, and grow it, and it’s difficult to do when you bring baggage with you,” said former Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican who has, at times, clashed with Ward. “Kelli was elected chairman, and I guess she can choose who she wants for her team if she thinks that person is the right person for the Republican Party in Arizona.”

Other prominent Republicans to comment.

Ward defeated the more moderate Republican incumbent to lead the party headed into the 2020 elections after harnessing anger and energy from the conservative wing of the party after its 2018 losses. Republicans lost a U.S. Senate seat for the first time in 30 years, as well as two statewide offices, while Democrats made significant gains in the state’s House of Representatives.

Ward, a former state lawmaker, has long been at odds with moderate members of her party. But as state-party chairwoman, she has pledged to work to ensure Trump and U.S. Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., are successful in the state’s 2020 elections.

While a U.S. Senate candidate, Ward embraced, then distanced herself from, Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser whose influence seemingly imploded after he made derogatory comments about Trump’s grown children.

Also during her 2018 Senate bid, Ward worked to separate herself from Paul Nehlen, a self-described “prowhite” Wisconsin congressional candidate from 2018 whose own Republican Party disavowed him.

Ward also has posed for pictures with the right-wing group Patriot Movement AZ, some of whose members appeared at events for her 2018 Senate candidacy. declined