Arizona Republicans worry about election audit fallout
PHOENIX – The Arizona ballot audit is raising political pressure, but Republicans are feeling the squeeze.
The slow tally of 2.1 million Maricopa County presidential ballots has Donald Trump’s approval, but it is deepening divisions within the GOP.
It has riveted the attention of the former president, who is bent on overturning the results. The U.S Justice Department is worried about the security of ballots and potential voter intimidation.
Arizona may have become a punch line for late-night comedians joking about volunteers searching for evidence of conspiracies linked to bamboo fibers and ultraviolet lights, but the stakes of this exercise should not be downplayed, election experts warned.
Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, said America held fair elections in the midst of a pandemic, but Republicans incensed about Trump’s loss to Joe Biden are damaging the process in a way that foreign nations sought to do.
“We should be very proud of ourselves as a country, and instead we’re still litigating over who won,” he said. “There’s plenty of evidence that Russian intelligence was behind promoting election fraud stories. … We have people from within our own country who are looking to undermine our democracy because one person can’t accept that he could ever lose an election.”
The audit by a private firm at the behest of the Republican-controlled state Senate is testing ideological unity for the GOP.
Pro-Trump figures formed an organization dedicated to examining election integrity in eight states, including Arizona.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, angered Trump by accepting Biden’s win, complicating his political ambitions after his term ends in 2023.
Some Republicans familiar with Arizona elections said the audit and its associations with right-wing conspiracies that the election was stolen are doing serious damage.
“I just want it over. I think Arizona needs to move on and not be the center of more of this political gossip,” said Betsey Bayless, Republican secretary of state for five years beginning in 1997.
“Let this be completed, and then we can talk about what the findings are,” Ducey said Thursday, adding that he was “focused on my day job.”
“No one has been a more vocal advocate for Arizona elections than the governor – from the state Capitol to the Oval Office,” said CJ Karamargin, a Ducey spokesperson. “The Senate is a separate, co-equal branch of government and has been granted the ability to examine the ballots by the court, another separate and co-equal branch of government. The executive branch has not been involved in the process.”
Former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl made clear he’s not associated with the audit and sees little upside to it.
“It is always the case that when there are serious controversies within a political party, it doesn’t do the party any good,” Kyl said. “And I think the divisions within the Republican Party will not reflect well on the party’s chances of success in the next election. That’s pretty obvious.”
The candidate fields already are taking shape for 2022’s races, which will draw hundreds of millions of dollars as Republicans hope to maintain control of the governor’s office and state Legislature and unseat Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., which could give the GOP control of that chamber.
“The Legislature should be focused on the challenges facing the state,” Kelly told The Arizona Republic on Thursday when asked about the potential consequences of the audit.
All four of the state’s U.S. House Republicans played varying roles in trying to set aside the election results despite the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency declaring the election the “most secure in American history.” For months after the election, Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs helped promote the narrative of a stolen election. Gosar repeatedly touted “Stop the Steal” events. Biggs called the results in Pennsylvania “fraud, pure and simple.”
Rep. Debbie Lesko and 100 other House Republicans joined a lawsuit brought by Texas seeking to block the results in four states. The Supreme Court quickly dismissed the case.
Hours after Trump supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Rep. David Schweikert joined 146 other House Republicans in voting to set aside election results in Pennsylvania. Unlike his three Arizona GOP colleagues, he did not seek to set aside his own state’s results.
Arizona’s state government remains in Republican control. Biden’s margin in Arizona, about 11,000 votes, was the narrowest in the country.
After Trump’s claims of widespread fraud, his supporters in GOP-controlled states have dug into the issue. Georgia passed a raft of voting restrictions.
Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, three other key presidential battlegrounds, have Democratic governors and are unlikely to indulge Trump’s conspiracy claims.
Though Arizona GOP lawmakers are aligned with Trump, Ducey’s relationship with the former president is fraught. He ignored a phone call from Trump while he certified Biden’s victory.
Ducey’s political ambitions may lie outside Arizona. As head of the Republican Governors Association, Ducey leads the effort to help the party in the next cycle in 38 gubernatorial races, a post that connects him with some of the party’s most influential donors.
He has done little to publicly shape or condemn the effort to recount the Maricopa County ballots.
Asked Thursday how the audit is reverberating nationally, the governor inaccurately responded, “This is an issue in every state, and it’s been an issue in the last several elections.”
Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who has been critical of the audit, said she received death threats, and Friday, the governor ordered state police protection for her and her family.
Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Chucri, a Republican, said he supported initial reviews of the county’s tallies because it seemed important to uphold public confidence. The audit isn’t doing that, he said.
“Your average citizen says this is turning into a mockery,” he said. “I just don’t know who’s in charge or how it’s going . ... I’m not sure this is giving people confidence.”