GOP party leaders and elected officials who have sided with Trump, backed by the right-wing media, have launched a relentless attack on those who cannot bring themselves to join the headline rejection. -sitting of the surrender duck.
To be sure, there are similar divisions across the GOP across the country. But the vision in Arizona offers a clear picture of why some Republicans fear if Trump continues to wake up and lead his followers once he’s out of office, perhaps party involvement at state and local level. The unrest within the party could quickly block the GOP as it enters an emergency election cycle: Republicans have lost both seats at the Arizona Senate in both elections finally, and they are entering 2022 with both the governor’s office and the Senate seat on the ballot. The split between the more moderate Arizona Republican and Trump’s allies as state GOP chairman Kelli Ward could lead to bitter primaries that could hurt the party’s hopes of capturing strong candidates in the fall.
“It has become very toxic,” said one Republican state lawyer, who would only speak on condition of anonymity. “Eighty percent with you is not enough for some people … Trump is so popular in the party and such an influence, that anyone who tries to Trump himself or his memory will fail. clean it and go nowhere. ”
“Some Republicans have decided to file for divorce from fact, that facts will be damaged,” said Barrett Marson, a publicist who worked for Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s political action committee in the 2020 election.
At the same time that Republicans did well in down-to-ballot races, Trump’s hard-hearted following in Arizona wasn’t enough for him to win the state this year. It was almost appalling, for Republicans, what Democrat Mark Kelly won in the U.S. sitcom race over Sen. Martha McSally. McSally, after two terms in the U.S. House, lost the Senate race to Democrat Kyrsten Cinema in 2018; Ducey later appointed Sen. City of John McCain. She lost Kelly in the race to serve the final two years of McCain’s term by nearly 79,0000 votes.
As one GOP official put it, “The last time Arizona had two Democrats in the U.S. Senate, the country was on the verge of waiting for little Ricky to give birth to ‘I Love Lucy.’ ”That was in 1953.
Kelly would normally be seen as vulnerable in 2022, because in Arizona, as elsewhere, the GOP has historically surpassed the Democratic Party in the middle turnout. -time.
But breaking a GOP could change that calculus.
Former state lawyer Grant Woods, a lifelong Republican who claims to have left the party because of Trump, believes the Arizona GOP has put itself in an impossible position.
“Right now, I’m confident the governor couldn’t win a primary. He’s got into Jeff Flake’s district; he’s getting it from the right and left …[And] You’re not going to beat Kelly with the Trumper candidate in the general election, but could anyone else win the primary? ”
Calling two of Trump’s biggest supporters in the state’s conference delegation, Woods added if Rep. Paul Gosar or Biggs “or one of those types of runs, they’re going to get stomped,” in the general election.
Mike Noble, head of research for OH Predictive Insights, an Arizona polling company, says the data is clear: “There can only be one established strategy for making GOP nationwide.” He said the 2020 vote here was a referendum, rejecting Trump even as Republicans held on to their 31-29 margin in the state house, and lost one seat but controlled the seat of the state.
Noble said he thinks Arizona is a “magenta” state – that is, the lightest shade of red.
“The X factor out there is Trump,” he said. “With a stroke of the thumb, it can raise money overnight for someone, millions. If it stays engaged and helps the Trump state, it could do a lot of damage to the GOP, depleting resources. It would be difficult; Democrats, especially in Arizona, are very united, compared to Republicans. “
Such fear has not been lost on some Trump supporters within the party.
“Republicans in this state have received a wake-up call; we must do everything we can to find unity going into the next circle,” said Michael Burke, GOP party chairman for Pinal County, the east- south of Phoenix. Burke sent a letter to Ducey in November signed by 14 of the 15 GOP party chairs, asking the governor to convene a special session to look at claims about voting irregularities. The fifteenth party, Rae Chornenky, of Maricopa County, resigned a week earlier under pressure from state chairman Ward after failing a pre-selection test of voting equipment, including ballot tabulators from Dominion Voting Systems, in its county.
However, Burke says of the party divisions, “there will be a remnant of that for a long time, but it will blow over.”
Marson, the journalist, agrees, saying, “People can move past things after two full years. There’s a lot of time to heal 2020 wounds.”
Others see less of a view of any end of the situation.
“The riot is not, ‘we will find a way to get ahead;’ The move is, you need to restore the proper role of government, “said state Senator Kelly Townsend, who is aligned with Ward and signed a resolution calling on Congress to slate 11 people. GOP poll.
Townsend said she simply interpreted the tweet as a criticism of Ducey’s actions; but she also said of the governor, “How do you trust someone like that again?” and reiterated the need for ongoing reviews of selected elections. “We should not turn our eyes away from this in the name of winning.”
Ducey declined requests for an interview with CNN, as did Ward. Representatives. Gosar and Biggs did not respond to interview requests.
On November 30, Ducey was in the middle of a public reception that signed the confirmation of Arizona election results, awarding 11 state voters to Biden, when his cell phone started playing “Hail to the Chief, ”Ducey told reporters he was reserved for Trump. Ducey rang his phone and placed it on his desk while he finished signing. Trump launched an attack shortly afterwards, saying “Arizona will never forget what Ducey just did.”
Ducey, who is limited by a term under state law, has not said what his plans are for 2022. But the governor alone is not clear about the future.
“Many people are confused with legislators, with the governor, the attorney general. They think we have far more power to take pro-Trump measures than we actually have,” one GOP state law which requested not to be named; Similarly, the lawyer said, “No one wins with Covid if you are a public official. Half the people think you are trying to kill them, and the other half think that you are taking away their freedom. “
Woods, for his part, sees one narrow way forward for a Republican in Arizona: Arranging the middle wing.
“If you want to get rid of Kelli Ward, you have to organize, get regular people, spend the time and do it. They should do that. I don’t know if they do or not; it ‘s very sad. It takes time and organizational skills … you have to spend time, talk to people, motivate them.Modesty is a relative term.Being more moderate than Kelli Ward doesn’t take much. -always harder to organize around the middle, “he said.
“You’ll never see parades with people with signs saying, ‘moderation now,'” Wood said, “even though that’s where most people are.”