PHOENIX –
Republican Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers lost his bid for a state Senate seat after rejecting then-President Donald Trump’s pleas to overturn the 2020 election results and testify before Congress. about these efforts.
Bowers tried to move to the state Senate because of term limits. He lost to former State Senator David Farnsworth, who criticized him for refusing to help Trump or conduct a controversial 2021 “audit” that Republican leaders in the Senate authorized. .
Farnsworth would automatically win the Senate seat because no Democrat is running in a Republican-rich area.
Bowers has faced an uphill battle in the eastern Phoenix suburb of Mesa, especially after the state’s Republicans censored him according to testimony in June before the panel investigating the attack on Congress. on January 6, 2021, and Trump endorsed Farnsworth.
“I know full well that I have a lot of distrust,” Bowers told The Associated Press ahead of the election. “My county is a very Trump district, and who knows how things will turn out.
“And if it doesn’t work out, great, I’ll do it all over again the same way,” Bowers said.
Trump pressured Bowers to help with a plan to replace the electors committed to current President Joe Biden during a phone call weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election. Bowers declined.
Bowers insisted on seeing Trump’s evidence of voter fraud, which he said Trump’s team never made beyond vague allegations. He recalls Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani later telling him, “We had a lot of theories, we just didn’t have the proof.”
Bowers is a Conservative Republican, but Farnsworth said he’s not Conservative enough and has become less of a speaker since becoming a speaker following the 2018 election.
“Of course, I think, the big problem for everyone is that I actually believe there was fraud in the 2020 election,” Farnsworth said in an interview last week. “And I feel like Rusty has failed…as speaker of the House and looking at that election.”
The Battle of Farnsworth-Bowers was one of several brewing cases involving current or former Arizona legislators.
In another eastern suburban county, GOP Senator Tyler Pace is tracking his challenger after an outside group targets him and Bowers.
The redistricting brought two pro-Trump state senators, Kelly Townsend and Wendy Rogers, into the same district. Rogers is leading in the early second leg, but the race is too soon to end.
It comes to bitter conclusions as Rogers has faced multiple ethics charges for her outrageous words, support for white supremacists, and tweets full of hate. conspiracy theories.
Townsend said she felt compelled to go against Rogers when she refused to refute white nationalism after speaking at a conference in Florida in February.
“If I don’t go against her and make that statement, win, lose or draw then her actions will become our own,” Townsend said Monday. “It ruins the entire party (Republican).”
Rogers has garnered a nationwide following, raising $3 million from donors around the country since taking office in early 2021. Townsend has raised about $15,000, typically much more for a state legislative race.
In the western suburbs of Phoenix, former Representative Anthony Kern, who attended the January 6 Trump rally that led to the attack on Congress and unsuccessfully sued Democrats asking the Justice Department to investigated him, led his attempt to return to the Legislature. He was defeated in the 2020 House primaries and is currently aiming for a Senate seat. If his solid lead holds, he’ll get it, as no Democrats are running.
Also trying to get back into politics is former Congressman Steve Montenegro, whose 2018 Congressional run was ended by a sex scandal. He is leading among four Republicans running in a district west of the Phoenix House for two seats in the House.
Democratic delegates Diego Espinoza and Richard Andrade are going head-to-head after being drawn to the same county in the western suburbs of Phoenix, with Andrade taking a slight lead in a race too close to call. And Senator Lela Alston, widely regarded as the most experienced legislator in the Legislature, took a lead of two opponents in the central district of Phoenix. One of them, Al Jones, a political unknown, sought attention by buying billboards all over the city.
