Prominent AZ Republicans urge GOP allies to stop spreading election conspiracies

Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump supporters gathered in the nation's capital to protest the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory over President Trump in the 2020 election. A pro-Trump mob later stormed the Capitol, breaking windows and clashing with police officers. Five people died as a result. Photo by Brent Stirton | Getty Images

Some prominent Arizona Republicans are preparing for an uphill battle in their attempt to restore voter confidence in the state’s elections.

“It’s going to be tough,” former Gov. Jan Brewer told the Arizona Mirror.

Brewer is a board member for the newly minted Democracy Defense Project , a bipartisan group of current and former politicians with the goal of bolstering faith in the election system.

“Designed to serve as a counterweight to attempts to undermine and sow distrust in election integrity, the Democracy Defense Project’s board members will speak up when these instances arise and publicly defend those who have sworn to uphold the rule of law regardless of party or outcome,” the project said in a news release announcing its launch.

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The launch, on June 25, came at a time when election systems in Arizona — and especially in Maricopa County — are under intense scrutiny and subject to rampant conspiracy theories after a temporary election worker allegedly stole a ballot tabulator key from the county on June 20.

The theft was quickly discovered, and the man suspected of taking the key was arrested the following day, after the key was reportedly found inside his home. But that hasn’t stopped many of the same people who claimed — without evidence — that the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen from spreading wild speculation and conspiracy theories about the theft.

Former U.S. Congressman Matt Salmon, another Democracy Defense Project board member who will be heading the organization’s operations in the Grand Canyon State, told the Arizona Mirror that he decided to join the effort after bearing witness to the “ruination” of the Republican Party in the state.

Salmon, who was a congressman for 10 years, a state senator for four years and a precinct committeeman for more than 30 years, said he just couldn’t handle running for office again this year.

“It makes me really sad, because I’ve always believed so strongly in the principles that the Republican Party has upheld,” he said. “And they’re more interested now in chasing rabbits down holes than they are in actually doing the job.”

Many Arizona Republicans have bought into the claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump and that the 2022 election was similarly stolen from several Trump-backed GOP candidates for statewide office. U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake has been continually challenging the results of the 2022 governor’s race that she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs. Also filing repeated unsuccessful court challenges to their losses in that election were Abe Hamadeh , who ran for attorney general, and Mark Finchem , who ran for secretary of state.

Salmon said he doesn’t believe that those lawsuits are serious.

“I lost interest after the 45th lawsuit,” he said. “I think it’s really a waste of time and money. I think it’s become more of a way to keep yourself, if you’re in the position of filing all these lawsuits, to keep your face out there in the media, keep yourself so-called relevant and raise money.”

Salmon added that he doesn’t think the suits are doing anything to benefit Arizonans or the Republican Party.

I think it’s really a waste of time and money. I think it’s become more of a way to keep yourself, if you’re in the position of filing all these lawsuits, to keep your face out there in the media, keep yourself so-called relevant and raise money.

– Former GOP Congressman Matt Salmon

While both Salmon and Brewer agree that restoring confidence in elections is imperative for the future of the United States, they don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on why some of their colleagues claim that the system is rigged or rampant with fraud.

“They, of course, believe what they say, or they wouldn’t be saying it, I assume,” Brewer told the Mirror. “But I don’t think they have the facts.”

She added that she believes it’s the responsibility of former officials like herself, who voters trust, to better inform them about how elections in Arizona work and about all the safeguards that are in place to ensure the accuracy of the results.

But Salmon doesn’t buy that all of the people making claims about election fraud actually believe what they’re saying.

“A lot of those people are just saying that because that’s what they know that the rank-and-file want to hear,” he said.

Salmon and Brewer both pointed out that Democrats like Hillary Clinton had also questioned the validity of elections that they lost.

Clinton called Donald Trump an “illegitimate president following his victory in 2016 because she won the popular vote but Trump won the Electoral College vote. She did not claim that Trump didn’t win in closely contested battleground states, and did not seek to overturn those election results. And her complaints about her defeat did not gain the kind of steam, or result in the same kinds of action from voters and other politicians, that Trump’s claims have elicited.

Salmon added that it makes him sad that some of those people will admit in private that they don’t believe their own claims, but keep parroting them in public. As examples, Salmon pointed to a text obtained by the media in which Hamadeh called election deniers “crazies” and right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson, wherein he admitted that he does not like Trump and thought he had discredited his own claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

While Salmon said that there’s no way to completely stamp out fraud or illegal voting in a free society, the rate at which it happens is very low — and does not affect the outcome of our elections.

Brewer and Salmon both said they hope that their work to combat inaccurate election information — whether it’s shared by Republicans or Democrats — leads to a peaceful transition of power, regardless of who wins in November.

“We don’t want another repeat of Jan. 6,” Brewer said. “That was just so, so disappointing to see what happened that day.”

Salmon pointed out that, in 2002, he lost the race for governor to Democrat Janet Napolitano by only 11,000 votes, fewer than the more than 17,000 that separated Lake and Hobbs in 2022. While he said some people urged him to contest the results, he felt it was better for Arizona to accept the results and move forward.

“We all have to agree that, no matter who wins, we have to trust that the election processes that we have in place, that they’re secure and every vote has been counted,” Brewer said.

But she knows that convincing people of that will be a struggle.

“It’s hard to convince people once they go down that path, to get them back to reality and to listen to the facts,” she said. “That’s the hard part. That’s why it takes a lot of people involved to speak out — people that they know. And I hope that they’ll listen.”

Both Salmon and Brewer agreed that the swift arrest of the man who allegedly stole a tabulator key from Maricopa County was a testament to the strict protocols and security measures that are already in place in Arizona.

Salmon, who was a founding member of the congressional House Freedom Caucus but has since left it, said he blames much of the doubt in the nation’s elections systems on election denialism spread by “ultra MAGA” politicians.

“Today’s Republican Party, to me, is far more interested in purity tests and Salem witch trials for people they don’t think are Republican enough instead of helping candidates get elected and winning in the general and that to me is very sad,” he said.

Salmon said he didn’t want to share whether he planned to vote for Trump in November, but Brewer told the Arizona Republic that she would vote for him because he’s the Republican nominee.

Just this month, a video from March surfaced in which Maricopa County Republican Committee First Vice Chair Shelby Busch said that she supports the campaigns of Christian candidates and that, if Republican Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer walked into the room, she would lynch him .

Richer, who has been a boogeyman for those who say Maricopa County’s elections are corrupt, is Jewish. Brewer said that she believes it’s up to the party to decide whether Busch should keep her position.

“She needs to be careful about how she behaves and how she acts,” Brewer said. “Unfortunately, that was a very bad comment that she made and she needs to apologize, overwhelmingly, to the people that she offended.”

In addition to Arizona, the Defend Democracy Project team is working to restore confidence in elections in Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Local board members, in addition to Brewer and Salmon, are Republican Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines and former Democratic state Rep. Daniel Hernandez.

***CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to reflect that the Democracy Defense Project launched on June 25 and that the tabulator key theft happened June 20.

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