Have the last four years happened? It would seem that for the MAGA Republican Party they have not. That is my first impression after 48 hours in the state and one thoughtful conversation with a Republican grandee: Barry Goldwater Jr.
President Joe Biden won the state’s 11 electoral college votes in 2020 by a whisker:
The result was the focus of a MAGA challenge too tedious to rehash in detail. It saw Rudy Giuliani fly to the state to lead the effort to find irregularities in the vote count, the method for validating ballots. The challenge went on for months, long after the January 6 2021 assault by MAGA Trump supporters on the Capitol and Joe Biden’s inauguration.
It wasn’t until September 2021 that a final report from Cyber Ninjas, the pro-Trump group hired to oversee a hand recount of more than 2 million ballots, reached the conclusion that the original count was accurate.
End of story? Oh no, this is America in the third decade of the 21st century. MAGA is on the march, not just against Democrats but also against Republicans who don’t toe the Trump line. In Maricopa County, home to the Phoenix metropolitan area, the county recorder oversees elections and vouches for their integrity. Since November 2020 the position has been held by Republican Stephen Richer. He is being primaried by a MAGAt.
Last night there was a debate among those vying for the job. His leading challenger Justin Heap, is an election denier. The men were asked if the 2020 election was stolen in Arizona. Richer said, “No the election was not stolen.” Heap did not give a straight answer.
If this seems like a small matter you don’t understand the madness that has taken over the MAGA Republican party. Yesterday, at a public meeting one of Richer’s fellow Republicans, Shelby Busch, said she’d lynch him.
Watch this clip. Richer’s response to an extreme provocation by someone who in theory is on the same team is calm and remarkably decent. But calm decency doesn’t seem to be a given following the MAGA takeover of the GOP.
The question is, why does MAGA keep flogging a dead horse? 2020 is done. Most voters want to move on. Those politicians who don’t pay a price. In 2022, Trump’s biggest Arizona fan, Kari Lake, ran for governor and lost. At the time she also blamed Richer for her defeat. He sued her for defamation when she claimed he had deliberately had ballots printed the wrong size so they couldn’t be counted properly.
The situation puzzles Barry Goldwater Jr. Now in his mid-80s, the former congressman, a bred in the bone conservative, is as perplexed as anybody else about why Lake won’t let 2020 go. This year she is running for the US Senate against Democrat Ruben Gallego. Goldwater describes him as a decent guy but liberal and worries that Lake is not the person to take him on.
“She’s got too much baggage. She could be a terrific candidate but she doesn’t listen and she’s not running a very good campaign.”
Goldwater expects another tight presidential race in Arizona in November with Trump carrying the state by a small margin. Why?
If there were a better Democrat candidate he could probably carry Arizona because Arizona has all this mass migration from California, Chicago, the Midwest and they have changed the political climate here. It was always conservative here but that is changing.
He reiterates,
If the Democrats had a better candidate they would probably take the state.
Goldwater says he won’t vote for Kari Lake for Senator because he has a third party option, Mark Lamb, a local sheriff, who has a national media profile. Lamb is running as an independent. But when it comes to voting for President, he has no third party option. He’ll vote Trump because: “He’s a Republican”.
But Trump is not a Republican candidate for President like Goldwater’s father or John McCain, another son of Arizona. That tribalism is an important part of the dynamic that buoys Donald Trump.
And I just don’t get it.
A reminder: I am traveling in the Southwest this week trying to get a feel for the dynamics shaping November’s vote. I want this to be the first of several trips to report from the country of my birth but that takes your support. The road is more expensive than it has ever been. (Note to Biden team: don’t go by the statistics. Inflation is a beast and it’s damned expensive out here). So please, if you value my work:
great article - the clip is stunning, really. wtf?? and travel now? food and motels, eating in restaurants, etc, is as you note truly expensive, a post covid shock to the credit card wherever you are. but to interview Goldwater Jr. - amazing. nicely done, I look forward to more of these.