Arizona Rep. Rusty Bowers (R) gave emotional testimony to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot, describing former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, defeated A Trump-backed candidate won a state Senate seat in the Republican primary on Tuesday.
FOrmer state Sen. David Farnsworth easily won the seat representing the region east of Mesa. Bowles served in the state legislature for 17 years and is the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives. Farnsworth is less well-known in the state and has less campaign money, but has one powerful weapon: Trump support.
“Rusty Bowers is a RINO coward who the other day took part in the fully partisan non-selective political mob and hacker committee against the GOP and shamed himself and he shamed Arizona,” Trump said Announce The acronym “Republican in name” was used at a rally in Prescott Valley last month.he endorsement Farnsworth said on Truth Social in early July that Bowers needed to lose, and that “the well-respected David Farnsworth is someone who does that.”
Aside from their very different views on the 2020 election, there are relatively few policy differences between the two. Bowers’ defeat is yet another signpost for the GOP toward an entirely anti-democratic entity willing to ignore fair elections fueled by a cult of personality entirely devoted to Trump and his political destiny.
In a recent debate, Farnsworth Say 2020 presidential election results: “This is a real conspiracy headed by the devil himself.” He also expressed a positive view of QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory that believes most Democrats are at the mercy of a global network of pedophiles. “I’ve talked to a lot of people who really believe they are good people and are trying to expose the truth,” he said in a text message to friends at the time. disclose Exchanges in 2020.
When Powers testified before a House select committee in June, he was an immediate object of contempt from Trump-aligned conservatives.Arizona Republican executive committee officially condemned Bowers in July. “He is no longer a Republican in good standing and we call on Republicans to replace him at the August primary ballot box,” the state’s party chairman Kelly Ward tweeted.
President Joe Biden won Arizona by only about 10,000 votes, making the state an immediate focus for Trump to overturn the election result. With zero evidence of any meaningful voter fraud, a subsequent GOP-backed audit found that Biden had actually won the state by more than the initial tally in November.
Powers told the committee on Jan. 6 that Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giulani launched an extreme pressure campaign immediately after the election, urging Powers to use his power as House speaker to use Voters loyal to Trump replace Biden voters to change the size of the Electoral College. During the call, Bowles said he pressured the two to provide evidence of voter fraud, but they did not provide any. “We have a lot of theories, but we don’t have proof,” Giuliani eventually admitted, according to Powers’ testimony.
Bowers refused to cooperate and appeared to choke as he explained why to the committee. “I’m not going to play with the laws I swore allegiance to,” he said. “Otherwise how would I approach [God] In the wilderness of living, knowing that I asked for this kind of guidance only to show that I was a coward in defending the line he led me to take? “
Democrats have no candidates in the Republican-majority district, so November’s election will be a formality for Farnsworth.
