5 Arizona GOP primary election moments we won't forget, no matter how hard we try
Gail Golec, an intrepid member of the election conspiracy squad, spotted one of those oft-talked-about-but-seldom-seen ballot mules last week.
Naturally, she took to Twitter over the weekend to expose the fiend.
“Hey @stephen_richer!” she wrote. “Did you know that ballot harvesting is illegal? Why are you helping this lady Harvest ballots? Oh, that’s right! You don’t care which is why you put in so many unmonitored mule boxes across the county. We caught you!”
Golec even posted a video of the “crime,” catching Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in the act … of being a gentleman.
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Golec wants to lead elections?
The video shows a vehicle at one of those devilish drop boxes, the driver’s side door opening and Richer, who was in the area, making a beeline for the car.
“Yes Gail,” Richer replied. “You caught me in the act of helping pick up a ballot for a lady who dropped it (while) trying to put in the box. How dare I?! I’m allowed to handle ballots as an election official. Good lord.”
Richer would later tell me it was actually two ballots, which he picked up off the ground and handed back to the driver.
Soon after her shocking exposé and the resulting laughter, Golec deleted her tweet, apparently realizing that she looked like a complete and total nincompoop. Not a good look for a candidate who hopes voters will elect her to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to help oversee the 2024 election.
Good lord, indeed.
Election results: See who wins in Arizona's 2022 primary election
Many more primary election moments
As we reach the final few hours of the knock-down, drag-out fight that is the Republican primary election in Arizona, there are so many poignant moments to remember. Things that we will never forget … no matter how hard we try.
There is state Sen. Wendy Rogers’ $3 million campaign to win a job that pays $24,000 a year. There is Senate hopeful Blake Masters knocking down a 73-year-old guy in a Black Lives Matter shirt and a “Jail Trump” cap, who had the nerve to show up at a Republican event. (Masters claimed the man hit a woman but a video of the scene shows the woman actually cold-cocked the old guy).
There is Secretary of State hopeful Mark Finchem’s ongoing, unending tantrum that the 2020 election was stolen (still waiting for him to produce actual evidence) and Jerone Davison’s bizarre campaign ad, in which this Black candidate for Congress unleashes his AR-15 to mow down a dozen Democrats in KKK hoods.
And there was the strange and startling announcement from Karrin Taylor Robson who spent $15 million to inform us that Kari Lake is a two-faced fake, a phony and a lying hypocrite who isn't qualified to be governor … but she’ll endorse her if she wins on Tuesday.
Cue the whiplash.
Cease and desist: Maricopa County Attorney's Office demands candidate to stop urging voters to replace pens at polls
Here are a few of my favorite moments from this unforgettable 2022 Republican primary:
Kari Lake dragged the drag queens
When there’s a culture war to be waged, look for Kari Lake to be armed up and leading the charge. So when a Dallas, Texas, gay bar hosted what was billed as a family-friendly drag queen show, Lake put on her pumps and predictably started swinging her trademark sledgehammer.
“They kicked God out of schools and welcomed the Drag Queens,” she tweeted. “They took down our Flag and replaced it with a rainbow. They seek to disarm Americans and militarize our Enemies. Let’s bring back the basics: God, Guns & Glory.”
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Lo and behold, it turns out Lake used to be a regular at drag shows at a downtown Phoenix gay bar. She also allowed her then-elementary-school-aged daughter to attend a baby shower at which one of the Valley’s best-known drag queens, Barbra Seville, performed.
“She’s friends with drag queens,” Rick Stephens aka Ms. Seville, told me. “She’s had her kid in front of a drag queen. I’ve done drag in her home for her friends and family. She’s not threatened by them. She would come to shows constantly. To make me be the bogeyman for political gain it was just too much.”
Holy hypocrite, Lake huffed and she puffed and she demanded that Stephens cease and desist with his outrageous lies.
But alas, by then it was a national story.
With pictures.
Abe Hamedeh duped the duper
Abe Hamadeh, having graduated from law school waaay back in 2016, is now the Trump-endorsed front-runner in the race to be Arizona’s top prosecutor.
What he lacks in experience he certainly displays in sheer genius.
In short, he duped the duper in chief, inflating his anemic war chest to seven figures, courtesy of a brother who lent him a million then took it back 14 days later.
Just long enough for it to show up on an April campaign finance report that wouldn’t have to be updated until July.
And wouldn’t you know it? In June, he snagged an endorsement from Donald Trump, who is under investigation for exaggerating the value of his holdings to his lenders, insurers and the Internal Revenue Service.
Credit to Hamadeh. Polls show this 31-year-old political newcomer poised to rise to the top in a six-way contest that includes Andrew Gould, a veteran prosecutor and longtime judge who left the Arizona Supreme Court to run for AG.
Gould, by the way, graduated from law school in 1990.
The Pentel Poison Pen Plot
Who can forget Sharpiegate – that nefarious, preposterous scheme in which, as the conspiracy goes, Republican voters were given a felt-tip pen to steal their votes from Donald Trump?
This time, voters are being asked to use a county-supplied felt-tip Pentel pen at the polls because the ink dries faster and the ballots won’t smear and the tabulation machinery won’t get gummed up.
So, naturally, Golec, state GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward and the rest of the conspiracy squad promptly took to Twitter to instruct voters to bring ballpoint pens to the polls.
Thus ensuring that the lines will be longer and increasing the number of ballots sent to “adjudication” – that mysterious and perilous process where the conspiracy squad insists your vote will be stolen.
Nobody talked about Bruno
Attorney General Mark Brnovich, elected twice to statewide office, was once upon a time the Republican Party’s best chance to defeat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.
In November 2020, he distinguished himself by going onto Fox Business and explaining that there was no election heist afoot in Arizona. Moderate Republican and independent voters simply split their vote, he explained, as they had in 2018 when they voted for Republican Gov. Doug Ducey but not for Martha McSally, the Republicans’ Senate candidate who had surgically attached herself to Trump’s hip.
Trump would have forgiven Brnovich, except that the attorney general never could bring himself to stage “perp walks” for elections officials demanded by conspiracy squadsters. Legal ethics being what they are, there still is a requirement that there actually be proof of a crime before someone is charged with a crime.
Rather than trumpeting that high point, Brnovich took to chasing after a Trump endorsement he was never going to get.
Now he’s become a punchline. With nunchucks.
The devil made voters do it. No, really
House Speaker Rusty Bowers is a lifelong conservative who had the absolute nerve to refuse to put party before principle and go along with the plot to overturn Arizona’s 2020 presidential election. For that, he was censured by the Arizona Republican Party and challenged in his bid for a spot in the state Senate by a fellow conservative.
Former state Sen. David Farnsworth is coming out of retirement to try to knock off Bowers, with a little help from Trump and the Arizona Republican Party.
Farnsworth believes Satan orchestrated the plot to deny Trump his second term in the White House.
Literally.
“In the book of Mormon in Ether Chapter 8, the synopsis of the chapter says … modern gentiles are warned of a secret combination which seeks to destroy the freedom of our lands,” Farnsworth said, during a Clean Elections debate. “And so this is much larger than just the 2020 election.
“This is a real conspiracy headed up by the devil himself. And this may sound crazy, I realize, to some people, but when I used to talk about it 25 years ago people would shake their heads and they thought I was crazy but nowadays people are saying, ‘wow.’ They’re talking about the swamp. It’s deep and it’s wide and it’s been going on for a long, long time.”
Farnsworth is expected to send Bowers packing after close to 20 years of distinguished service.
Really, what can you say?
Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona election moments we won't forget, even if we tried
