On anniversary of Jan. 6 insurrection, President Joe Biden to honor Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers

Departing Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers will receive the nation's second-highest civilian award on Friday at the White House.

It's another recognition of Bowers' stance against efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, and the event falls on the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurgency at the U.S. Capitol.

"The last day of my tenure, I will be meeting with President Biden, who I didn't support but I wasn't going to let him get cheated out of his election," Bowers said in an interview before heading to Washington, D.C.

President Joe Biden will present Bowers, a Republican, with the Presidential Citizens Medal at a noontime White House ceremony. The medal, awarded at the president's discretion, recognizes Americans "who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens,” according to an executive order signed by then-President Richard Nixon in 1969. It is considered the highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Bowers, in his typical unassuming manner, said he didn't get a lot of explanation about why he got the honor, but acknowledged the timing with the Jan. 6 anniversary was not a coincidence.

"They just said, 'Come,'" he said of the call he received from the White House.

Bowers is one of 12 Americans chosen by Biden to recognize their efforts to protect democracy against threats that were epitomized by the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Other recipients include former and current officers of the Capitol Police and Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police forces who responded to the riot at the Capitol, as well as elections officials who fought efforts to undermine the 2020 election.

'I will follow the Constitution'

In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Bowers rebuffed attempts from former President Donald Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani and several Arizona lawmakers to set aside Arizona's presidential vote, which favored Biden and that helped seal Biden's win nationally. In a phone call nearly three weeks after the election, Trump and Giuliani argued there was a way in Arizona law to set aside the electors chosen by voters and instead let the Legislature pick the winner.

Bowers was skeptical, saying he'd never heard of such a law.

“You are giving me nothing but conjecture and asking me to break my oath and commit to doing something I cannot do because I swore I wouldn't. I will follow the Constitution,” Bowers recalled in an interview with Arizona Republic reporters in 2021.

He asked Trump and Giuliani for proof, but despite promises to deliver it, nothing arrived.

Bowers repeated this encounter when he testified before the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection last summer.

"I do not want to be a winner by cheating," he told the panel, reading from entries he made in November 2020 in his personal journal.

This is not the first award Bowers has received recognizing his resistance to such Stop the Steal demands.

In May, he accepted the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award. He was one of five people who were selected for their efforts to protect democracy, ranging from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, an elections department employee in Fulton County, Georgia.

Locally, Bowers has received condemnation from factions of his own party since the events of November 2020. He was threatened with recall, which failed; there were unsuccessful attempts to replace him as speaker; and in the August primary, he lost his bid for a state Senate seat to a Trump-endorsed Republican.

Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com and follow her on Twitter @maryjpitzl.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: AZ's Rusty Bowers to receive Presidential Citizens Medal from Biden