Does Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers still qualify as a 'real' Republican?

The Republicans who lead us in Arizona aren’t generally known these days for their profiles in courage.

We’re used to the likes of state Rep. Mark Finchem, who is still pushing the fairy tale that Arizona’s 2020 election was stolen. And state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who'd likely hang her own grandmother from those public gallows she’d like to build if she thought it would get her a few extra Twitter followers and a campaign donation.

We’ve reluctantly grown used to Senate President Karen Fann, a once-respected legislator who ordered an audit to “restore voter confidence” in an election she has said she doesn’t believe was stolen – and in so doing probably did more to kill voter confidence than anyone in the state.

We’re still working on getting used to Kari Lake, the Republican gubernatorial frontrunner whose increasingly bizarre blasts of bravado don’t seem to be bringing her new supporters. (This week’s offering: “Cartel drones that enter Arizona Airspace when I am Governor will be shot out of the sky. Anyone up for some target practice?”)

Then there is House Speaker Rusty Bowers.

Bowers wouldn't go down the election rabbit hole

Bowers is the state’s “other” top GOP legislative leader, the quiet one who declined to give into the collective psychosis that descended upon Arizona after Joe Biden was elected president.

He’s a staunch conservative who supported the reelection of Donald Trump. But once the people had spoken, he refused to take a header down the rabbit hole where black is white and up is down and the election was stolen, well … because it just was.

No actual evidence needed.

Bowers didn’t bow to the phone calls from Trump and his chief advisors, pressuring him to undo the election. He put an early stop to the schemes of Finchem and then-Rep. Kelly Townsend, who proposed legislation to overturn the results of the election.

While Fann was rushing to please Team Trump by hiring an unqualified Trump supporter to conduct her “independent” election audit, Bowers held onto his dignity and took a pass.

Even this year, he continues to kill the kookiest of election “reform” bills, including Finchem’s ongoing quest to decertify the vote and Rep. John Fillmore’s proposal to allow the Legislature to overturn the results of any election it doesn’t like.

He was honored alongside Zelenskyy

For standing on principle, Bowers was targeted for recall. Protesters cruised his Mesa neighborhood, using a loudspeaker to call him a pedophile while inside his home, he cared for his dying daughter.

He is what many Republican officials once aspired to be, guided by principle and conscience instead of cowardice or a craven abdication of honor.

On Thursday, Bowers won the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. This is no vanity award, doled out on the chicken-dinner circuit. It’s given to public servants who defend democracy at home or abroad, regardless of the personal consequences.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is among the five honorees this year. So is Rep. Liz Cheney. And Bowers.

“There is no issue today more important than the fight for democracy,” The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Foundation notes, in announcing this year’s winners. “These honorees have placed their careers and lives on the line to protect democratic principles and free and fair elections. They embody what President Kennedy admired most in others – political courage.”

A trait that, sadly, has gone out of style.

Bowers is right. It's not a heroic act. Yet ...

It remains to be seen whether a Republican who believes the 2020 election wasn’t stolen can win an election in Arizona. Bowers is running for the state Senate against former Sen. David Farnsworth, who believes “100%” that the 2020 election was stolen.

They’ll face off in an Aug. 2 GOP primary that should tell us a lot about the future of the Republican Party, whether it will remain nestled in the palm of Donald Trump’s hand or revert to the once-Grand Old Party that coalesced around a broad spectrum of conservative principles.

Bowers, for his part, seems puzzled by the whole to-do with the JFK award.

“Honoring my oath and the people’s choices at the ballot box are not heroic acts,” he said, in a statement. “They are the least that Arizonans should expect from the people elected to serve them.”

He’s right. They are.

And yet …

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Is House Speaker Rusty Bowers still a 'real' Republican?