Is Jeff DeWit the next Kelli Ward? (And if so, is Arizona's GOP doomed?)

Farewell, Kelli Ward.

The four-year reign of the chaotic chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party ended on Saturday.

Her list of accomplishments is both long and astonishing, having lost one presidential election, two Senate seats, the top three state offices and yes, even the party’s liability insurance. (The party’s insurance company canceled, she announced on Saturday, “because we are Republicans.”)

The question is, what are Republicans moving on to?

Jeff DeWit won't declare war on RINOs

The GOP’s grassroots activists on Saturday elected Jeff DeWit as the new party chairman.

Then they overwhelmingly rejected a resolution stating that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.

DeWit won’t be as woefully incompetent, so wondrously bumbling as Kelli Ward.

Landslide win:AZ GOP picks former Trump official Jeff DeWit

He’s not going to declare war on RINOs or invite McCain supporters “to get the hell out” of the once-Grand Old Party, as failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake did. And unlike Ward and Lake, he actually won a statewide election, having been tapped as state treasurer in 2014 before leaving the post three years later to work in the Trump administration.

But with his ties to Trump and the far right, the jury’s still out on whether DeWit can save the party from itself as it tries to deliver the key battleground state to a Republican president, reclaim a Senate seat and strengthen its tenuous control of the Arizona Legislature in 2024.

But can he lead the GOP back from the edge?

DeWit didn’t return my call last week to talk about his plans but reaction by some in the party’s establishment wing ranges from disappointed and downright skeptical to resigned but please-God-don’t-let-him-be-another-Kelli-Ward.

“He has the DNA and relevant life experience to lead,“ Republican strategist Chuck Coughlin told me. “The question is, can he? Can he be selfless and serve, not inward looking and boastful? Is he willing to be able to quietly be truthful and not succumb to social media and Twitter? We will see.”

For those who are hoping the Arizona Republican Party will return to its once-winning ways, there are some good signs. Then there are the exceedingly bad signs.

DeWit beat out Steve Daniels, the pick of the fringiest of the party fringe.

Daniels teamed with failed 2020 Senate candidate Daniel “Demand Daniel” McCarthy to start the wacky Patriot Party. The group is best known for trying to recall conservative House Speaker Rusty Bowers and for the misfits who cruised Bowers’ neighborhood using a loudspeakers to brand him a pedophile. This, because Bowers refused to get behind efforts to overturn Arizona’s presidential election.

Good signs (and really bad ones) for change

But activists on Saturday passed up candidates from the party’s establishment wing. Instead, they elected DeWit, who was endorsed by a who’s who of election deniers, including Ward, Lake, failed secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, Sens. Wendy Rogers and Sonny Borrelli, Reps. Anthony Kern and Austin Smith, R-Turning Point USA. According to Lake, he also was Trump’s pick for the job.

DeWit – who ran Trump’s 2016 campaign in Arizona and played a key role in Trump’s 2020 national campaign – says many of the right things about moving on. About removing the stake so delightfully driven into the heart of the party by the state’s prime RINO hunters, Ward and Lake.

“We are going to unify and we’re going to get back to winning elections,” he told the 1,000 or so Republicans gathered at Saturday’s annual meeting.

But during his pre-vote speech, he brought Rogers and Borrelli – two of the many ultra-right legislators who continue to be obsessed by the 2020 and 2022 elections – onto the stage to stand beside him.

DeWit sees Democrats as 'the real enemy'

And as his first act, DeWit attended Lake’s rally on Sunday.

Was there ever a candidate less inclined to move on that Kari Lake?

“Actions speak louder than words,“ Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas Galvin told me. “DeWit has no desire to unite the party nor signal to crucial donors that the party is heading in a new direction. By standing side-by-side with grifters who monetized election fraud, he provides no reason to think he wants to save the party from its death spiral.“

DeWit privately reassures more conventional Republicans that he’s moved on from Trump but on Saturday he called Democrats “the real enemy”. While that makes the hearts of the MAGA faithful go pitty-pat, it strikes the wrong note with more moderate and independent voters who see Democrats not as the enemy but as fellow Americans who simply have a different vision for how to run the country.

The sort of candidates who moderates and GOP-leaning independents will hold their nose and vote for – if, that is, the only other choices are the choices put forth of late by the Republican base.

In fact, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema are depending on that, as is anyone who hopes to keep the Senate in Democratic hands.

Can DeWit unite 2 Republican factions?

As for Republicans from the wing of the party that long controlled this state? They’re not exactly delirious with excitement about Ward’s successor. But, at least, most are hoping the party has traded up.

Honestly, that wouldn’t take much.

“He’s an improvement,“ Republican consultant Tyler Montague told me. “If he takes the GOP forward on issues and stays out of the primaries, and most importantly, moves on from the election fraud mantra, he’ll have been successful.“

The challenge DeWit faces is daunting.

He has to figure out how to unite the MAGA faithful who have Trump’s face tattooed over their hearts – deeply embedded in permanent ink – with more conventional Republicans who are ready to move on from 2020.

The question is, which one is he really?

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

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: If Jeff DeWit is the next Kelli Ward, Arizona's GOP is doomed