In key district for Legislature, Board of Supervisors pick Shawnna Bolick to fill state Senate seat

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors have picked former lawmaker Shawnna Bolick as the newest Republican state senator for a north Phoenix district that will play a key role in next year's election.

In a special meeting Wednesday, the board's five members unanimously voted for Bolick among three nominees to replace former Legislative District 2 Republican state Sen. Steve Kaiser, who resigned last month.

"I very much look forward to getting to work for the people in Arizona as I demonstrated in my previous tenure in the House," Bolick wrote on social media after the vote. "I will always be one of the strongest advocates for freedom and liberty."

Supervisor Bill Gates, a Republican who represents part of the county that encompasses the district, said Bolick was the only nominee ready to "hit the ground running," and that he felt her political ideas, which include keeping government small and Maricopa County intact, mirrored his own.

He also said Bolick and the other two nominees told him during interviews that they agreed it was time to "move on" from past elections and conceded that working with election experts at the county was a good way to achieve reforms.

But Gates was among the supervisors who also criticized the system in which the legislative district's GOP officials vote to nominate three people to fill the vacancy, one of which much be chosen by the board.

"I wish that the process didn't play out the way that it does now because of the dysfunction going on," Gates said. The three nominees "are not representative of, in my opinion, the broad breadth of the Republican Party."

Bolick will serve out the rest of Kaiser's term in 2024.

Kaiser left halfway into his second term as a lawmaker, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. But his departure came after a frustrating session that saw the failure of two bills Kaiser hoped would ease Arizona's housing crisis.

Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the board's lone Democrat, said Kaiser likely "walked out with a bad taste in his mouth" after getting "a huge pushback on what he was attempting to do."

Bolick served two terms in the state House before deciding to run for secretary of state last year. She came in third in the Republican primary.

Bolick could face a tough time in next year's general election in Legislative District 2, which is considered a swing district. She leans further toward the party's far-right than Kaiser did and has sometimes emphasized election security based on conspiracy theories. She sponsored a failed bill that would have allowed the Legislature to overturn a presidential election by revoking certification of the results under certain conditions before inauguration.

She also touted her attendance at a hearing last year that put a spotlight on the makers of "2000 Mules," a roundly debunked election-conspiracy movie.

Bolick worked in Washington D.C. for former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, and has since worked in conservative think tanks including the Heritage Foundation and Goldwater Institute. She's married to state Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick and has two children.

The other nominees before the board were Josh Barnett, a business owner and former congressional candidate, and Paul Carver, who serves as chair of the Legislative District 2 Republicans and is a Deer Valley Unified School District board member. Barnett has filed a statement of interest for the district's senate seat in the 2024 primary election and said Wednesday he plans to run. Bolick has not yet filed.

The records of Barnett and Carver, like Bolick, include varying levels of election denialism. Barnett sued to nullify the results of the 2022 election. Carver is a former leader in the paramilitary movement the Union of Three Percenter American Patriots in Arizona who said last month that it's still unclear whether Biden won the 2020 election fairly.

District could help decide control of Legislature

Chuck Coughlin, a political consultant with a long record of working with Republicans, said Democrats will have a good chance of gaining the majority in the Legislature next year because of races in districts like Kaiser's, where he expects current Democratic Rep. Judy Schwiebert to win the Senate seat. Schwiebert announced plans to run for Kaiser's seat two days after he resigned.

"The (Republican) Party is making very difficult, politically limiting choices, particularly in a swing district," Coughlin said of GOP leaders' vote last month for the three right-wing nominees.

The three nominees, like the Republican leaders who selected them, simply don't represent the majority of voters in the district, Coughlin said. The district is one of five out of 30 legislative districts designed by the 2021 Independent Redistricting Committee to be "competitive," meaning it contains a roughly equal number of Republican and Democratic voters who sometimes vote for candidates of either party.

Republicans narrowly held onto one-vote majorities in both the state House and Senate last year but lost most of the state's top statewide races. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has vowed to raise $500,000 or more to help candidates win in 2024.

Reach the reporter at rstern@arizonarepublic.com or 480-276-3237. Follow him on Twitter @raystern.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Maricopa County Board of Supervisors appoint Shawnna Bolick to Senate