Republican primaries across Arizona on Tuesday will test whether the far-right cadre focused on election denial still can win among their base, despite major losses in the 2022 primaries.
The state has been gripped with fights over elections for years, with candidates like Donald Trump and Kari Lake refusing to concede their respective races. These general election losses in 2020 and 2022 ended decades-long Republican dominance, delivering the governor’s office and other top spots to Democrats.
The results could foretell whether Arizonans, particularly Arizona Republicans, are ready to move on from election denialism and the far-right flank that controls the state party. And that lesson could carry into November in the swing state, which Biden narrowly won in 2020 in an upset.
Lake, who lost the governor’s race in 2022, is now running for US Senate. She faces Mark Lamb, the sheriff of Pinal county, but she is expected to win the Republican contest on Tuesday. The winner will face the Democratic representative Ruben Gallego. The seat is open after senator Kyrsten Sinema left the Democratic party and decided not to run for re-election, making it a top race to watch nationally for control of the chamber.
Gallego’s run for Senate leaves a race for his House seat in a strong Democratic district, where the former state lawmaker Raquel Terán is facing the former Phoenix vice-mayor Yassamin Ansari.
Other prominent Republicans who embraced election lies and lost their 2022 races are back in the mix now, too.
Abe Hamadeh, who narrowly lost the attorney general election in 2022, is now in a crowded primary to fill the seat of Debbie Lesko, the Republican representative who will vacate congressional district 8.
Hamadeh has Trump and Lake’s endorsements in the crowded field, though Trump made the late decision to also endorse Blake Masters, the Peter Thiel acolyte who lost in the US Senate race in 2022. Trump called Hamadeh and Masters “two spectacular America First Candidates”.
“Blake Masters is a very successful businessman, and an incredibly strong supporter of our Movement to Make America Great Again – He is smart and tough! Likewise, Abe Hamadeh, a Veteran, former prosecutor, and fearless fighter for Election Integrity, has been with me all the way!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.
The primary field also includes Anthony Kern, senator and fake elector; Ben Toma, the speaker of the Arizona house; Trent Franks, who resigned from Congress after staffers claimed he asked them to serve as surrogates for him; and Pat Briody.
Mark Finchem, who lost his bid for secretary of state and still has not agreed he lost, is trying to return to the statehouse, running against a more moderate Republican, Ken Bennett, for a state senate seat.
Several Maricopa county offices with primary elections include people who either say the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen or will not say whether they believe the elections were valid.
Stephen Richer, the Maricopa county recorder who became a nationally known voice for defending elections and sued Lake for defamation over election falsehoods, faces primary challengers who have questioned election results. Justin Heap, state representative, will not say whether he believes the 2020 or 2022 elections were stolen, but has called Maricopa county elections a “laughingstock” and supported bills that stemmed from election conspiracies. Another challenger, Don Hiatt, has said the 2020 election was stolen and wants to curtail voting access.
The Maricopa county board of supervisors and the recorder, which both play roles overseeing elections, stood up to intense pressure campaigns from Trump and his allies in 2020 and have faced ongoing threats, some of which have been prosecuted and led to prison sentences. Errors like printing problems in the 2022 election have added fuel to rightwing conspiracies.
The county primaries could land election deniers or skeptics into roles overseeing elections. Two of the supervisors, Bill Gates and Clint Hickman, decided not to run for re-election, in part because of the threats and harassment. This assures that the board will not have the same makeup next year.
Lesko, the congresswoman who is endorsed by Trump and voted to overturn election results on 6 January, is vying for Hickman’s seat. She faces Bob Branch, a professor at the Christian college Grand Canyon University, who has spread false claims about elections, including the one where he lost a state superintendent race in 2018.
For Gates’s seat, Kate Brophy McGee, a Republican former state lawmaker who, at times, voted against her party in the legislature, faces Tabatha LaVoie, who says on her campaign website that she wanted to restore voter confidence because “Our County cannot continue to raise doubts about the integrity of our elections.”
The two other Republican supervisors face primary challengers who are farther right, especially on election issues.
Jack Sellers, currently the board chair, is facing a challenge from Mark Stewart, currently a council member in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler. Stewart won’t say whether he would have certified results in 2020 or 2022 and claims he will restore confidence in county elections.
Thomas Galvin, who was not on the board in 2020 but has defended county elections since taking office after beating election-denying candidates in 2022, will need to beat back a challenge from Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a a former state lawmaker and Lake-endorsed candidate who promised to “fight for election integrity” and “take back Maricopa County from the establishment”. Ugenti-Rita faced accusations of sexual harassment from a female lobbyist after Ugenti-Rita claimed she was harassed by a state lawmaker who was ousted from the chamber over a pattern of harassment.
In the politically fraught state, some other races could also have widespread impact.
David Schweikert, a longtime representative, has Republican challengers and a crowded Democratic primary in congressional district 1 because recent elections showed Schweikert to be vulnerable to a Democratic ouster.
On the right, Robert Backie and Kim George want to beat Schweikert, though he is expected to win the nomination. And on the left, contenders include Andrei Cherny, Marlene Galan-Woods, Andrew Horne, Kurt Kroemer, Conor O’Callaghan and Amish Shah.
Shawnna Bolick, a state senator who voted to repeal a territorial-era abortion ban and the wife of a state supreme court justice, will have to fend off a challenge from the right in what could be seen as a test for how Republican voters view abortion bans.
Another outspoken election denier, Wendy Rogers, is being challenged for her senate seat by David Cook, a relative moderate.
