Maricopa fight highlights the bitter disagreements between the GOPe and the Trump wing
The battle in Maricopa County at this point is mostly among Republicans. It’s a familiar one that’s been waged for as long as I can remember noticing anything about politics on the right, although the terms to refer to each Republican wing keep changing, as do the details of what they support and what they oppose. When I was very young, the sides used to be called the Rockefeller Republicans and the Goldwater Republicans, for example.
Recall that Goldwater came from Arizona. And so did the 2008 candidate detested by the non-GOPe wing, John McCain.
So the bitterness between Republicans concerning the voting in Maricopa County is the latest iteration. Kari Lake has this to say:
“This botched election should not be certified, especially in Maricopa County, where the board of supervisors are well aware of the catastrophic issues caused by the maladministration of Supervisor Bill Gates and County Recorder Steven Richer, who started a dark money PAC with the sole purpose of going after me, my campaign, and our movement while they supervised the election (emphasis added),” Lake revealed. “Let me repeat that: They ran an election with my name on the ballot, and their number one political goal was to see to it that I was not elected. Can you say, ‘conflict of interest’?”
Both Gates and Richer are Republicans, but they are not keen on Lake and her so-called “election denial” and in fact Gates was in charge in 2020, a year about which she was criticizing the results. He’s been upset about the audit that was done concerning the voting that year; after all, it’s an implicit criticism of his leadership. Back in 2021 he had this to say about it:
“The 2020 election … was the best election we’ve ever run in Maricopa County,” said Bill Gates, vice chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Gates, a Republican, called criticism of the election results a “staggering refusal to follow the will of the voters.”
He said that in addition to the routine checks, the county supervisors authorized two audits that found no hacking or manipulation with the voting machines used in the election.
“It should have ended there,” Gates said.
So when Kari Lake ran on the idea that the 2020 election wasn’t on the up-and-up, she was attacking Bill Gates, who was still running the show. In this article from September of 2022, in the buildup to the midterms, we learn this:
“Unfortunately, all these election deniers were successful here in Arizona, in a swing state,” said Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which has faced vitriolic backlash for defending the 2020 election against Trump’s false claims of fraud. “So we’ll see if those folks are able to win in the general election. I think that will give us a feel on where this party is headed in the future.”
Gates was censured by Legislative District 3 Republicans last month for saying election-denying GOP candidates may have to lose for the party to find its way.
You can’t call him a disinterested party. And of course Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor who was declared the winner, is the opposite of a disinterested party and should have recused herself. I’d actually say the same for Gates.
NOTE: If there hadn’t been widespread malfunction of the voting machines in Maricopa on Election Day, I doubt we’d be talking about this now. And yet so far I haven’t seen any acknowledgement by Gates and/or Hobbs that the situation in Maricopa on Election Day was terrible and could not help but raise suspicions. As far as I can tell, they seem to be acting as though all the brouhaha is manufactured and they have nothing to explain and nothing of which to be ashamed. If anyone can find any acknowledgement by these players of the serious problems involved in the 2022 elections in Maricopa, please post a link in the comments.
The insistence by GOPe (not simply in AZ) that Arizona’s recent election was not in the slightest “problematic” is so absurd that no rational person should consider it worthy of consideration, but a recent piece by the increasingly loathsome National Review attacking B Masters (not nearly as charismatic as Kari, but intelligent and sensible nonetheless) illustrates the stupidity (also apparent in the majority of the comments posted at NRO) currently afflicting the Republican establishment, as well as proving the complete inability of powerful Republicans to respond to the concerns of ordinary voters, instead catering to wealthy donors and trying to curry favor with the MSM.
Never admit.
Never apologize.
Never forgive.
Never forget
Never learn.
That’s quite the OODA loop, ain’t it?
With apologies to Roxy Music, “Hate is the Drug”…
I think Kari Lake made an unforced error. Just after winning the primary, is was reported:
“A few days after her primary election win, she stood at at a CPAC summit in Dallas to celebrate her victory.
“We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine,” she proclaimed, to wild cheers of the ultra-MAGA crowd.
On the Friday before the general election, she sneered at “he party of McCain” during a campaign event, adding, “Boy, Arizona has delivered some losers, haven’t they?”
“We don’t have any McCain Republicans in here, do we?” she asked.
“Well, get the hell out!” Lake told them.”
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2022/11/13/today-make-break-kari-lake-do-hear-john-mccain-laughing/10691172002/
She got into a twitter spat with McCain’s daughter, and insults were traded.
John McCain was certainly a disappointment to conservatives, but when you’re trying to win a statewide race in the state that still holds him in high regard, you don’t tell them you don’t need their vote. As it is turning out, she did need them.
It’s one thing to insult the media. It’s also OK to insult lawyers and used car salesman. Fair game.
Another problem (if it was a problem). During an interview on election day, she and Harmeet Dhillon said they had sufficient poll watchers. But there is potentially a security hole in the Maricopa process. The ballots go to Runbeck Printing from polling places to have the envelopes scanned. They stay there until the counting center asks for them. As we’ve seen, that can be up to a week or more. What is the security there?
I think the unnecessary spat with the McCain family could easily have cost Lake 17,000 votes.
The situation with Maricopa Co. is really unbelievable. You might think that the officials would have taken care to handle the Box 3 drop boxes properly when the machines failed, or at least hide the mishandling well. Then they could have at least plausibly claimed integrity. But no, everyone knows that the whole process was a botch job or screw job. And still the whole mess motors along like some Stalinist nightmare.
Brian E, Thanks for that bit of info. I have no factual basis for saying this, but I suspect Cindy Hensley McCain has had a huge influence on her husband and AZ politics for a long time. I was unaware of her until John’s presidential run when a reporter asked him how many homes his family owned. McCain said (paraphrasing), “Gee I don’t know, 13 or 14.”
Anybody remember the concept of “the appearance of impropriety?” It used to be a fairly widespread understanding that it wasn’t just important not to do anything wrong, but not to APPEAR to be doing anything wrong. The “appearance of impropriety” therefore became of useful guardrail both to avoiding bad behavior and maintaining public trust.
That’s very clearly “no longer operable,” as they used to say.
Mike
Exactly Mike.
Anybody remember the concept of “the appearance of impropriety?”
I seem to recall it as a weasel term used by Democratic members of Congress contra Republican officials.
as well as proving the complete inability of powerful Republicans to respond to the concerns of ordinary voters,
I think the word you’re looking for is ‘unwillingness’. About 3/4 of the Senate Republican caucus voted to return the odious melting wax dummy to the floor leader’s position. They had the audacity to include outgoing senators in the balloting. He’s now plotting to saddle the incoming Republican caucuses with a grotesque continuing resolution. Always remember that ‘bipartisan’ means a conspiracy by insiders contra the public interest.
Brian E:
I agree that Lake never should have antagonized the McCain wing if she wanted to win in Arizona. However, I think that the truth is that her very essence, her basic message and her support of Trump, would have antagonized them greatly anyway. It reflects the much deeper rifts in the GOP, rifts that have cost them many elections and that I think will cost them many more.
no she antagonized that wing by existing, reminding them of the betrayal that they wrought on this country, two years ago,
Neo,
I’m not trying to be contrary, but your above comment sort of sounds like a lack of internal cooperation caused the GOP to lose something they didn’t want to lose. Don’t we have to admit that the GOP people running the Maricopa operation got exactly what they wanted? At a minimum they are utterly corrupt and dishonest.
Differences in ideology is one thing, but corrupt and dishonest is another. I don’t know the details but an old example was how the NY state GOP operated in the Sen. Al D’Amato era. Very corrupt, I’ve read.
The GOPe would do well to refamiliarize themselves with the reaction in Europe in the immediate aftermath of WWII, to its collaborators.
they don’t care how much damage they wreak on the country, as long as they feel good, d’mato was no cicero, but better than the hacks they’ve put up for 30 years
those were communists, geoffrey the radical party came back in power, because of their excesses, in 1947, they slipped into the socialists in the post soviet era, although they have a party of their own, represented by melanchon,
The NY state GOP at the time of D’Amato. I don’t know about D’Amato himself. Battles over qualifying signatures and candidate disqualification itself were common. Of course, those battles can have corruption on either side. Bogus signatures, or bogus disqualification of signatures.
No Republican, or for that matter any thinking person, should use the term “election denier” as if this is something new. Disputed election is the phrase I remember from the past. “Election denier” is a term crafted by the Dems. I don’t know what other people think when they hear “election denier”, but my mind throws up Holocaust denier. Most of the time I really believe that the Republicans are the stupid party and the Democrats are the evil party.
They not only steal the vote but then sanction you for calling it out
TommyJay:
I never meant to imply that people like Bill Gates of Arizona wanted Kari Lake to win. I am pretty sure he did not want it at all – and that’s why I included that quote in the body of the post: “Gates was censured by Legislative District 3 Republicans last month for saying election-denying GOP candidates may have to lose for the party to find its way.” I take that to mean that he flat out said he wanted Lake to lose.
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘unwillingness’.”
It’s going to be interesting to see which party better handles its current challenge. I think it might be the GOP, though it probably has a better chance of total fracture than the Democrats. That’s because as awful as a civil war can be, it eventually comes to an end.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are facing the rise of generations of politicians who are more like AOC than Nancy Pelosi or Bill Clinton. That’s not going to go away. Every Democrat coming up is like the ones voters rejected in favor of President Dementia Patient.
Mike
Brian E:
For all the talk about the significance insult to the McCain legacy and of McCain voters it must follow that McCain voters were running this operation you highlighted:
The ballots go to Runbeck Printing from polling places to have the envelopes scanned. They stay there until the counting center asks for them. As we’ve seen, that can be up to a week or more. What is the security there?
Or was that another corrupt establishment operation concerned with its own political survival?
The National Review piece by Jim Geraghty (another writer for whom I have lost all respect) was hilarious. He essentially said that the results in Maricopa County were clean because the Maricopa County officials said so (and 4 of the 5 were Republicans!). He doesn’t even acknowledge why some people may have legitimate questions or that there is a huge rift between the McCain establishment and the MAGA Republicans. Just another example of how far the National Review has fallen.
neo – If Kari Lake had tried to build a coalition of McCain supporters and Trump supporters, I think she would have succeeded and would have won comfortably. The woman has undeniable political skill. So, I disagree that her existence would have antagonized McCain people. She sealed her fate when she decided to run AGAINST what she called “McCain Republicans” in the state that elected McCain to the Senate six or so times.
You just can’t wield power with one half of one party.
(Aside – I’m old enough to remember when McCain was the candidate trying to shake up the GOPe in 2000 against Bush.)
“…her basic message and her support of Trump, would have antagonized them greatly anyway.” -neo
Kari Lake’s platform on her website is very conventional conservative– secure the border, lower taxes, election integrity with voter id/pre-printed ballots, parent first education, tackling the homeless problem with tough love, etc.
Are a majority of Arizonians fine with open borders? The GOPe did everything they could to slow-walk a border fence back in 2006 and it didn’t get better under Trump.
Lake is behind by 17,000 votes, the AG 500, the Supt. of Education by slightly more than that, and Blake Masters by 120,000. Maybe someone that knows Arizona can chime in, but I’ve read the state has two types of ballots state and federal. Those that don’t prove their citizenship are given federal ballots. If true, that would explain some of the differences between Masters and the others.
om, Runbeck provides printing services for several states, including Georgia and Texas.
It is only mail-in ballots, whether from the Post Office or dropped at polling centers on election day, are taken to Runbeck to have the envelopes scanned. They have ability to do the signature match there, but Maricopa choses to hand verify the signatures at their facilities.
It appears to be a flaw in their chain of custody.
Neo doesn’t think much of Gateway Pundit, but in this case it’s just reporting– his opinion that there is skullduggery is just opinion.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/11/behind-closed-doors-runbeck-election-services-maricopa-county-scanning-ballot-envelopes/
Brian E:
Her website is not the point. The point was Lake herself, whose rhetoric right from the start was strongly pro-Trump and very suspicious that fraud had occurred in the 2020 election. They were utterly against those stances.
One of the many problems with the MSM, is their atrocious coverage of Republican candidates (and to a lesser extent any candidate). They try and unfortunately succeed in creating a negative impression, a caricature of the candidate.
In Lake’s case, the only coverage I saw was her berating the news media and talking about declaring the flood of illegals an invasion.
That would appear to be the entirety of her campaign. Not very flattering stuff to anyone except very conservative conservatives.
The Arizona Republic, which is the state’s newspaper, consistently referred to Kari Lake with the prefix “election denier.” Granted, non of Lake’s supporters take the Repubic seriously. But there was also a strong tone of partisanship on some of the TV stations, and it continues. A story I watched a couple of days ago flat out said that any refusal to certify was nutty. I saw that sort of thing often. It has an impact.
And yes, Lake’s attack on the McCain Republicans had consequences. She was never going to have their love, but sticking her middle finger in their faces was foolish. It’s the only time I saw her put a foot wrong.
The Maricopa county officials think they did run a good election. Certainly it was better than 2020. The fact that Maricopa County is now a punch line escapes them. It may have been as honest as any election with mail-in ballots can be, but it was not a process that inspired confidence.
Tuesday night elections were held for Legislative District 10’s officers. I couldn’t vote since I’m not yet a precinct committeeman. But I heard one of the state’s two national committee members tell the crowd that one of the county supervisors might be looking for work soon. That is not an insignificant thing to say. A Maricopa supervisor represents more people than a U.S. congressman.
The McCain folks are not showing up at events like this. Rusty Bowers is still a state house member from LD10 and is still Speaker of the House, with a special session possible. He doesn’t dare show up. He wouldn’t be in danger, but he would not be popular, and he’s represented the area for decades.
I was asked if I wanted to be a state committeeman (they still have “man” in all the titles and the women officers use “committeeman” to refer to themselves without any irony). It’s not a unique honor, as there’s over a thousand. But I declined as I don’t know who all the players are, yet. I will attend the convention as an observer to learn.
And not all the news is bad. A few weeks ago I met the AZ state treasurer, who comfortably won reelection. She controls what state governments, and also county and local, can invest funds in. It’s a lot of money. And when she started pulling money out of Blackrock, and Disney, and some others, hoo boy did she get calls. But her response was, check back in a year. We’ll revisit it then.
Arizona is not the only state doing this. So are Texas, Florida and others.
I think that the thing that is so frustrating is that the cheating here, in Maricopa County, was so blatant. Republicans (GOPmaga and GOPe, I think) were completely sucked in and faked out. The Dems were all told to early or main in vote. They did. Then the machines were rigged to test clean Monday night, and be unable to scan or tally on Tuesday. Probably set back to spec Wednesday morning. How did they do that? I think by using the same back door that they used in 2020, getting approval with someone in SoS (and now Gov Elect) Katy Hobbs office) to allow computers with WiFi turned off in the BIOS, when they couldn’t find any computers that didn’t have WiFi hardware. Then use that back door to miscalibrate the scanning machines after they were tested Monday night. Why am I suspicious of that? Because there is a lot of evidence that it was done in 2020, including here in AZ.
Hobbs should have just kept her mouth shut, when asked about how she was going to beat Lake, without campaigning. Her response made much of AZ sure that she was up to her eyebrows in the scheme. And, of course, that she refused to recuse herself.
BrianE, Neo, and others remind me of a certain scene in the comedy “Animal House:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGwpNey_IL0
WHEN DO YOU GIVE UP ON CONSENTING TO YOUR OWN SELF-ABUSE?
WHEN DO YOU REBEL AGAINST YOU VOLUNTARY SERVITUDE (as De La Boettie asked)?
As Adam Smith goes, they’re a lot of ruin in a nation. Until you embrace different, and better, more radical actionable answers, the cycle of ruination through the drain will continue ceaselessly.
Cast off your CHAINS! Have the dignity to rebel!
Perhaps one tipping point is examined by J. B. Sturk at American Thinker.
He asks, “What if MAGA Shrugged?”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/12/what_if_maga_shrugged.html
But THIS presupposes that giving into evil in power will generate enough more dangerous evils to spread, that therefore the triumph of nihilism generates its own “final solution:” The destructive end of the USA.
The oft discussed here subtlety of knave versus fool dichotomy finds us facing a new, and parallel, strategic dilemma: Shrug versus fight.
Discuss, please.
James Woods declares, on Tucker, that “ I am not afraid of you” (Biden, DNC), “and I am coming for you.” He also invites us to join him in The Fight against the fascists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RsedoC_PN4
TJ,
What exactly are you referring to?