A group of Republican Arizona state lawmakers is proposing to split Maricopa County into several pieces.
HB 2787 would severely decrease the size of Maricopa County, though it would retain most of Phoenix, and add three more counties — Hohokam, Mogollon, and O’odham — by the end of the year. Maricopa County is currently the fourth-most populous county in the country, with 4,485,414 people, according to the 2020 census.
The group of lawmakers backing the bill is led by state Rep. Jake Hoffman, a Republican who last year criticized the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors — which, at the time, refused to comply with subpoenas from the Arizona Senate’s partisan audit of the 2020 election — for what he said was its “blatant disregard for the Constitution and public mockery of the lawful oversight of elections by the Arizona legislature.”
Hoffman also made headlines in recent weeks after it was revealed that he was involved in creating an alternate slate of electors following the 2020 election to back former President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden won the state, but Trump and his allies challenged the results in Arizona and other states, claiming there was widespread fraud and irregularities.
Federal prosecutors have been reviewing the fake Electoral College certificates — which came from states including Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico — and the House committee investigating the Capitol riot has sent subpoenas out to some of the signers.
Laurie Roberts, a columnist for the Arizona Republic and azcentral, commented in a tweet about a map of the Maricopa split, showing three GOP-dominant counties and one blue county, that such a move is “monstrously expensive but hey, that’s what we get for snubbing Donald Trump in 2020.”
Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Fake Elector, proposes breaking Maricopa County into 4 counties – 3 R and 1 D. It’d be monstrously expensive but hey, that’s what we get for snubbing Donald Trump in 2020. Brought to you by the party of small government… https://t.co/bm83ylyhoF
— Laurie Roberts (@LaurieRoberts) February 9, 2022
Whether the bill lives or dies remains to be seen, but the 2020 election remains a front-and-center topic in Arizona politics.
Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, a Republican and Trump ally who is running for secretary of state, introduced a resolution Monday calling for the elections of Maricopa, Pima, and Yuma Counties to be “set aside” based on “clear and convincing” evidence that the elections in those counties were “irredeemably compromised.”
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, also a Republican, signaled that the measure is doomed from the start. “Mr. Finchem’s obviously unconstitutional and profoundly unwise proposal will receive all the consideration it deserves,” he said, according to reporting by ABC 15.
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Finchem, whose district includes parts of Pima and Pinal counties, is a candidate for Arizona secretary of state and has been endorsed by Trump, who has boosted assertions of there being widespread fraud in states including Arizona even as election officials and the courts have roundly rejected such claims.
Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, was the site of a controversial audit commissioned by the GOP-led Arizona Senate that affirmed Biden’s victory but led to a referral to the state’s attorney general to investigate “urgent issues.”
Last week, Bowers torpedoed a bill that would have overhauled elections in Arizona, which would, in part, give the Legislature the power to reject election results.
