Republican infighting in Arizona over charges of disloyalty to former President Donald Trump and who’s to blame for his loss to President Biden is threatening to cement the Democratic Party’s foothold in this former redoubt of red-blooded conservatism.
On Saturday, the Arizona Republican Party will vote to censure Gov. Doug Ducey. The motion was drafted by GOP activists who were angry at the Republican for certifying Biden’s 10,457-vote victory in the state and refusing to back the former president’s unfounded claims that the election was stolen. The state party is also planning censure votes to punish two prominent Arizona Republicans for endorsing Biden: former Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain.
These actions are emblematic of the growing intraparty rift Trump left in his wake (in Arizona and elsewhere), pitting a populist GOP base aligned with him against traditional conservatives, such as Ducey, who are more appealing to rank-and-file Republicans in the suburbs. This “meltdown,” as one GOP strategist in Arizona described matters, could boost Democrats in 2022 when they hope to capture the governor’s mansion and solidify their hold on the state’s two Senate seats.
“It’s a real shitshow,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican operative in Phoenix affiliated with Ducey. “The division is real.”
Kelli Ward, Arizona’s Republican chairwoman, is considered a driving force behind the effort to censure Ducey, Flake, and Cindy McCain. Ward is a diehard Trump supporter. She criticized the governor for rebuffing the former president’s post-election attempt to move Arizona’s 11 Electoral College votes into his column — and often sparred with John McCain over policy differences when he was alive. But Arizona GOP spokesman Zach Henry emphasized Ward has not taken a public position on the resolutions.
The resolutions are to be considered this weekend during a meeting of the 1,500-member state committee, an elected body of grassroots activists that is unusually large compared to other state Republican parties. Under Arizona GOP bylaws, any member of this committee can force a resolution vote, with party leaders virtually powerless to object. “I don’t know if they’re going to pass or not; we’ve taken no position,” Henry said.
“These are 1,500 people who ran for election to public office. They will be the ones to decide if the censures should pass,” he added.
Arizona was home to conservative icon Barry Goldwater, the Republican senator who sparked a movement that would later be known as the Reagan revolution. For decades, the state was reliably red, voting Democrat for president just once from 1952 to 2016 (in 1996, for Bill Clinton), while supporting just one Democrat for the Senate during the same period, Dennis DeConcini in 1976, 1982, and 1988. The GOP’s fortunes took a turn for the worse under Trump.
In 2018, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema captured the Senate seat relinquished by Flake. In a special Senate election two years later, Democrat Mark Kelly ousted Republican Martha McSally, whom Ducey appointed to fill the vacancy created by McCain’s death (Kelly must face the voters again in 2022, when the term McCain won in 2016 expires). And, of course, Biden defeated Trump. Republican insiders acknowledge the trend is ominous and worry GOP fratricide could exacerbate it.
“We’re going to do a lot of soul-searching,” said Bruce Ash, a former Republican National Committee member from Arizona.
Ducey cruised to reelection in 2018, a Democratic wave year, defeating his Democratic challenger by 14 percentage points. That makes him an attractive Senate recruit for the Republicans in 2022. In fact, the governor on Thursday tweeted a picture from his meeting with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Ducey, who is the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, the GOP governors’ campaign arm, met with McConnell while in Washington for Biden’s inauguration.
Last week, Ducey welcomed Biden to the White House in a complimentary Twitter post, pledging to work with his administration. Such conciliatory behavior can run afoul of grassroots Republicans. In Arizona, this crowd was already frustrated with Ducey, both for stiff-arming Trump in the weeks after the November election and for the restrictions on gatherings and commerce that he implemented over the past 10 months in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
But Republican operatives connected to Ducey are confident that dissatisfaction with him among state party activists has little bearing on his political standing with the broader electorate. Even censure by the Arizona GOP would not diminish Ducey’s appeal as a Senate candidate, his allies insist. Ducey will be termed out of the governor’s mansion two years from now.
“The state party apparatus, when it goes rogue, has to be managed and dealt with,” said Kirk Adams, Ducey’s former chief of staff. “But ultimately, the people that occupy state party headquarters, they make up a small percentage of Republican” primary voters.
Although a disaster at the top of the ticket, Republicans enjoyed a banner 2020 election down-ballot. They held their ground in the House and retained control of the legislature. In Maricopa County, the state’s biggest by population, Biden won. Yet, Republicans were elected and reelected in races for local office. That has left some Republicans bullish on the party’s immediate future, especially with a Democrat in the White House and a midterm election coming soon.
Additionally, noted Republican insiders, the Arizona Republican Party has a long history of infighting, one that predates Trump, and of attacking popular elected statewide Republicans for some alleged misdeed or another. That includes John McCain, who for years was at odds with the state party over, among other issues, immigration. The GOP managed to emerge from those family feuds on top in the next election, and the party can do so again.
Still, Republican pollster George Khalaf, the president of the Phoenix firm Data Orbital, said the Republican base has evolved in recent years — and grown. That is something GOP politicians in the state, Ducey among them, have to take into account.
“The Republican Party went from a place where party activists probably represented 15% at most of the primary electorate,” he said. “Today, that mentality represents if not a majority, a strong plurality, and they want their elected officials to fight for them. They feel like they have been ignored.”
