PHOENIX — Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers may have become a darling of the media and the Trump resistance for his folksy comments and testimony before the Jan. 6 committee — but back home, he is feeling the heat.
Powerful Republican leaders and lawmakers, Arizona’s GOP chairman, and former President Donald Trump have all endorsed Bowers’s challenger, state Sen. David Farnsworth (R), a man who believes the devil stole the 2020 election from Trump, in the Aug. 2 primary contest ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Bowers and Farnsworth are the only Republican primary candidates running for the 10th District state Senate seat. There are no Democratic challengers.
ARIZONA HOUSE SPEAKER WOULD ‘NOT BREAK HIS OATH’ FOR TRUMP ELECTION CLAIMS
Several Arizona residents the Washington Examiner spoke to said they were disappointed by Bowers’s June testimony, believing he bowed to Democratic political pressure and sold them out.
“He knew the election was stolen, he knew there was fraud, but he blamed Trump because it was the easiest thing to do,” Scottsdale resident Shelly Agron told the Washington Examiner. “We haven’t forgotten what he said, and his words are going to come back to haunt him.”
Nina Clements, a California native who recently moved to the state, called Bowers a “turncoat” and someone who should be booted from office.
“He failed us,” she told the Washington Examiner.
Bowers, a lifelong conservative Republican, gave emotional testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee about the 2020 elections. He said under oath that Trump, attorney Rudy Giuliani, and Arizona GOP Rep. Andy Biggs pressured him to overturn the election results in Arizona illegally, something he refused to do.
“It is a tenant of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired … and so for me to do that because somebody just asked me to is foreign to my very being,” he said. “I will not do it.”
Bowers also walked committee members through a Trump telephone call he received on a Sunday after he returned from church. Trump laid out a proposal to have the state replace its electors for President Joe Biden with others favoring Trump, Bowers said.
“I said, ‘Look, you’re asking me to do something that is counter to my oath,'” he testified. Bowers then told committee members he insisted on seeing proof of the alleged voter fraud, something Trump and his allies were unable to produce. Bowers also recalled Giuliani telling him, “We’ve got lots of theories — we just don’t have the evidence.”
TRUMP ENDORSES GOP CHALLENGER TO ARIZONA’S RUSTY BOWERS AFTER JAN. 6 TESTIMONY
Within hours of his testimony, Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward endorsed Bowers’s opponent, Farnsworth. Typically, the head of Arizona’s Republican Party stays neutral in contested primaries, though that tradition was quickly broken after Bowers finished testifying. Ward went on to slam Bowers on social media and began referring to the 69-year-old as “Rusty Bowels.”
Since then, the Arizona GOP has only grown louder in its opposition.
“Trump and Arizona Republicans are trying to do everything they can to unseat the current speaker of the House Rusty Bowers,” Kristy Dohnel, director of communication for the Arizona Republican Party, told the Washington Examiner. She also pointed to Bowers’s failure to bring forward any substantial election reform bills as another reason to shift support.
Trump, who will be headlining a rally in Prescott Valley on Saturday for “the entire Arizona Trump Ticket,” has also been clear about his intentions to kick Bowers out of office.
“Bowers must be defeated, and the highly respected David Farnsworth is the man to do it,” the former president said in his endorsement. He also called Bowers a “puppet” of Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who refused to follow through with Trump’s plan to reject Arizona’s election results.
Biggs, who was implicated in Bowers’s testimony, also endorsed Farnsworth.
The Patriot Party of Arizona tried unsuccessfully to recall Bowers in 2021 but failed on a technicality.
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Bowers was honored with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award earlier this year.
“For his decision of conscience, Bowers endured persistent harassment and intimidation tactics from Trump supporters, and later survived an attempt to recall him from the legislature,” the award page reads. “In January 2022, Bowers again acted to protect the integrity of Arizona elections by stopping a Republican-sponsored bill that would have allowed the legislature to overturn the results of an election. He remains a target for pro-Trump partisans.”
