In the MAGA Crosshairs: Arizona, Pt 2

Part 2: Three great AZ Democrats and 3 horrible Republicans

Arizona seems to be Ground Zero this year for rabid election-deniers, with Trump-endorsed vote fraudsters dominating the races up and down the ballot.  They must be stopped.

Winning these races – Governor, Secretary of State and Attorney General – can provide an Arizona firewall for 2024.

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AZ SECRETARY OF STATE

The secretary of State in Arizona has significant power over the election.

The Arizona primary was held on August 2, 2022, very late in the process.  There was a tight race in the Democratic primary, forcing the winner, Adrian Fonte, to focus on his Democratic primary opponent until just recently.

Meet the rabid Republican Election Denier: Mark Finchem

The Republican candidate, Mark Finchem is particularly dangerous.  As a State Legislator, he introduced resolutions to decertify the 2020 election results in three key Counties.  He’s a member of Trump-backed America First Secretary of State Coalition, which promotes the candidacy of election deniers and various voter suppression measures.  He was a vocal supporter of the Cyber Ninja audit.

⭐️  Mark Finchem has the power and the motivation to potentially steal the election in Arizona.🌟

Meet the Excellent Democrat: Adrian Fonte

Adrian Fonte prevailed in a close primary against a worthy opponent.

Fonte is especially qualified and battle-tested: Since 2016 he has been the Registrar for Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest by far. His responsibilities included election oversight in the County that contains roughly 60% of Arizona’s voters.  He is a former Marine, a former Prosecutor and worked in the Arizona Attorney General’s office.  He was the first Latino to ever hold a County-wide office in Maricopa County.

Adrian Fonte is an impressive candidate, who had to contend with a late primary date, leaving him with a short window to introduce himself to general election voters.

Link to Adrian Fonte’s website for more information.

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AZ ATTORNEY GENERAL

The current AG, Republican Mark Brnovich, is termed out, so this is an open seat.

Meet the rabid Republican Election Denier: Abraham Hamadeh

He is – like the other candidates the Republicans are running in Arizona – an extremist.  He is firmly in the election conspiracy camp, has stated that he would not have certified the 2020 vote, and vowed to  use his office to protect “election integrity.”  We all know what that means: curbing voting rights and exerting more powers over elections.

Ironically, when he was 16, on an on-line message board, Hamadeh admitted to altering his mother’s absentee ballot.  On that same board, he engaged in anti-Semitic, sexist and racists rants.  (He seems nice.)   Now 31 years old, and never having held office, he wants to bring that same bigotry to the office of State Attorney General, and it’s clear that electoral issues are the centerpiece of Hamadeh’s campaign.

By temperament, he is a Trump-ist in the extreme, spewing out invective regarding his opponent, Kristin Mayes. Here is a link to an article from an Arizona on-line publication discussing his unfitness for office.

Meet the Excellent Democrat: Kristin Mayes

The Democrat, Kristin Mayes, is currently a law professor at ASU focusing on energy issues.  She was formerly the Arizona Corporation Commissioner.  As Corporation Commissioner, she built a reputation as a fierce consumer advocate, and co-wrote Arizona’s first renewable energy standard.

She was also a former journalist.

Link to Kristin Mayes’ website for more information.

The dreadful Republican candidate Hamadeh is using Kristin Mayes’ journalist background to attack her as a biased member of the liberal press.  Painting Mayes as a radical will be a tough sell:  she was a moderate Republican before switching parties.

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AZ GOVERNOR

Meet the rabid Republican Election Denier: Kari Lake

Arizona Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is an aggressively dishonest promoter of election lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.  A former television journalist and Obama voter, she has mutated into a MAGA true believer, with “God, Guns & Glory” as her unofficial campaign slogan.  She has repeatedly insisted that the 2020 election was “corrupt” and “stolen,” and characterized her primary opponent’s refusal to say the election was stolen as “disqualifying” and “sickening.”  She has never held public office.

Here’s a deeper dive into Kari Lake’s character and transition to MAGA extremist.

Meet the Excellent Democrat: Katie Hobbs

Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs is the current Secretary of State for Arizona and calmly and effectively weathered the repeated attacks on the integrity of the election by MAGA-ites and the Cyber Ninjas. Prior to that, she served for eight years on the State Legislature. She is also a former social worker and helped run a domestic violence shelter.

Link to Katie Hobbs’ website for more information.

We simply cannot let them win in November.

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For more details about Arizona, I’ll include this link again.  How the hard-right turn in the Arizona GOP is an anti-democracy experiment.

*The thermometer was started for the 3 critical executive offices in AZ:  Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General.  MazeDancer talked me into adding Jevin Hodge in AZ-01,  a Biden +1.5 district where Hodge is currently down by 1.

Tomorrow, we will introduce an Arizona-based program that can really make a difference.