DOUBLE TAKE: All 4 Arizona Congressional Republicans Split With Trump On Covid Stimulus Checks, While Supporting His Veto Of Defense Measure

Arizona's Republican Congressional delegation made a rare split with President Donald Trump today. The foursome of Paul Gosar (CD4), Andy Biggs (CD5), David Schweikert (CD6) and Debbie Lesko (CD8) all opposed raising the Covid-19 Economic Stimulus payments from $600 to $2,000, which the House approved with 44 GOP votes after the President's surprising pre-Christmas announcement that he might veto the relief package and that the checks should be larger.

The House managed to get the 2/3 vote necessary to agree with the President, passing it this evening by a 275-134 margin. All of Arizona's five Democrats voted "aye", although two Democrats from elsewhere opposed it.

The measure faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where at least one Republican is expected to oppose an effort to pass it by unanimous consent tomorrow. That will put it into a lengthy process that will be difficult in the GOP-controlled body.

Arizona's 4 Republican House members were also in the minority this evening in opposing an override of the President's veto of the National Defense Authorization Act. The override passed by an overwhelmingly easy margin of 322-87, which included a clear majority of Republicans. 

The veto was based chiefly upon the President's anger that Congress did not include provisions limiting a shield protecting internet companies like Facebook (Section 230) and that it requires the Pentagon to rename military bases/facilities named for Civil War Confederate leaders.

In explaining his support of the veto, Arizona Rep. Biggs stated "it (the bill) serves foreign interests, not American interests."

Interestingly, Arizona Rep. Lesko voted FOR the NDAA less than three weeks ago. She has not yet made a public statement about the change of position. Arizona's Politics has requested an explanation and will update if warranted.

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BREAKING: Maricopa County Will Ask Court How To Comply With GOP Legislators' Election-Related Subpoenas

BREAKING: Maricopa County Will Ask Court How To Comply With GOP Legislators' Election-Related Subpoenas

UPDATE, 12/18, 1:10pm: The County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to file a legal action in Maricopa County Superior Court to determine what can and should be turned over to the State Senate in response to the election-related subpoenas. The vote came after approximately 7 1/4 hours of Executive Session deliberation time (Wednesday and today). (The Supervisors were not sequestered.)

UPDATE: Maricopa Supervisors Will Resume Considering Response To GOP Election Subpoenas Friday Morning (12/17/20, 10:00am)):

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will resume discussing their response to legislative election-related subpoenas Friday morning. The new meeting was posted Thursday morning after a 4 1/2 hour Executive Session on Wednesday failed to result in any agreed-upon action.

The special meeting will begin at 10am, and it is likely that the Republican-controlled Board will again quickly move into Executive Session. Any actions would be voted upon in public session, which will be live-streamed on their website.

We have now published a news analysis  about the existing election integrity-related laws in place which the County - and, the Legislature - have to abide by. However, it should be noted that one of the factors which could be complicating the Supervisors' decision-making process are the two legal cases brought by the AZGOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward. The AZGOP has appealed both of those cases.

Original article, 12/16/20, 10:00pm: "UPDATE: Maricopa Supervisors Meet For 4 1/2 Hours, Take No Action Regarding Election-Related Subpoenas"

UPDATE: After their 4 1/2 hour (approx) Executive Session, the @MaricopaCounty Bd of Supervisors took NO ACTION on responding to the subpoenas issued by State Sen. Pres. @FannKfann / Eddie Farnsworth re: collecting all mailed-in ballot images and forensic audit.

Taking no official action does not mean that the Superviors have chosen not to comply with the subpoenas. They apparently listened to the (GOP) legal counsel and discussed  the statutes already in place to protect the integrity of elections and their options, and there obviously was not yet agreement on how to respond. Chairman Clint Hickman announced: "There has been no action at this time. So, there is no vote at this moment."

Here are the audits the Supervisors were discussing.

No new Supervisors meeting has been noticed out as of early Thursday morning.

(This is a developing story. Please check back for additional details.)

AZ State Senate subpoena for Scanned Ballot Audit by arizonaspolitics on Scribd

AZ State Senate subpoena for Forensic Audit by arizonaspolitics on Scribd

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BREAKING, "MISSED IT BY *THAT* MUCH: New Arizona Senator Mark Kelly Raised $99.4M During Campaign

Arizona's newest Senator nearly broke the 9-figure mark in campaign fundraising. Your contribution almost might have put him over the hump, as Mark Kelly's campaign raised $99.4M as of Election Day.

That figure dwarfed the $73M raised by his Republican opponent, Martha McSally - and she had the benefit of being in the office.

Kelly also took office this week knowing that he has $1.2M already in the bank for his re-election campaign in just two years. (He is serving the last two years of the late Sen. John McCain's six year term.) Arizona's Politics wrote about that upcoming battle here.

3:30pm: BREAKING: McSally Spent $67.5 MILLION In Losing Effort, Has $476,000 Left In Account

In the most expensive campaign ever in Arizona's history, Martha McSally lost her bid to win her U.S. Senate seat while spending a total of $67,498,294.30. (That does not include the tens of millions spent by outside groups to benefit her bid.)

After paying off late-incurred bills, McSally has $476,000 left in her campaign account, which could be used for future campaigns or refunded - but may not be used for personal purposes.

McSally narrowly lost to Mark Kelly (D), who was sworn in this week to serve out the remaining two years of the late John McCain's Senate term. His post-general finance filing has not yet been made publicly available.

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COMMENTARY: "The President’s help in a primary will nearly guarantee a general election defeat"

Here is Arizona Republican political consultant Chuck Coughlin's entire analysis for Arizona's Politics about the possible impact of outgoing President Donald Trump's involvement in Arizona's politics.

The rest of our News Analysis about the 2022 U.S. Senate race can be found here.

Coughlin is the President and CEO of Highground Public Affairs Consultants.

The question placed to Coughlin was "Do you think Trump's attacks on Ducey - combined with both Trump's praise of Ward at the rally in October AND Ducey's rapid response - signal the beginnings of a primary campaign battle, with Trump trying to flex his muscles?"

I take the President’s displeasure with the Governor for what it is.. self-centered egotistical behavior totally expected an unsurprising.  There are several  questions Trump supporters should be asking themselves;

 

If the President turned that quickly on the Governor and Senator McSally, how long before he treats me just the same? Given the President’s track record and his relationship to the truth, Do I want to stake my entire political fortunes on this one guy who just lost Arizona?

 

For me, I have concluded, absent a disastrous first two years of a Biden administration, that the President’s help in a primary will nearly guarantee a general election defeat.  Trump is  not on the ballot in 22, so his supporters won’t be nearly as enthusiastic.  Trump’s ability to raise money will be severely handicapped by his loss of the White House.   His endorsement will likely mean I cannot wholly rely on him for fundraising and his support will jeopardize my own ability to raise funds independent of him.

 

And, let’s remember, Kelly has the ability to largely control the narrative of this race.  If he stakes out, as Sinema has done, a center left voting record and avoid votes where he is tagged as a progressive, he will be harder to defeat , without a Presidential race at the top of the ticket.  Also there will be an open Governor’s seat and one new Congressional district on that ballot as well further diluting attention from the Senate campaign.

 

I could see a scenario where there are several Republican candidates for Senate and the Trump endorsed candidate being out fundraised by a better center right candidate who didn’t want to struggle with the Trump shadow and sought to run a campaign that included Trump supporters and other center right Republicans. 

 

Look at that, the curtain hasn’t even come down on 20 yet and we have a double feature going in 22!  Should be fun.

BATTLE For #AZSenate 2022 Is Well Underway: Mark Kelly Files For Re-Election, Republicans Jockeying To Oppose Him (Arizona's Politics News Analysis)

(Arizona's Politics is an independent, non-partisan political news blog. When we engage in analysis or commentary, we attempt to label it as such. This article may be classified as "news analysis" because it attempts to "provid(e) interpretations that add to a reader's understanding of a subject.")

Arizona's Mark Kelly is being sworn in as the newest U.S. Senator Wednesday afternoon, marking the unofficial beginning of his re-election campaign in just two short years.

Kelly won the special election last month to fill the remainder of the 6-year term that the late John McCain was elected to in 2016. Last week, he filed his Statement of Candidacy (below) to run for the full term.

Meanwhile, while no statements have been made on the GOP side, a battle is shaping up which could pit Arizona's Governor against the Chairwoman of his state party. And, outgoing President Donald Trump may have just chosen sides between those two great friends of his. An Arizona Republican political consultant thinks Trump's endorsement would most help Kelly win re-election.

Kelly's battle to unseat the appointed Martha McSally was the most costly campaign in Arizona history and one of the most expensive in the nation this year. 

He headed into the final weeks of the campaign with $11M in his campaign account. (The new Statement of Candidacy will permit him to continue raising money.)

Meanwhile, the Republicans are already jockeying to take him on in the next election.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee ("NRSC") - which spent more than $8.7M attacking Kelly in the just ended campaign - has already begun recruiting Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to oppose Kelly in 2022.

Chris Hartline, the incoming Communications Director for the NRSC, tells Arizona's Politics that “Senator (Rick) Scott has a good working relationship with Governor Ducey. As NRSC Chairman, Senator Scott’s goal is to recruit good candidates around the country who can raise money and get their message out. Starting in January, he will by hyper-focused on that goal.” Ducey's 2nd - and final - term as Governor concludes in two years and he has long been thought to be eyeing the Senate seat.

In fact, Monday's very high profile Twitter war between Ducey and outgoing President Donald Trump may have been the first public battle for the GOP nomination for that Senate seat. As part of his continuing effort to undermine confidence in the country's election laws and administration, Trump blasted Ducey by name for certifying Arizona's election results. (He did not mention Arizona's Republican Attorney General - Mark Brnovich.) The President then fired a fusillade of derisive tweets at the governor he had recently called "a great Governor and a great friend of mine."

Ducey fired back with a series of Tweets of his own, explaining why Arizona's elections were fair and the results accurate.

At the same time, Ducey was also being hammered by the Chair of the Arizona Republican Party, Kelli Ward. Ward traveled to Washington, D.C. earlier that day, and there were unconfirmed rumors that she was at the White House at about the same time that Trump began pounding Ducey.

In that same rally where Trump proclaimed his great friendship with Ducey, he also had noted that Ward is "a friend that is so loyal and strong" who would have been a Senator. He called her a "warrior and a fighter."

(Ward has also been angrily blasting Ducey for certifying the elections, and choosing to focus on him but not Brnovich.)

The AZGOP spokesperson would not confirm to Arizona's Politics whether Ward was with the President at the White House, who else she might have met there, and whether she was there on AZGOP business. 

However, Ward has already made it clear that she would like to be in the U.S. Senate, having run for the Republican nomination twice, in both 2016 and 2018. (McCain beat her with 51% in a multi-candidate primary in the former, and McSally won 54% in a two-way primary in the latter.)

Ward also could be preparing to run for a U.S. House seat, as Arizona will be gaining a 10th Congressional seat next year. Her term as AZGOP Chair ends next month, and it would be unlikely to run for office as Chair of the party, so an announcement is likely sometime within the next several weeks.

Given the current battle for control of the Republican Party, it would appear that Ward and Ducey are destined to end up battling for the Republican nomination to face Mark Kelly. If so, the outgoing President may have just decided to try to play kingmaker and has chosen sides. 

Longtime Republican political consultant Chuck Coughlin does not think it wise for any GOP candidate to stake his or her political fortunes "on this one guy who just lost Arizona". 

"Absent a disastrous first two years of a Biden administration, that the President’s help in a primary will nearly guarantee a general election defeat," Coughlin says. He notes that Trump's enthusiastic supporters will be less likely to turn out for an election without the Trump name on the ballot, and that he will be less of a fundraising support once he is not residing in the White House.

Coughlin's entire astute analysis can be found in this sidebar article.

Kelly Stmt of Candidacy by arizonaspolitics on Scribd

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NEW: Republican Strategist: "A Majority Of Mormons Voted For Trump, But You Had a 10% Point Defection To Biden"

Longtime Republican strategist Tyler Montague thinks that the Arizona Republican Party's election contest filed last night based largely on supposed anomalies in the heavily Mormon portion of the East Valley and Queen Creek is "bull crap".

As reported earlier, the Complaint - filed as a proposed Complaint in order to permit AZ GOP Chair Kelli Ward's attorneys to begin discovery before the Contest can be filed following Monday's statewide

(photo from KJZZ/Will Stone)

canvass (aka "certification") - alleges that "the results in CD5/Queen Creek were strongly inconsistent with voter registration data (party affiliation) and with historical voting data (voting in previous elections including the 2016 Presidential election)."

Garrett Archer, a data analyst for ABC 15 who was formerly with the Secretary of State's Office, noted last week that one of the Queen Creek precincts showed an 8.9% point swing away from Trump this year. CD5 - which contains that portion of Queen Creek, as well as major parts of Mesa and Gilbert - also is cited as being an anomaly.

The precinct in Arizona (with over 1k voters) with the biggest swing away from @realdonaldTrump is in the GOP suburb of Queen Creek.
Trump 2016: 67.4%
Trump 2020: 58.5%
Swing: -8.9 pic.twitter.com/lSGKCX29hI

— The AZ - abc15 - Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 19, 2020

Archer's tweet last week caught the attention of many Republicans, who have used it to bolster their (inconsistent, and evidence-less) claims of fraud. 

Ward herself cited it as "(a)nother reason we need PRECINCT LEVEL audits in Maricopa County." (This makes little sense because voters from that precinct cast Election Day ballots at any of a number of Vote Centers in the area and around the county.) State Rep. Warren Petersen (R-LD12) then said that "This is my district and I can't see how this could possibly happen."

However, Montague cited three main reasons that Donald Trump received fewer votes than he did in 2016: Mormons, growth in the area from out of state, and people who were upset at Trump's posthumous treatment of longtime Arizona Senator John McCain. 

"A majority of Mormons voted for Trump. But, you had a 10% point defection," Montague asserts. He says that many East Valley Mormons (including himself) voted for Evan McMullin four years ago, and that "Biden picked up those third party defections this year."

Montague says the state party has "been putting out all sorts of bull crap.... It's embarrassing as a Republican to see this. Let's go win it by connecting with people and talking about good policies."

The hearing on Ward's request to permit discovery is at 10:30a.m. on Monday. At 11:00a.m., Arizona's results are going to be canvassed (certified). Immediately after the canvass, anyone has five days to file a Complaint contesting the election for grounds specified in Arizona law.

(Tonight, at 6pm, tune into ABC15 to watch friends @TomRyanLaw and @ThePolitiKat discuss the new lawsuit.)

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LIVE: Trump Campaign's Arizona Court Challenge to Maricopa County Voting

We are live-tweeting today's evidentiary hearing and oral argument in the Trump campaign's court challenge to Arizona's voting. Click on the below tweet to follow the latest:

UPDATES on Trump campaign's Arizona election irregularities lawsuit:

— "AZ Law" (@arizonaslaw) November 12, 2020

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BREAKING AWAY: Snell & Wilmer Attorneys Dump Trump's Election Irregularities Case

As the Trump campaign's Arizona election irregularities case goes to trial tomorrow morning, the plaintiffs will be without two of the high profile attorneys who helped begin the case on Saturday.

Two of Snell & Wilmer's partners - Eric Spencer and Brett Johnson - had helped Donald J. Trump for President and the Republican National Committee successfully intervene in last week's so-called Sharpiegate case. When the plaintiffs in that case - represented by the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation - dismissed the suit on Saturday, Snell & Wilmer and Statecraft Law immediately filed a new case on behalf of the Trump campaign, the RNC and the Arizona Republican Party. 

The case was filed only a few hours after most news organizations projected that Joe Biden had defeated the President. Less than 21 hours later and without any public developments, Spencer and Johnson filed a little-noticed withdrawal.

The attorneys not only withdrew, but they attempted to make it clear that they had not been representing either the Trump campaign or the AZGOP. (They did not file an after-the-fact withdrawal in the previous case, which makes it unclear if they had represented the President in that case.) Their withdrawal was only from representing the RNC.

Phoenix-based Snell & Wilmer is on the cusp of being one of the 100 largest law firms in the nation (measured by the number of attorneys). Spencer was Arizona's State Election Director under former Secretary of State Michele Reagan, and Johnson is one of the best-known election law attorneys in the state and has represented Governor Doug Ducey in a number of recent Covid-related legal actions.

Their withdrawal came just before the New York Times published an article reporting on the "Growing Discomfort at Law Firms Representing Trump in Election Lawsuits". That article lays out some of the pressures from other clients for the large firms as well as internal discussions about representing the Trump campaign.

"Some senior lawyers at Jones Day, one of the country's largest law firms, are worried that it is advancing arguments that lack evidence and may be helping Mr. Trump and his allies undermine the integrity of American elections," read one portion.

In Arizona's case, the Trump campaign and the Republicans are alleging that Maricopa County poll workers disenfranchised many Republican voters and that that may have cost the President "up to thousands of votes" for the President. (It turned out to be a maximum of 180 votes.)

Although Spencer and Johnson are closely associated with the Republican party, Snell & Wilmer attorneys were much bigger financial supporters of the Biden campaign than the Trump reelection effort. Federal Election Commission filings show that ten attorneys contributed $1,000 or more to the challenger while only one attorney gave $1,000 to the President. (It was neither Spencer nor Johnson.)

Arizona's Law requested comment from several people at Snell & Wilmer and will update if responses warrant.

The Trump and Republican case goes before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Daniel Kiley on Thursday. Arizona's Law and Arizona's Politics will be there to cover it.

Trump Lawsuit - Notice of Clarification and Withdrawal by arizonaspolitics on Scribd

 

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