Category: Politics

To make it out of a Republican primary in Arizona, there’s one key litmus test: believing the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Election deniers who played prominent roles in efforts to overturn the 2020 results triumphed in statewide Republican primaries Tuesday: Rep. Andy Biggs for governor, state Rep. Alexander Kolodin for secretary of state, and state Senate President Warren Petersen for attorney general.

Biggs, a staunch Trump ally who helped try and overturn the election on Jan. 6, 2021, was later subpoenaed in an Arizona probe. Kolodin represented a slate of fake electors, leading to discipline from the Arizona state bar, and filed lawsuits to try to overturn both the 2020 and 2022 elections. Petersen launched a taxpayer-funded audit into Maricopa County’s election system that eventually led to a subpoena.

Their victories show GOP primary voters continue to prefer candidates who have pushed false narratives about elections or worked to overturn them. But that can prove toxic in November — and Democrats plan to make their rivals pay for those positions in the fall.

“It’s one of those things that just won’t go away,” said former Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.). “In the Republican Party in Arizona, in the primary, carrying the Trump line on virtually everything — and that includes election denialism — is still something that benefits you.”

But in the general election, “it’s a stone around your neck,” Salmon said. “Among independents and moderate Republicans who vote in the general election, election denialism is not an asset.”

Each of the triumphant election deniers Tuesday centered election integrity in their 2026 campaigns. Biggs has been a prominent supporter of the SAVE America Act, the stalled election bill that Trump has pushed repeatedly. Kolodin has advocated for ending Arizona’s permanent early voting list and for stringent ID requirements. And Petersen has pledged to expand the attorney general office’s election integrity unit in order to investigate election results.

Arizona was one of the most competitive — and most contested — states in the 2020 election. Fox News’ decision to declare then-candidate Joe Biden’s victory in the state on election night sent shockwaves through Trump’s orbit. It took then-Republican Gov. Doug Ducey several weeks to acknowledge Biden won.

The Grand Canyon State became ground zero for Trump’s effort to overturn the election. Trump and his allies pressured Arizona leaders, including then-House Speaker Rusty Bowers, to call the legislature back into session and recall the state’s slate of electors. A group of Republicans falsely posing as alternate electors were later charged with forgery, fraud and conspiracy, a case that is ongoing.

Even still, running as an election denier hasn’t been a successful strategy for the Arizona GOP once November rolls around. In 2022, Arizona Republicans nominated hardline election deniers up and down the ballot — Kari Lake for governor, Blake Masters for U.S. Senate, and Mark Finchem for secretary of state — and saw losses in each race, even as Republicans nationally enjoyed an otherwise strong year. And in 2024, Lake again lost, this time for U.S. Senate, even as Trump won the state by more than five percentage points.

“Biggs and Kolodin will be saddled with election denialism for the next three months,” said longtime Arizona GOP strategist Barrett Marson. “While Democrats would be wise to focus on affordability, certainly some of their talking points will focus on how these two are dangerous for democracy.”

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary Tuesday and will face Biggs in November, served as secretary of state during the 2020 election. She has portrayed this year’s gubernatorial election as a contrast between confidence and conspiracy in the state’s election system.

“Arizona is one of seven swing states that will decide the presidential election,” Hobbs said during an MS NOW appearance Tuesday evening. “If Andy Biggs is governor, Arizona is the first swing state with an election denier in charge, and the time to stop that is not 2028. It is right now.”

It’s almost impossible to be a Republican officeholder without agreeing with the president on the 2020 election and the need to dramatically change election law.

“As long as Donald Trump, who has the bully pulpit and is the party leader … is talking about election integrity, it will be a top issue in GOP primaries,” said one Arizona Republican strategist, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly.

“Election integrity measures are broadly popular, but the issue being front and center highlights divisions about Jan. 6th and wasn’t a winning general election issue in 2022,” the strategist continued. “Not sure that general election voters will care much about that in 2026 with such a focus on affordability issues. We are about to find out!”

Trump, for his part, has proven unwilling to move past the 2020 election even after winning a return to the White House in 2024. He has never acknowledged he lost that election, and in a primetime speech last Thursday, he announced his administration would declassify documents he alleged show Chinese interference in the 2020 race.

“Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost,” Trump said Thursday. “This cannot be allowed to continue.”

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Former Arizona Cardinals kicker Jay Feely cruised to victory in Arizona’s 1st District on Tuesday, one of the nation’s most competitive battlegrounds.

Feely, a close ally of President Donald Trump, leveraged Trump’s endorsement to topple former state Rep. Joseph Chaplik.

He’ll face a steep challenge defeating the Democratic nominee in November: The 1st District, which spans the affluent suburbs north of Phoenix, is one of House Democrats’ top targets after Trump won it by just three points in 2024. Feely is looking to keep the seat under GOP control amid a midterm year that presents major headwinds for the party.

During the primary, Chaplik, a member of the Arizona Freedom Caucus, attacked Feely for being insufficiently conservative on gun rights and for his humanitarian work in Haiti. But Feely, one of Trump’s occasional golf partners, leaned on his proximity to the president.

“Who can call [Trump] and who can get him to answer? That’s me,” Feely said in a debate. “He will take my call and he will listen. I have the ability to have the ear of the president.”

Feely, a former professional football player who counts Tom Brady among his college roommates, first announced his candidacy for GOP Rep. Andy Biggs’ seat in the 5th District. But after Trump backed former Pinal County sheriff Mark Lamb in that race, Feely switched to the 1st District, where he earned the president’s dual endorsement, alongside former state GOP chair Gina Swoboda.

“Both fierce advocates of Make America Great Again, Jay and Gina have been with us from the very beginning, and either one would be an incredible Representative,” Trump said in January on Truth Social.

In February, Swoboda dropped her candidacy for the 1st District and instead ran for secretary of state, leaving the path clear for Feely.

As a member of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s MAGA Majority fundraising program, Feely will likely be a top recipient of outside Republican spending in the months leading to November.

​Politics

A scandal-plagued House candidate powered by President Donald Trump’s endorsement won a messy primary Tuesday.

Mark Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff, overcame a late push from self-funding candidate Daniel Keenan in Arizona’s 5th District. Lamb will enter November as the heavy frontrunner in the deep-red Phoenix-area district to replace Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who is running for governor.

Keenan had poured nearly $2 million of his own cash into the campaign and attempted to make Lamb’s alleged sexual misconduct and abuse of power central to the race. Lamb has denied the allegations.

But Lamb — bolstered by Trump and Arizona-based Turning Point USA — managed to ward off the attacks.

The race’s outcome reveals the strength of Trump’s endorsement, and it’s the latest example of how willing GOP primary voters have been to accept scandal-ridden candidates favored by the president.

Lamb, who served as sheriff until 2024, earned national notoriety as a gun-toting critic of the Biden administration’s immigration and border policy. He secured Trump’s backing for the 5th District contest last year.

Then in May, the Arizona Republic launched a multi-part investigation alleging that Lamb engaged in a yearslong pattern of sending sexual images and instigating intimate encounters between him, his wife and others. One woman involved, Jillian Stannard, accused Lamb of encouraging her husband to have sex with other women, including Lamb’s wife. She also alleged that Lamb threatened her, saying there would be consequences, when Stannard raised concerns to religious leaders.

Screenshots the Republic obtained of messages with another woman, Tammy Peacock, suggest Lamb — then a sitting county sheriff — threatened to leverage Arizona’s revenge porn law against her.

In a statement last week, Lamb spokesperson Ed Morabito told POLITICO that “these allegations are false and come from long-discredited political opponents.”

Lamb did not lose any significant endorsements in the wake of the scandals — Trump reinforced his endorsement in mid-July — even as Keenan made the allegations central to his campaign.

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Trump-endorsed Rep. Andy Biggs has won the GOP primary to face Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in November, setting up a marquee governor’s race in one of America’s most competitive states.

Biggs, a former chair of the hardline House Freedom Caucus and a close ally of President Donald Trump, easily dealt with his only serious challenger, Rep. David Schweikert, on Tuesday. Before the primary results were official, he had already begun pivoting to the general election against Hobbs, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable Democratic governors this fall.

Republicans feel bullish about their odds of flipping the governorship, after Trump carried the state by five points in 2024. But even though Trump won last time, the state has gradually shifted to pure tossup territory over the past few years, electing Democrats to both Senate seats, as well as the attorney general and secretary of state’s offices.

Hobbs had already shifted her focus to Biggs as well. Her campaign has amassed a significant warchest for the race and has already started running ads. Biggs, given his lack of a significant primary challenge, has been able to hold onto more cash than his GOP rivals, but is still behind Hobbs.

The race will test whether Republicans, who are starting down a potentially bruising midterm cycle, can reclaim the top office of a state that has long been a place of success for the party.

During the Republican primary debate, Biggs spent more time talking about his working relationship with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly than he did flexing his endorsement from Trump or highlighting his House record, including his time atop the Freedom Caucus. Instead, he tried to refocus on his bipartisanship in Congress and his leadership in the state legislature.

“I know how to reach across the aisle,” Biggs said during the debate.

But he will still have to contend with many of his past stances, including his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

And Hobbs is already working to ensure voters know where Biggs stands on key issues as a longtime member of the House, including his anti-abortion positions and his role in 2020. Her campaign has repeatedly attacked him as “too extreme” for the state and has dubbed him “basement Biggs” for keeping a relatively low profile throughout the GOP primary.

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The race to fill Lindsey Graham’s seat has created a new test of President Donald Trump’s power. South Carolina Republicans aren’t sure Trump will pass.

Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed last week to fill the remainder of her late brother’s term, announced Monday she will seek a full term for her brother’s old seat. Her decision came after winning Trump’s backing, and his endorsement of the political newcomer had the potential to scare away challengers.

But other Republicans are still charging forward, seeing an opening in a race with a highly untested candidate. Their determination is a signal that challenging a Trump-backed candidate may no longer be the career-ender it once was within the party.

“Even folks that didn’t like Senator [Lindsey] Graham or didn’t vote for him in the primary were pretty happy about the appointment, as a tribute to Senator Graham,” said CJ Westfall, chair of the Dorchester County GOP. “But once we saw the president jump in and support her, 95 percent are saying, ‘What the hell are we doing here? We don’t know how she votes. We don’t know what she believes.’”

“People that were excited about the appointment are now skeptical of the endorsement,” Westfall said.

Rep. Russell Fry, one of Trump’s most loyal congressional allies, announced earlier Monday he was jumping in. He joins Rep. Ralph Norman, who declared his own candidacy over the weekend, along with self-funding businessman Mark Lynch, who lost to the former senator in the primary. A number of other Republicans are mulling runs as well, including former Gov. Mark Sanford and Lt. Gov Pam Evette, who lost her own bid for governor a few weeks ago in spite of Trump’s endorsement.

While Trump’s endorsees have largely won their primaries, Evette’s recent loss isn’t his only setback. His picks lost in the Iowa and Georgia gubernatorial races.

“I think people saw [Trump’s] endorsement of Pam Evette and her terrible performance and know this race could be up for grabs like the gubernatorial was,” said a Republican operative unaffiliated with race who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the landscape.

While Graham’s candidacy will test the power of Trump’s direct endorsement, there’s no question the MAGA movement is still the dominant force in South Carolina politics: All Republicans in the race are running as unapologetic supporters of the president, competing among themselves to prove who is the most authentic champion of Trump’s agenda — a dynamic that has defined GOP primaries across the country this year.

Norman told reporters on Monday that Trump’s endorsement “helps a great deal.” “That’s why I ask[ed] him for it,” he added. “I’d rather have it, but it’s up to the people.”

In Fry’s launch video, he presented himself as a Trump-aligned “MAGA warrior” — and included pictures of him grinning alongside the president.

In a statement, Fry campaign spokesperson Luke Byars noted Fry has “been honored to receive President Trump’s endorsement” in his previous elections.

“Our focus for the next three weeks remains ensuring South Carolina has a conservative fighter in the United States Senate who will advance the President’s agenda and deliver real results for South Carolina families,” Byars said.

Some Republicans said Graham’s lack of prior elected experience and the original expectation that she would only serve the remainder of her brother’s term have kept the field open.

“There is a desire to avoid yet another bruising Republican primary, right after we had a pretty contentious one for governor,” said Joel Sawyer, a longtime GOP strategist in South Carolina who’s not involved in the race. “But I don’t think that’s going to be the case.”

Trump’s endorsement of Graham gives her instant credibility despite her lack of electoral experience. But her campaign announcement on Monday was met with surprise and confusion by many across the state.

Most saw her appointment as a respectful gesture to the Graham family, and she was expected to be a caretaker who would hold the seat until the end of her brother’s term in January. Her interest in running for a full term even caught South Carolina party brass off-guard: Drew McKissick, chair of the South Carolina Republican Party, told POLITICO Friday he thought Graham told Gov. Henry McMaster she’d “accept the appointment to fill the rest of the term, not to be a candidate for it.”

A South Carolina GOP rule adopted earlier this year requires candidates for office to have voted in at least two of the past three statewide GOP primaries.According to local political outlet FITSNews, Graham voted in the 2024 GOP runoff but neither the 2022 nor 2024 GOP primaries. Whether Graham qualifies depends on whether, alongside her vote last month, her 2024 runoff vote counts as a primary vote under the new rule. The Dorchester County Republican Party announced it was formally requesting the state party’s rules committee review Graham’s eligibility.

McKissick, the state party chair, said Monday he hadn’t taken a look at the issue yet since the filing window doesn’t open until midday Tuesday, so no one had officially filed to run.

“As a result I haven’t seen information from any candidates yet,” he told POLITICO. “But suffice it to say that we will look at all of the various candidates’ information and official voting records from the state election commission when they do.”

A spokesperson for Graham’s campaign said she meets the state GOP’s primary voting requirement to file as a Senate candidate and is “qualified to run because she has real experience leading.”

“As to why she is running, it’s quite simple: she is a strong conservative who wants to build upon her brother’s legacy. There were never any conversations surrounding her appointment that were contingent upon serving only the remainder of Senator Lindsey Graham’s term,” Abby Zilch, a spokesperson for Graham’s campaign, said in a statement.

Trump’s endorsement power has been decisive across contested Republican primaries over the last several months, repeatedly propelling his favored candidate across the finish line. But his track record in South Carolina is murkier. After backing Evette early in the gubernatorial race only to see her struggle in the runoff, Trump offered a last-minute dual-endorsement to also back Attorney General Alan Wilson. Wilson ultimately beat Evette in the runoff by more than 30 points.

“I think it’s a nice sentiment,” said another GOP strategist of Trump’s endorsement granted anonymity to speak openly. “But at the end of the day she has no record, nor a right to the seat all because her brother held it. This is up to the people of South Carolina to decide.”

On Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would stay out of the August 11 special election. Thune, who was close friends with Lindsey Graham, called his sister a “strong candidate” but said “I’ll let voters in South Carolina decide it.”

Other senators are diving in. Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rick Scott (R-Florida), staunch allies of the president, announced their support for Norman over the weekend, publicly bucking Trump to back one of the House’s most conservative members. Both Lee and Scott specifically cited Norman’s support for the Save America Act, the election reform bill that has been a central focus for Trump in recent months. Norman also earned the nod of Turning Point Action.

Meanwhile, Norman — who passed on another term in the House to make an unsuccessful run for governor — has suggested Fry, his House colleague, could jeopardize Republicans’ House majority. If Fry wins the special election for Graham’s seat, the state would have to call a special election to fill his House seat, potentially leaving it empty for months.

“I respect Russell Fry and I have enjoyed serving with him in the House, but the reality is, his candidacy could leave his seat vacant until May 18th,” Norman wrote Monday.

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace announced Monday she would not enter the race.

The candidate filing window closes on July 28. Election Day is just two weeks later. The breakneck speed could play to Graham’s favor: She has the benefit of her brother’s campaign apparatus, which mobilized to win a primary outright last month while many of the state’s other contested races went to runoffs. And the memorial services for Lindsey Graham — scheduled for July 28 in Washington and July 29 in South Carolina — will shrink the calendar further.

“We say it’s a three-week campaign, but really it’s a two-week campaign after the funeral,” said Tyson Grinstead, an RNC committeeman and Richland County GOP chair. “I’m sure there’ll be ads and stuff, but it’s going to be hard for everybody to focus on campaign rallies and make a decision on this, in terms of voters, until after the funeral.”

If no candidate reaches 50% of the vote, a runoff election would be held in late August.

“We don’t always understand what’s going on in D.C.,” said Jeff Green, the GOP chair in Greenville County. “We try to give the president a lot of grace on these things. Would I have picked, you know, another Graham to replace Lindsey Graham? Probably not.”

“We don’t know her yet,” Green added. “But we’re open and trusting in what the president and his team are doing.”

Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.

​Politics

Firebrand Republican Rep. Nancy Mace announced Monday that she will not run for the South Carolina Senate seat held by the late Lindsey Graham.

“I’m not running for the U.S. Senate, not because I’m backing down from a fight, but because the one I’m already in matters right now,” she said in a video announcement.

Her decision comes after a fifth-place primary finish in her run for governor earlier this year and as the race to succeed Graham is already taking shape.

Mace began exploring the viability of a potential bid just hours after Graham’s death became public, two people familiar with her thinking told POLITICO at the time, but decided against a second statewide bid in as many months.

Her move effectively guarantees she will not be serving in elected office once her term ends early next year.

In the video, Mace said “the laws meant to protect me and other women failed us, and I won’t stop until that changes.”

“Serving South Carolina has been the honor of my life, and I will continue to voice our values everywhere I can; I’m even going to shit post from time to time, because someone has to call out the dumbasses,” she said.

Sen. Darline Graham, Lindsey Graham’s sister who was appointed to serve out the remainder of his term shortly after his death, announced Monday that she is running for a full term, and she has already secured President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

GOP Reps. Russell Fry and Ralph Norman have announced bids as well.

The filing window for the special primary election opens Tuesday and closes one week later. The election will be held Aug. 11, with a runoff for the top two candidates if no one wins 50 percent of the vote Aug. 25.

Whoever wins the special GOP primary will be the heavy favorite to secure a full term in November.

​Politics