The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has selected former Rep. Shauna Bolick as the newest Republican state senator for the Northern Phoenix District, who will play a key role in next year’s election.
At a special meeting Wednesday, five members of the board unanimously voted for Bolick among the three candidates to replace former legislative second state Senator Steve Kaiser, who resigned last month.
“I am very excited to serve the people of Arizona, as I have shown during my previous years in the House,” Bolick wrote on social media after the vote. “I will always remain one of the strongest defenders of liberty and liberty.”
Republican superintendent Bill Gates, who represents parts of the county that includes the school district, said Mr. Bolick was the only candidate ready to “get serious right away” and felt that her political ideals, including keeping government small and keeping Maricopa County intact, were similar to his own.
He also said Mr. Bolick and two other candidates said in interviews that they agreed it was time to “move on” from past elections and acknowledged that working with county election experts was a good way to achieve reform.
But Gates was also one of the overseers who criticized the system in which Republican officials in congressional districts voted to nominate three people to fill vacancies, one of whom was nearly selected by the board.
“I wish the process hadn’t played out the way it does now because of the ongoing dysfunction,” Gates said. The three candidates “do not, in my opinion, represent the broad partisanship of the Republican Party.”
Borik will complete the remainder of Kaiser’s term in 2024.
Kaiser resigned midway through his second term as MP, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. But his resignation comes after a frustrating Congress that defeated two bills Kaiser hoped would ease Arizona’s housing crisis.
Director Steve Gallardo, the only Democrat on the board, said Mr. Kaiser “probably walked out with a bad aftertaste” after “huge backlash against what he was trying to do.”
Borik decided to run for secretary of state last year after serving two terms in the state House of Representatives. She finished third in the Republican primary.
Bolick could struggle in next year’s general election in the hotly contested second legislative district. She was more far-right in her party than Mr. Kaiser, and at times emphasized election security on the basis of conspiracy theories. Before her inauguration, she proposed a failed bill that would allow Congress to overturn a presidential election by decertifying election results under certain conditions.
She also publicized her attendance at last year’s public hearings that spotlighted the makers of “2000 Mules,” a movie that thoroughly exposed election conspiracies.
Bolick has worked in Washington, D.C., for former Senator Rick Santorum (R, Pennsylvania) and later at conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Goldwater Institute. She is married to state Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, with whom she has two children.
Other candidates before the board were business owner and former congressional candidate Josh Barnett and Paul Carver, Republican chairman of Legislative District 2 and director of the Deer Valley Unified School District. Barnett said he plans to submit a letter of interest for the district’s Senate seat in the 2024 primary and plans to run Wednesday. Borik has not yet applied.
Barnett and Carver’s records, like Bolick’s, contain varying levels of election denial. Barnett filed a lawsuit seeking to have the 2022 election results nullified. Carver, a former leader of the Three Percent American Patriots Coalition in Arizona, said last month that it was still unclear whether Biden won the 2020 election fairly.
Districts can help determine parliamentary control
Chuck Coughlin, a political consultant with a long history of working with Republicans, said there’s a good chance Democrats will win a majority in Congress next year because of campaigns in places like the Kaiser, where he expects current Democratic Rep. Judy Schwievert to win a seat in the Senate. Schwievert announced plans to run for Kaiser’s seat two days after his resignation.
“(The Republicans) are making very difficult and politically constraining choices, especially in hotspots,” Coughlin said of Republican leadership’s vote last month for three right-wing candidates.
Coughlin said the three candidates, like the Republican leaders who elected them, simply do not represent the majority of voters in their constituencies. The district is one of five of the 30 legislative districts that the 2021 Independent Electoral Commission has designed to be “competitive,” which means it contains roughly equal numbers of Republican and Democratic voters, possibly voting for candidates of either party.
Republicans held a narrow one-vote majority in both the state House and Senate last year, but lost most of the top statewide elections. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has vowed to raise more than $500,000 for her candidate to win in 2024.
Here’s where to contact reporters:rstern@arizonarepublic.com or 480-276-3237. follow him on twitter@raystern.
Judy Schweebert says:My colleagues are making a breathtaking attack on your voting rights.please help stop them
