Donald Trump-endorsed “America First” candidates won sweeping victories in battleground state Arizona’s contentious Republican primary on Tuesday.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who defended the 2020 election and 2022 election results and had received campaign support from leftist donors, was defeated by state Rep. Justin Heap.
Despite claiming to be a “proud Republican,” Richer supported Joe Biden for president, and he allegedly operated a political-action committee to defeat former GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and other “MAGA” supporters during the 2022 race.
Richer also rejected demands to purge illegal immigrants from the county’s voter rolls after requests by America First Legal, and he was reportedly linked to a county election worker who was caught stealing the security keys for the county’s voter tabulation machines in June.
Most recently, he was forced to awkwardly account for the fact that a CrowdStrike server crash had taken down some of the county’s election machines, even though they were not supposed to be connected to outside internet that would make them susceptible to hacking.
BREAKING: Reports are coming from Maricopa County, Arizona that Dominion voting machines are malfunctioning county-wide as a result of the CrowdStrike outage. Officials have long claimed that the machines are NEVER connected to the internet… you can laugh at those claims now… pic.twitter.com/t5A6SIImKY
— George (@BehizyTweets) July 19, 2024
Heap defeated Richer 42.4% to his 35.9%, and a third candidate took 21.8% of the vote.
“Elections have winners and, sadly, losers. And in this one, it looks like I’m going to end up on the losing side of the column,” Richer wrote in an X post.
He will continue to preside over elections in Maricopa County until January 2025.
Hey Maricopa County, this Tuesday, don't forget to REMOVE STEPHEN RICHER and vote @azjustinheap. https://t.co/TNIUMU2rS9 pic.twitter.com/GWILIZpLer
— Shrapnel Control Now! (@unashamedusa) July 29, 2024
Lake, the ex-television news host who lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs in the highly dubious 2022 gubernatorial race, won her primary for the Senate nomination against Sheriff Mark Lamb.
In 2022, Lake was a strong advocate for election integrity, mounting legal challenges to combat alleged voter fraud by Hobbs.
She was endorsed by Trump, despite being outraised raising only a fraction of the cash that her primary rival was able to accumulate.
Thank you for putting your faith in me, Arizona.
I won't let you down.
Together, we're going to save this state.
Together, we're going to #MakeArizonaGrandAgain. pic.twitter.com/eW0Q9TTFVV
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) July 31, 2024
Trump and Lake both endorsed Abe Hamadeh—the 2022 candidate for attorney general, whose race against Democrat Kris Mayes came down to just 280 votes, again under somewhat suspicious circumstances.
Hamadeh defeated five other competitors in a high-profile primary to secure the Republican nomination for Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, garnering 29.8% of the vote.
Former senatorial candidate Blake Masters finished second in the race.
The results show a pattern of support for MAGA and America First policies in Arizona—a state whose Republican politics have long been dominated by RINO “mavericks” such as the late Sen. John McCain, who maintained a notoriously contentious relationship with Trump.
However, the party will continue to face an uphill battle going into the general election with George Soros-backed Democrats holding the top executive offices.
The primary nonetheless stood as a victory for grassroots organizations such as Phoenix-based Turning Point Action, which have turned into full-time ballot-chasing machines.
The Charlie Kirk-fronted group has been registering Republican voters and encouraging early voting in a push to flip the state for Trump in November.
In April, Mayes indicted the organization’s chief operating officer, Tyler Bowyer, as one of 18 “fake electors” in a chilling lawfare attack over efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.
Despite the setback, Bowyer touted Turning Point’s endorsement of the winning candidates in the state’s most closely watched races.
“The GOP is on pace to obliterate Democrats in turnout by not only a double-digit number, but almost 20%,” he wrote on X, applauding his organization’s efforts. “Bad sign for Democrat prospects in AZ in November!”
The GOP is on pace to obliterate Democrats in turnout by not only a double digit number, but almost 20%
Bad sign for Democrat prospects in AZ in November! pic.twitter.com/4EKmlm3xPj
— Tyler Bowyer (@tylerbowyer) July 31, 2024
