Some Arizona Republicans embrace election conspiracies as they bow to Trump
CNN
Republican leaders nationally hope to move on from re-litigating the 2020 election as they set their sights on winning back the House and Senate in next year's midterms, but that may be a difficult shift to make in Arizona.
GOP headliners running for some of the state's top jobs are making former President Donald Trump's baseless claims about election fraud central to their campaigns as they inject conspiracy theories into the debate.
The most prominent Republican vying to take on Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, is facing mounting pressure from conservatives to use the law enforcement tools of his office to produce criminal charges out of Trump's election claims -- a tall task given that the evidence of widespread voter fraud has proven non-existent. Other candidates like Kari Lake, a former Phoenix-area news anchor endorsed by Trump for governor, and Mark Finchem, a four-term state representative who's running for secretary of state, are fully leaning into Trump's lies. Ron Watkins, the latest entrant to Arizona's 1st Congressional District race, is getting in on it too.