(AP photos)
PHOENIX – The Arizona Republican Party voted Saturday to disapprove some of its most successful figures, Arizona governor Doug Ducey, Cindy McCain – the widow of Senator John McCain – and former Senator Jeff Flake.
The party also re-elected Kelli Ward as the party’s chairman, a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump who was a promoter of electoral fraud theories and filed several lawsuits that judges threw out for lack of evidence.
Ducey, who was elected governor in 2014 and won reelection in 2018, was targeted by his restrictions on individuals and businesses in an effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus. While not stated, Ducey also had a notable break with Trump when he confirmed Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
“These resolutions have no consequence and the people behind them have lost the little moral authority they once had,” said Sara Mueller, Ducey’s political director.
While McCain didn’t change her party’s affiliation, she backed Biden in last year’s election after Trump verbally assaulted her husband for years.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump said of John McCain: “He is not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was taken prisoner. I like people who have not been arrested. “
McCain was shot over North Vietnam in 1967 and was imprisoned, beaten, and held for over five years.
Cindy McCain appeared in a political ad for the Democratic president, saying Biden is what the country needed.
“Now more than ever we need a president who puts service before himself, a president who leads with courage and compassion, not ego,” McCain said in the ad.
John McCain, who was in office for more than three decades until his death in 2018, was also censored by the Republican Party in 2014 for what they saw as insufficiently conservative voting.
“Perhaps (Ward) should be reminded that my husband has never lost an election in Arizona since his first victory in 1982,” McCain said in a statement before the vote.
The late senator had at times strained relations with the Republican Party due to his willingness to deviate from the party on certain issues, but he was consistently elected by wide margins.
Flake, meanwhile, was openly critical of Trump for not adhering to conservative values and decided not to run for re-election in 2018, and joined McCain in endorsing Biden as president in last year’s election.
“If approving the president’s behavior is required to remain in the party’s good graces, then I’m fine with being informed,” Flake wrote on Twitter before the vote.
The Arizona Republican Party is now reflecting on its future after losing the presidential race, the second time the state turned blue for a president in more than five decades, and a second seat in the United States Senate in four years.
Ward, a physician and former state legislator who previously lost two Republican primaries to the United States Senate, including one time to John McCain, said the way forward is to keep Trump’s 74 million voters engaged.
She acknowledged “disappointment at the top of the ticket,” but pointed to the GOP’s success along the polls and said the party defied expectations in local races.
Ward narrowly defeated Sergio Arrellano, a businessman concerned that the party was shrinking its message to help the party appeal to the state’s Latino voters.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.