‘Welcome to fascism’: Senior Republican official in Arizona warns of Trump attempts to steal future elections

A Republican whose career in the Arizona state legislature will end after he defied Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election agrees that the efforts of Maga Republicans to seize control of voting systems and the power to declare election results invalid are “fascism”.

Rusty Bowers made the characterisation while describing a Republican-led piece of legislation that if passed would have granted politicians in Arizona’s capital the ability to override the will of voters and engineer a new election. In one of his last acts as speaker of Arizona’s state House, Mr Bowers doomed the bill by requiring all 12 committees in the chamber to review the bill before action is taken.

“The legislature, after the election, could dismiss the election,” he told CNN, describing the bill. “And I said, welcome to fascism.”

The use of the term is significant. President Joe Biden accused the Maga wing of the GOP of practicing “semi-facsism” in a national address earlier this month where he denounced Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to sow distrust in US election systems and demand his reinstatement as president. That terminology was roundly rejected by conservatives, including a few persistent critics (or outright enemies) of Mr Trump in the GOP such as Maryland’s outgoing governor, Larry Hogan.

Mr Bowers was recently defeated in a GOP primary for his seat after becoming one of the Republicans to publicly testify against Mr Trump and his campaign to overturn the valid results of the 2020 election before the January 6 committee in Washington. The aging legislator described how Rudy Giuliani and other members of the president’s team urged him to call a special session of the state legislature and take a vote on a resolution declaring the results of the election invalid — a scheme that he said had no constitutional basis.

His testimony was key in that Mr Bowers was the first to say under oath that Mr Giuliani, Mr Trump’s lead attorney at the time, had admitted to him in private that the Trump campaign did not actually have the evidence to prove widespread election fraud which they had been falsely claiming otherwise for weeks to have acquired.

The efforts of Mr Giuliani to spread Mr Trump’s lies about the 2020 election led to the suspension of the former New York City mayor’s law license by the state bar.

Mr Bowers added to CNN that Republicans could very well push again to seize control of Arizona’s election systems in the upcoming year once his term comes to an end.

“It is very possible that the bill that I assigned liberally to my committees will be back”, said Mr Bowers. “The possibility of that getting a governor[’s] signature would just be a disaster. I call it the possibility of going back into the dark ages in Arizona.”