AZ Senator Kelly Townsend Is Running for Congress to Serve Trump and Fundamentalist Fascism

UPDATE 1/28: Rawstory just published a look at the disgusting career of Kelly Townsend, which reminded me of a few things, and informed me of a few more. I considered accusing Townsend of being a possible member of the Oath Keepers but had only associational evidence of it. Rawstory also suggests the possibility and presents in detail the history of her association with and cooperation with known Oath Keepers, but they also turned up an incidence of her calling herself an “Oathkeeper”. Case closed, in my view. But the point is that she is clearly aligned with the philosophy and goals of such fringe right militia groups, even if she was never a formal member of the Oath Keepers.

In addition, the Rawstory article points out Townsend’s deep involvement with the anti-government, sovereign citizen movement Bundy family, and Sheriff Mack’s extremist Constitutional Sheriffs & Peace Officers Association (CSPOA).

Rawstory reports: “Townsend’s presence at Bundy Ranch, along with a handful of other state lawmakers, in April 2014 was well documented in the news media at the time, but Raw Story has learned that CSPOA arranged the trip and paid for the state lawmakers’ hotel rooms.”

The news that CPSO paid for Townsend’s travel and lodging during her attendance at the 2014 armed standoff between the Bundys and their supporters and the Federal Government in Nevada in 2014 was new information to me. At that standoff, if you recall, armed militia groups aimed their rifles at federal officers from sniper positions, and among those militia groups were the Oath Keepers under the direct leadership of terrorist Stewart Rhodes.

What all this boils down to is that Townsend lent the prestige and authority of her position as a member of Arizona’s government to a group of right-wing militia extremists who challenged the authority of the Federal Government based on lies, ‘sovereign citizen’ conspiracy theories, and brute armed resistance. She should not be anywhere near elected office, let alone serve in the very Federal Government she seeks to undermine and delegitimize.

END UPDATE

Trump-endorsed, AZ Senator Kelly Townsend is running for Congress in AZ CD6. She is the ‘Ted Cruz of Arizona’, despised even by many members of her own caucus. She’s so disagreeable that she has publicly feuded with Representative Andy Biggs, Arizona Senator T.J. Shope, and Arizona Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita, (though, to be fair, some of those ‘lawmakers’ are also notoriously nasty people) and has engaged in many quieter interpersonal donnybrooks with her own caucus members due to her paranoid and high-conflict personality that haven’t broken through into the press. She was caught on a hot mic plotting retribution via trumped-up ethics complaints against Arizona Senator Paul Boyer for voting his conscience. She’s so nasty and self-righteous that she retaliated against a private citizen for daring to criticize her on FaceBook. She even threatened (in a Christian fundamentalist dog-whistle) Governor Ducey with death over his certification of the 2020 election!

No surprise, therefore, that her obstreperous and paranoid nature, combined with her utterly unprincipled ambition, has also led her to conspiracy-mongering about COVID measures like masking and vaccines. She has compared reasonable public health measures with Nazi crimes, and even threatened Pima County – which she now seeks to represent! – with the loss of its state shared revenues over vaccine mandates. She has pushed legislation that would force pharmacists to fill prescriptions for snake oil COVID treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. She has incessantly lied that the 2020 election was stolen, and tried to overturn the democratic will of Arizona voters. She did all this to gather political support from the gullible Trump cultists to further her political ambitions.

But, even with that flaming clown car of a public career, Townsend is perhaps best known for her vituperative and rabid anti-abortion activism. She has pushed dozens of extreme legislative attacks on Arizona women’s constitutional rights to control their own reproductive health. She claims a role in founding the abortion extremist organization 40 Days for Life, wrote a book ungrammatically titled ‘Christ Centered Childbirth‘, and supports those fake ‘clinics’ that lie to pregnant women seeking medical advice that abortions are medically dangerous. She’s even argued that women who engage in ‘moral defiance’ by ‘acting lewdly’ have ‘no defense’ if they are ‘harassed or raped’.

If she’s nominated, she may try to moderate her tone to appeal to anyone who isn’t a member of the Trump cult, or a Bible-worshipping fundamentalist (to the extent that these groups aren’t perfectly congruent at this point) in order to get elected to Congress. But don’t be fooled: she is as extreme and out-of-step with the American mainstream as one can get. And on top of that, she’s a nasty, mean, vengeful, self-righteous, bigoted lout.

She appeared at the recent human sacrifice ceremony for the Trump Cult in Florence, Arizona. When Trump took the stage, he commented on Townsend: “Another woman who’s been with me from the beginning — Kelly Townsend, who I hear will be running for Congress, and she will be incredible,” Trump said. “Kelly, wherever you may be, good luck.”

Townsend opened by demanding the immediate issuance of indictments for “election workers”, because of crimes? She said: “They meant to harm us, and they did for a little time. But you know what we’ve gotten out of this? We now know what is going on. America’s eyes are open. And no more are they going to get away with this kind of deception, this kind of fraud and illegal activity. Not only people in general, but the election workers. We want indictments of the election workers, so they don’t continue to do this.”

Townsend led the cult rally in a chant against election workers:

“What do we want?” she asked.

“Indictments,” they thundered back.

“When do we want them?”

“Now!”

She seems not to grasp that Attorney General Brnovich, or any prosecuting agency, has to actually allege some facts that constitute a crime that he can get a Grand Jury and a judge to find it at all credible using these things called ‘witnesses’ and ‘evidence’ in order to issue any indictments (which is why he has not done so), and then prove them in court beyond a reasonable doubt (which he cannot do solely armed with misinformation and bullshit). Despite the minor impediment of ‘any facts whatsoever’ she “calls on Brnovich” to issue the indictments. She’s utterly unhinged. Or criminally ignorant. Or both… Probably both.

She spent the rest of her 3 minutes doing her best to instill fear and hatred in the crowd by doling out the raw red meat. She asserted that “they are scheming to harm America”, meaning, presumably, Democrats. That “CRT is indoctrinating our children in public schools”. She called our public schools “cesspools”. And, of course, she wants to close the Mexico border and build the wall.

She floated a half-baked idea to use Mexican ports on the Pacific to address supply chain issues. Which only served to demonstrate she has no grasp of geography, logistics, infrastructure, the real causes of supply chain issues, or reality itself.

Finally, she reminded everyone that public health measures to try to prevent unnecessary death and suffering are “medical tyranny”, and that “they mean to harm us.” Presumably, I guess, doctors, nurses, and public health professionals secretly seek to victimize people rather than help them? If she actually believes that, she’s probably a QAnon nut, too.

Needless to say, my contempt for Kelly Townsend is actually bigger than her own overblown ego, vile opportunism, and utterly ruthless political ambition – put together. A vote for Kelly Townsend for Congress is a vote for yet another Trump cultist who will scheme to surrender our democracy to the Orange Julius Ceasar.