Fake Electors and Future Felons of Arizona

AZMirror’s Kira Lerner posted a list of all 83 fake electors, including those hailing from Arizona. We’ve covered them previously, but Kira dug up a bit more biographical information about some of those who are less-well known that is worth republishing. Great journalism, Kira!

ARIZONA (11)

Nancy Cottle*: Cottle is the first vice president of programs for the Arizona Federation of Republican Women. She has been active in Arizona politics for the past decade and holds various other positions on the Maricopa County Republican Committee and the AZGOP executive committee.

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Loraine B. Pellegrino*: Pellegrino has served as president of Ahwatukee Republican Women.

Tyler Bowyer: Bowyer is the chief operating officer of Turning Point USA, a Phoenix-based nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative values in schools. He has previously worked for the Republican National Committee and the Maricopa County Republican Party.

Jake Hoffman: Hoffman is an Arizona state representative for the 12th District. Hoffman also runs a conservative digital marketing company, Rally Forge, that was banned from Facebook and suspended from Twitter for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on behalf of Turning Point Action, an affiliate of Turning Point USA. The company was enlisting and paying teens to share comments with right-wing opinions, including that mail-in ballots would lead to fraud and that coronavirus numbers were intentionally inflated. Experts told the Washington Post in 2020 that the effort was “among the most ambitious domestic influence campaigns uncovered this election cycle.”

Anthony T. Kern: From January 2015 until January 2021, Kern was an Arizona state representative for the 20th District. He is currently running for election to the Arizona state Senate to represent the 20th District. Kern participated in the January 6 riots in D.C. and has lied about breaching the U.S. Capitol building

James Lamon: Lamon is running for election to the U.S. Senate to represent Arizona. He is a veteran and was previously CEO of DEPCOM Power, a solar energy contractor, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Robert Montgomery: In 2020, Montgomery served as the chairman of the Cochise County Republican Committee.

Samuel I. Moorhead: Moorhead serves as the second vice chair of the Gila County Arizona Republican Party.

Greg Safsten: Safsten is the executive director of the Republican Party of Arizona. He previously worked for Rep. Andy Biggs and Rep. Matt Salmon, both of Arizona, in their U.S. House offices, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Dr. Kelli Ward: Ward is an osteopathic physician who has served as the chair of the Arizona Republican Party since 2019. Following the 2020 election, Ward aided Trump’s efforts to invalidate the election results and filed a number of lawsuits to nullify Arizona’s results. In 2016, she challenged the late U.S. Sen. John McCain in the Republican primary but lost with 39 percent of the vote. She previously served in the Arizona state Senate.

Dr. Michael Ward: Ward met his wife, Kelli Ward, while he was serving in the Arizona Air National Guard. In 2019, he was accused of spitting in the eye of a former volunteer of his wife’s when she was a candidate for Senate because the volunteer went on to support her former political foe, Martha McSally. Michael Ward denied touching, pushing, threatening or spitting on the volunteer in an email to police, according to AZ Central.

In addition, it is worth adding that Kelli Ward has a lot of experience stealing things; it is common knowledge in Arizona political circles that her current husband was somebody else’s when they met, and that many in the AZGOP believe that Kelli’s current term as Chair of the party was also nefariously purloined with a rigged party election. No wonder she goes on and on about a rigged election in 2020 – projection much, Kelli?