Fake GQP Elector Rep. Jake Hoffman And Eight Other Trump Sycophants Want To Divide Up Maricopa County Into Four Counties

In 2004, journalist Bill Bishop coined the term “the big sort.” He even wrote a book about it. The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart:

Armed with startling new demographic data, he made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities — not by region or by state, but by city and even neighborhood. Over the past three decades, we have been choosing the neighborhood (and church and news show) compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. The result is a country that has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred that people don’t know and can’t understand those who live a few miles away. How this came to be, and its dire implications for our country, is the subject of his ground-breaking work.

Radical Republicans in Maricopa County who cannot accept the truth that Maricopa County voted for Democrat Joe Biden for president in 2020 and gave him his margin of victory in Arizona, want to divide up Maricopa County into four counties to accelerate this “big sort” so that they do not have to associate with Democrats and live in homogeneous communities of like-minded Maga/QAnon cult followers.

Newsweek reports, Arizona GOP Lawmakers Propose Breaking Up Maricopa Into 4 Smaller Counties:

Nine Arizona Republican lawmakers introduced a bill that would split Maricopa County, one of the largest in the United States, into four separate counties.

Maricopa is the country’s fourth most populous county, with nearly 4.5 million residents, according to the 2020 U.S. census. While House Bill 2787, proposed by state Representative Jake Hoffman, would shrink Maricopa County, it would still contain most of Phoenix, Tempe, Avondale and Glendale. The others three counties would be called Hohokam County, Mogollon County and O’Odham County.

Hoffman’s eight other co-sponsors are among the usual suspects.

Hohokam County would include the eastern parts of what is currently Maricopa county, Mogollon County would take the north and O’Odham County would take the west, according to the proposal.

Caught wind of a Republican-backed bill to split Maricopa County into four new counties. Here's a look at what it would do, politically. pic.twitter.com/EbKdoecozb

— Leon Sit (@politicsmaps) February 8, 2022

Some have criticized the bill, in part, for leaving three of the counties controlled by Republicans and one by Democrats, The Arizona Republic reported. The move comes several months after a partisan audit confirmed that Maricopa County voted for now-President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

The proposed counties are “artfully gerrymandered,” according to Laurie Roberts of The Arizona Republic, who reported that breaking up the county would be a further hassle by requiring three more of each position and department a county needs, such as county boards of supervisors, sheriffs, court systems, health departments and transportation departments.

Andrew Wilder, communications director for the state House Republican Caucus, told The Hill the bill’s sponsors think of it as “a legislative proposal with bipartisan support [the sponsors are all Republicans] designed to ensure that Arizona governments remain accountable and representative to the community for generations to come.”

Arizona Republicans who subscribe to the unsubstantiated theory that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election have been at odds with Maricopa County since it voted for Biden, ordering an audit to certify its election results. The audit did not find evidence to support the idea of election fraud.

It is unlikely the bill will advance because it was introduced on the last day lawmakers could bring new legislative proposals to the table, inside sources told The Hill.

[Fake GQP elector] Hoffman, who introduced the bill, has a history of supporting the idea that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Newsweek previously reported that he was one of 11 Republicans who signed a bogus declaration in December 2020 that they were electors who voted for Trump in the presidential election. A video of Hoffman dodging questions about why he signed it went viral on Twitter.

He was also accused in October 2020 of setting up an “internet troll farm” by allegedly paying teenagers to create fake social media accounts and flood various platforms with posts questioning the election’s validity and calling for Trump’s reelection.

See, Turning Point Action (USA) Creates Its Own Russian Troll Farm In Phoenix (excerpt):

Smith, as part of written responses to The Post, deferred specific questions about the financial setup to a “marketing partner” called Rally Forge, which he said was running the program for Turning Point.

Jake Hoffman, president and chief executive of the Phoenix-based digital marketing firm, confirmed the online workers were classified as contractors but declined to comment further on “private employment matters.” He did not respond to a question about the office setup.

Addressing the use of centralized documents to prepare the messages, Hoffman said in written responses, “Every working team within my agency works out of dozens of collaborative documents every day, as is common with all dynamic marketing agencies or campaign phone banks for example.”

The messages have appeared mainly as replies to news articles about politics and public health posted on social media. They seek to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process, asserting that Democrats are using mail balloting to steal the election — “thwarting the will of the American people,” they alleged.

Laurie Roberts of The Republic writes, Latest plan by the election crybabies at the Arizona Legislature: Split up Maricopa County:

Crybabying and bellyaching over the 2020 election has now entered an entirely new phase at the Arizona Legislature.

Oh sure, the 100 or so bills to “reform” Arizona’s election laws continue to flow forth to combat all that still-undiscovered election fraud – the stuff the Senate’s own auditors couldn’t find.

But now comes a new idea from the sore loser set: A plan to strip the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors of their power by splitting up the county into four smaller counties.

Three would be controlled by Republicans and one by Democrats.

House Bill 2787 is brought to you by none other than Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek.

Hoffman is well versed in deception

Maybe you’ve heard of this esteemed stateman. Before getting elected to the Legislature in 2020, Hoffman was running what amounts to an internet troll farm– paying teenagers to post conservative talking points and baseless conspiracy theories aimed at getting President Donald Trump reelected.

Hoffman’s Rally Forge paid teens, some of them minors, to set up fake personas and blanket social media with thousands of nearly identical posts designed to undermine confidence in the validity of election and downplay the impact of COVID-19.

In other words, Hoffman wanted to fool you into thinking these were real people spontaneously expressing deeply held conservative beliefs instead of what they were — a group of kids being paid to deceive you.

Speaking of deception, Hoffman went on to pose as a fake elector in December 2020, avowing that he had been duly elected by Arizona voters to cast one of the state’s 11 electoral votes for Donald Trump.

As he recently explained to The Arizona Republic’s Richard Ruelas, “In unprecedented times, unprecedented actions occur.”

Like, for example, [Coup] plots to overturn democracy.

And now, his plan to stick it to the Republican-run Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for the apparently unforgivable offense of refusing to throw in with the conspiracy crew about the many, often fantastical ways in which the election was stolen.

Why do we need 4 of everything?

Hoffman didn’t immediately return a phone call to explain the crying need to break up Maricopa County, which is the nation’s fourth largest.

HB 2787, which is scheduled to be heard in the House Government and Elections Committee on Wednesday, would split it into four smaller counties:

• • • Maricopa, comprised of much of Phoenix, Tempe, Glendale and Avondale.
    • Mogollon, covering north Phoenix, Scottsdale and Peoria.
    • O’odham, which is now western Maricopa County.
    • And Hohokam, taking in Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert.

The proposed counties are artfully gerrymandered, packing Democrats into one county and leaving Republicans to control the other three.

Giving us four boards of supervisors where there now is one.

And four county sheriffs, four county attorneys, four county jail systems and four court systems.

Also, four county treasurers, four county recorders, four county school superintendents, four county tax assessors, four county health departments, four county transportation departments, four community college districts and on and on and on.

Not to mention the nightmare of divvying up responsibility for the county’s debts and ownership of its various assets.

All this, brought to you by … the party of smaller government?

This idea should die, but who knows?

As for the impact on taxes, I shudder to think. (Unless I happen to live in O’odham, site of the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, which generates a substantial amount of county property tax revenues to help pay for stuff.)

Normally, I would say this bill has no chance of seeing the light of day, but do not underestimate the level of Republican legislative anger at their brethren on the GOP-run Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the ones who dared to speak the truth when Republicans all around them were clinging to conspiracy theories.

Hopefully, House Speaker Rusty Bowers, and Mesa Republican and one of the few adults over at crybaby central, will consign this bill to the same fate as Rep. John Fillmore’s proposal to allow the Legislature to simply veto the results of any election it doesn’t like.

But as Hoffman said, “In unprecedented times, unprecedented actions occur.”

Also unhinged ones.

Who signed on to Hoffman’s bill?

Here are the co-sponsors to Hoffman’s bill to split up Maricopa County: Reps. Travis Grantham of Gilbert, John Kavanagh of Fountain Hills, Justin Wilmeth of Phoenix and House Majority Leder Ben Toma of Peoria. Also, Sens. Sine Kerr of Buckeye, David Livingston of Peoria, J.D. Mesnard of Chandler and Senate Majority Leader Warren Petersen of Mesa.

All election deniers who can’t accept the fact that their “Dear Leader” lost Maricopa County and the state of Arizona.