LD 20 Republicans Want to Censure Sen. Paul Boyer

Abe Kwok in an opinion piece at the Arizona Republic asks, This isn’t the first time Sen. Paul Boyer went rogue. Will Republicans punish him for it? Sen. Paul Boyer co-sponsored the resolution to arrest county supervisors if they balked a subpoena, then voted against it. Will there be payback?

That Sen. Paul Boyer broke ranks with his Republican colleagues and voted against holding Maricopa County supervisors in contempt is perhaps only more shocking than his co-sponsoring the resolution in the first place.

Boyer is an earnest lawmaker who is known to go to the mat over policy rather than partisan politics.

Which makes his involvement in the contempt resolution a head-scratcher. Perhaps he co-sponsored it with the other 15 GOP senators as a sign of party unity, but it was an ill-conceived move.

The resolution is a big deal in symbol and in practice – symbolically because it stink-bombs Maricopa County’s own election audit, giving life yet to the lie that the presidential election results cannot be trusted, and practically because a “yes” vote could result in the arrest of the five county supervisors.

Their crime? Failure to comply with the Senate’s subpoenas demanding copies of all the county’s mail-in ballots and access to its voting machines. Even though state law requires the ballots to be locked up after an election unless a judge determines otherwise.

The county has gone to court to quash the subpoenas.

Boyer’s vote on Monday stalled the madness, if only for the time being. It was a courageous vote, nevertheless.

One wonders what punishment lies ahead for him. By all accounts, Senate President Karen Fann believed she had the votes against the supervisors. Boyer’s vote must have stunned and stung.

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The tight balance at the Legislature – Republicans hold a 16-14 margin in the Senate – strongly suggests Republicans can ill afford to shun or shut out Boyer. Nonetheless, one wonders, will they hold him in contempt as well?

I would argue that it was all 16 GQP senators who “went rogue” when they voted for the resolution of contempt for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for, as you say, “Failure to comply with the Senate’s subpoenas demanding copies of all the county’s mail-in ballots and access to its voting machines, even though state law requires the ballots to be locked up after an election unless a judge determines otherwise.”

They are asking the Board of Supervisors to violate the very laws that they themselves enacted, in pursuit of the Trump/QAnon cult fever dream that Donald Trump won the election in Arizona, long after any irregularities alleged in eight court cases were dismissed for lack of any evidence and the vote was certified by Arizona’s top elected officials:

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, certified the election results, saying the elections process was the most secure in recent history, “despite unfounded claims to the contrary.” The state’s Gov. Doug Ducey and Attorney General Mark Brnovich, along with Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, witnessed the certification, as required by state law.

But to answer your question, Mr. Kwok, “Will there be payback?” a reader of the blog has sent us a copy of a “A Resolution to censure AZ State Senator Paul Boyer in LD20 AZGOP” (.pdf), introduced by Christian Lamar, Registered Republican Voter in LD20 of Maricopa County, AZ.

The Trump/QAnon cult loves to censure anyone who does not march in lockstep with Trumpism, the new American fascism. No one is allowed to question the supremacy of their cult leader, “Dear Leader.”

Just last month. the state Arizona GQP censured former senator Jeff Flake, former senator John McCain’s widow, Cindy McCain, and Governor Doug Ducey. Across the country, Republican committees are censuring the Republicans who voted to impeach their “Dear Leader” in the House and who voted against dismissing the impeachment in the Senate on specious legal grounds unsupported by the law, precedent, and history.

Liz Cheney, a scion of uber-villain Dick Cheney, with impeccable Republican credentials – she is the House Republican Conference Chair, the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership – has been censured by the Wyoming Republican Party for having voted for impeachment and providing the succinct framing for this impeachment:

Trump “summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing,” she said. “None of this would have happened without the president.”

The Censure Resolution against Senator Boyer has a lot of highfalutin language about how Sen. Boyer is violating his oath of office and Arizona law by not demanding that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors violate the law to enable the audit of ballots and election equipment in pursuit of the Trump/QAnon cult fever dream that Trump won the election in Arizona. Sen. Boyer is doing neither.

Christian Lamar is full of himself. His actual complaint comes later in the resolution:

5. Paul Boyer is ignoring the 52,409 Trump voters in Legislative District 20 who voted to re-elect Donald John Trump for President of the United States.

6. Paul Boyer is ignoring Arizona LD20 who voted for Donald Trump by 300 more votes in the 2020 election. 52,409 for Trump to 52,109 for Biden.

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8. Paul Boyer does not represent the interests of his constituents, neither does he represent the interest of LD20 or nor does he represent the interests of the Arizona Republican Party.

9. Paul Boyer hides behind sanctimoniousness and the Democrat Party Media instead of representing “ We the people, “ who elected him in good faith.

In Lamar’s disjointed logic, because LD 20, a safe Republican district, voted in the majority for Donald Trump, then it must follow that Donald Trump won the state of Arizona (he did not not). Sen. Boyer “does not represent the interests of LD 20” by not pursuing this Trump/QAnon fever dream that Trump won Arizona. and the “Democrat Party Media” (that’s the Democratic Party to you, asshole) which says otherwise is “the enemy of the people” as “Dear Leader” constantly tells him.

Get professional help, Dude. It’s time everyone in this personality cult look up a good cult deprogrammer to get professional help.

Laurie Roberts of The Republic writes, Paul Boyer saves the Arizona Senate, despite its best efforts to embarrass itself:

Sen. Paul Boyer has saved the Senate from embarrassing itself.

The Glendale Republican on Monday declined to support an astonishing plan to arrest the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for refusing to violate state law by handing over the ballots from the November election.

“My vote today is about prayerful patience. It’s about settling things civilly,” he said, during a tense session on the Senate floor.

Boyer sided with Democrats and the resolution to hold the supervisors in contempt was defeated on a 15-15 vote after a blindsided Senate President Karen Fann practically pleaded with Boyer to toe the party line. Instead, he stood firm — tall, I would argue — despite pressure from a parade of Republicans who tried to push him back in line, including one who called on the “lathered up” public to “do what you gotta do.”

Yep, It was Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, a rather shocking thing in light what happened when baser elements of the Trump base were “lathered up” on Jan. 6 at the nation’s Capitol.

And still Boyer stood his ground. It was a courageous move for a guy whose political base is convinced that Donald Trump was robbed.

Not overturning the election, they say

An OH Predictive Insights poll released on Monday indicates that 54% of Arizona Republican voters polled believe the election was stolen, despite any evidence to support that belief.

They believe in Bigfoot and space aliens, and, sorry kids,  the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and leprechauns too.

There is, however, the near-constant drumbeat of suspicion pounded into the public psyche that a scheme was afoot. That, and a shameful number of Republican officials who have allowed that suspicion to build, either because they believe the fairy tale or they believe in not crossing the GOP base.

Republican senators spent quite a bit of time on the floor last week and on Monday explaining how this isn’t about overturning the election but about ensuring that people can have faith in the system, never mentioning their own role in weakening that faith.

I suspect it’s more about ensuring their own political prospects in the party of Trump.

Townsend, during the debate, warned Boyer he’d never again be trusted if he voted no after agreeing last week to sign onto the resolution, and she issued what sounded like an incitement to violence.

“This shouldn’t fall into the hands of the public… when they’re so lathered up,” she said. “So public, do what you gotta do.”

This, as an unsuccessful Republican legislative candidate blasted out his cell phone number on Twitter.

Sen. Warren Petersen, meanwhile, called the supervisors outright liars, echoing Republicans’ belief that the supervisors had previously agreed to turn over the ballots. The supervisors are adamant that they never did.

“I am utterly, utterly, utterly disappointed with our Board of Supervisors,” the Gilbert Republican said. “They care more about protecting themselves than really showing that their system works thoroughly.”

Yet some lawmakers think the fix is in

In fact, the county already has shown that the system works. In the pre- and post-election tests mandated by state law to ensure the machinery is accurately counting ballots. In the sample hand counts of ballots, also required by state law, that matched the machine tabulations.

In a judge-ordered review of several thousand “adjudicated” ballots that could not be read by the machinery — one that when extrapolated to all duplicated ballots would have netted Trump 153 votes. He needed more than 10,457.

The Republican-run county Board of Supervisors has refused to turn over the 2.1 million ballots and the Dominion Voting Systems tabulation machines demanded by the Senate’s sweeping subpoena. The county contends state law allows the ballots to be opened only if a judge orders it. Meanwhile, a county-ordered review of the Dominion machinery, attempting to lay to rest claims that the machinery was fixed to give Biden a win, already is under way.

[“Q”] True believers, however, are as suspicious of the county’s audit as they are of the county’s election results.

Petersen called the county audit “a joke.”

“They’re not going to find anything,” he told his colleagues. “They’re not meant to find fraud.”

Boyer dashed their hope for red meat

The most ardent Trump supporters are suspicious of the two firms the county hired because they are certified by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, which employs a key official who formerly worked for Dominion.

So instead, the Senate was poised to hire Allied Security Operations Group, whose employees both produced an error-laden report about how the vote was stolen in Michigan and Wisconsin and participated in Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s post-election “we was robbed” tour of battleground states.

Given that — and the public statements of about half of the GQP senators that the election was stolen — it’s fairly easy to draw conclusions about the purpose of the Senate’s audit: Red meat to the masses.

Handcuffs on the supervisors were just to be the first juicy cut.

Until Boyer balked, insisting on “settling things civilly”.

3 things that need to happen now

Given that this isn’t over — will, in fact, never be over for the true believers — it seems clear that three things need to happen now.

1. The Senate and the Board of Supervisors should jointly petition the Arizona Supreme Court to settle this dispute, to decide if the law requiring the ballots to be sealed means what it says.

2. Any audit should be conducted by someone who knows what they’re doing, independent experts who haven’t produced widely discredited reports of vote theft and/or palled around with Rudy Giuliani. Friends and associates of Hugo Chavez – the dead Venezuelan dictator who somehow figured into the conspiracy to fix the Dominion machinery – also should be avoided.

3. Once any audit is completed, there must be public accountability.

If fraud is found, prosecute all criminals involved then fix it so that never again are we arguing about who won the election three months after the fact.

But if no fraud is found, every public official who spent the last few months undermining voters’ faith in the election should immediately apologize and resign.

I wonder how many Senate Republicans would be willing to make that deal?

Why even humor their baseless conspiracy theory? Let’s just skip to they “should immediately apologize and resign.” And then call a good cult deprogrammer.