Intro: But while Bowers said the efforts by Giuliani and other Trump backers have been hurtful, he does not levy any criticism on Trump directly and would support him if he were on the ballot.
06 June 2021
Arizona's Fantasy Football > Sports Betting on Republican House Chair Rusty Bower's "Hail Mary Pass"
Arizona House GOP Leaders To Force Vote On $12.8 Billion Budget
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These Republicans Resisted Trump’s Attempt To Steal The Election. They’d Vote For Him Again.
As GOP election deniers prepare to test American democracy again, the few Republicans who thwarted Trump's 2020 lies still won't fully break with him.
Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona state House of Representatives, on Tuesday detailed his efforts to thwart former President Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election in stirring testimony to a select congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Bowers told the committee that Trump and his lawyers failed to produce any evidence of fraud, and that they asked him to ignore the law and overturn the election anyway. He became emotional, at times, as he described the barrage of violent threats he and his family have faced
Bowers was among a small group of Republican elected officials who broke with Trump and refused to go along with the plot to overturn the 2020 election. Now, he is the latest among them to suggest that he would still support Trump in a future contest, even as the former president and his Republican allies intensify their efforts to undermine American democracy.
Bowers was one of five recipients of this year’s John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award for his refusal to consider overturning the 2020 election results despite pressure from Trump and his supporters.
But while Bowers said the efforts by Giuliani and other Trump backers have been hurtful, he does not levy any criticism on Trump directly and would support him if he were on the ballot.
“If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again,” Bowers said. “Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the county. In my view it was great.”
Arizona Republican calls push to overturn 2020 ‘juvenile’
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PHOENIX (AP) — Calls from top advisers to former President Donald Trump to help overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss were an unsupported, unwise and “juvenile” effort that attacked a bedrock principal of American democracy, Arizona’s House speaker said Monday.
Republican Speaker Rusty Bowers is among a series of state election officials set to testify Tuesday before the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection where Trump backers tried to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.
Bowers spoke to The Associated Press after he arrived in Washington on Monday afternoon. He will be questioned about a phone call he got from Trump and attorney Rudy Giuliani in the weeks after the November 2020 election where Giuliani floated a proposal to replace Arizona’s Biden electors by having the state’s Legislature instead choose those committed to voting for Trump.
Bowers refused, saying the scheme was illegal and unconstitutional. In an interview last year, he said he told the president he would not break the law to help him gain the presidency.
He revealed a second call from Trump on Monday, saying the president phoned again on Dec. 4, 2020, but did not pressure him. He said Trump mainly made small talk, asking about his family and the upcoming holidays.
“But then he said, ‘I want to call you to tell you that I remember what you said the first time.’” Bowers said. “And I’m presuming it was about when I told him I wouldn’t. That I supported him, I walked for him, I campaigned with him. But I wouldn’t do anything illegal for him.”
Bowers said efforts by Trump’s backers have harmed the nation, undercut trust in elections and the right of people to vote their conscience.
“I just think it is horrendous. It’s terrible,” Bowers said. “The result of throwing the pebble in the pond, the reverberations across the pond, have, I think, been very destructive.”
January 6 hearings: state officials testify on Trump pressure to discredit election
‘Pressuring public servants into betraying their oaths was a fundamental part of the playbook,’ says Adam Schiff
‘Pressuring public servants into betraying their oaths was a fundamental part of the playbook,’ says Adam Schiff
‘Pressuring public servants into betraying their oaths was a fundamental part of the playbook,’ says Adam Schiff
State election officials testified before the January 6 committee on Tuesday, recounting how Donald Trump and his allies pressured them to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election in the weeks leading up to the deadly Capitol attack.
Trump continued his efforts even after members of his own party repeatedly told him that reversing the election results would violate state laws and the US constitution, the officials testified.
As a result of Trump’s persistence, election officials and poll workers were subjected to violent, hateful and at times racist threats from the former president’s supporters.
The hearing came days after the panel heard about Trump’s pressure campaign on his vice-president, Mike Pence, to interfere with the congressional certification of the results. . .
Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona house, was among those testifying at the Tuesday hearing. Less than an hour before the start of the hearing, Trump released a statement mocking Bowers as a “RINO”, meaning Republican in name only, and claiming that Bowers had said the election in Arizona was rigged.
Testifying before the committee, Bowers acknowledged that he spoke to Trump in the days after the election, but he denied ever claiming his state’s results were tainted by fraud. “Anywhere, anyone, anytime who said that I said the election was rigged – that would not be true,” Bowers said.
Instead, Bowers repeatedly pressed Trump and his lawyers to present valid evidence of widespread fraud in Arizona’s results. According to Bowers, Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s campaign attorneys, told him: “We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.”
Despite his failure to present any evidence to substantiate his baseless claims, Trump heavily leaned on Bowers to send a fake slate of Republican electors to Congress, as part of a larger effort to overturn the election results. Bowers said he told Trump, “You’re asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath.”
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06 June 2021
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09 June 2019
Time-To-Ask: Is Mesa Republican Rusty Bowers Growing Crooked?
Bowers said the state is still trying to determine who has the rights to certain surface and subsurface waters.
He said some of the water rights at issue actually could turn out to belong to tribes. Bowers said there’s no reason to subject well drillers to criminal liability if it turns out that what they’re pumping “contains one molecule of subflow.”
That includes Bowers himself who said he drilled a new well two years ago. . . "
Legislation to immunize well owners becomes law
by Howie Fischer 07 June 2019
A new law signed Thursday by Gov. Doug Ducey is designed to provide legal protections to those who drill wells into underground streams they are not legally entitled to tap.
The measure repeals existing laws that make it a crime when a well owner “uses water to which another is entitled.” That law, until now, has subjected violators to up to four months in jail and a $750 fine.
Now, that criminal penalty will be available only when someone knew they were breaking the law. . . Read more > https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2019/06/07/legislation-to-immunize-well-owners-becomes-law/
05 December 2018
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Bowers is in his second stint in state government:
> he originally served in the state House from 1993 to 1997,
> then served in the state Senate from 1997 to 2001 (where he served as Majority Leader). > After an unsuccessful 2010 Congressional campaign, he was elected to return to the state House in 2014.
Over that time, one thing has been constant:
he does not believe LGBTQ people deserve equal treatment under the law
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Blogger Note: Here in Mesa it appears that action on a proposed Anti-Discrimination Ordinance was put 'on the back-burner' during the first elected-term for Mayor John Giles after he stated publicly "It's the right thing to do".
Unlike the mayors in Arizona's two larger cities Phoenix and Tucson and Flagstaff, Giles has chosen instead not to exercise the necessary leadership skills to guarantee equal rights in employment or in public accommodations for everyone. He says he is 'waiting for guidance' from the State.That guidance he wants could be handed down by the Arizona Supreme Court in January:
Gay Wedding Invitation Card Lawsuit Heads To Arizona Supreme Court
by Josh Israel 29 Nov 2018 08:00am in THINK PROGRESS
His reasoning: he believed homosexual behavior to be bad for society. “When a public entity endorses a behavior (through ordinances), it is very dangerous,” he said at the time. “It legitimizes it.”
Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Colorado ban as a clear violation of the constitution’s equal protection clause.
. . . In 2001, Bowers helped to initially torpedo nondiscrimination protections for gay Arizonans who work for the state government, arguing that “Tolerance does not require abandoning one’s standards or one’s opinions on political or public choices, especially policy choices… Tolerance is a way of reacting to diversity, not a command to insulate it from examination.”
Days later, when the senate reconsidered and passed the bill, he decried it as “an anarchy of values.”
Such protections, he predicted, would “be extremely disruptive of employment in this state.”
Later that same year, Bowers also vociferously opposed a repeal of the state’s unconstitutional sodomy ban and laws that prohibited sex not intended to produce children. “We have a culture war here,” he proclaimed, terming the bill a “direct attack on the family.” “It’s because people don’t exercise more self-discipline that more laws are required,” he added.
Though times have changed and public opinion has enormously shifted in favor of recognizing basic rights for LGBTQ people, it does not appear that Bowers has evolved, even during his 13 years away from government.
He signed onto a 2018 amicus brief urging the state Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling that a business that makes wedding invitations must provide equal accommodations to same-sex couples under Phoenix’s public accommodation laws. The brief asks the state’s highest court to examine “whether public accommodation laws can force speakers to convey messages contrary to their faith” — a request the court granted last week. And as he ran for re-election, he completed a candidate questionnaire for the notoriously anti-LGBTQ Center for Arizona Policy. Not only did he tell them that he opposes adding sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression to the state’s existing nondiscrimination law, he also vowed to support “[p]rotecting a parent’s right to seek professional counseling for their minor child with same-sex attraction or gender identity issues to help them reach their desired outcome,” endorsing the harmful and ineffective practice of forcing LGBTQ kids to endure conversion therapy. This scam practice is banned in 14 states and the District of Columbia because of the damage it can cause.
ThinkProgress reached out to Bowers to ask whether his view on any of these issues has changed; he did not respond.
While Bowers has apparently stood still, Arizona has made progress.
> The state just elected the first openly bisexual woman to be a United States Senator.
> The Republican mayor of Bowers’ hometown, Mesa, endorsed a proposed statewide employment nondiscrimination law for LGBTQ Arizonans last year, and the measure has bipartisan support in the legislature.
https://thinkprogress.org/arizona-republicans-rusty-bowers-speaking-leading-homophobe-8e797977f1e0/
09 January 2019
New Times Reporter Joseph Flaherty: Fresh Hell For All of Us
Gage Skidmore/Flickr; New Times illustration by Zac McDonald
Joe Flaherty's report 07 Jan 2019
Once again it's Mesa conservative Mormon Republican Rusty Bowers in the picture >
New legislators from Mesa represent LD 18,
LD 16 and LD 24
Over all these issues is the narrow Republican margin of control in the House. The Republicans lost seats in the House, reducing their margin from 35 during the last session to just 31. This 31-29 split between Republicans and Democrats means that one GOP dissenting voice can make life difficult for the majority.
WHAT THEY ARE SAYING:
HUD’s Directive to Enforce the Fair Housing Act to Prohibit Discrimination on the Basis of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it will administer and enforce the Fair Housing Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The HUD directive begins implementation of the policy set forth in President Biden’s Executive Order 13988 on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.
24 September 2019
Republican Rusty Bowers, AZ Speaker of The House Claims Sex-Education Classes Are 'Sexualizing' Children
As the current Speaker of The House, where Republicans have a slim majority of one, Bowers expresses certain issues in public.
Senator Steve Pierce Will Leave Bitter Legacy
It seemed to many Arizona Legislature watchers that the only time State Senator Steve Pierce smiled was when he was thwarting efforts on behalf of the small business owners by his fellow lawmakers. Pierce, who will reportedly not seek re-election to his Legislative District 1 Senate seat, leaves behind a bitter legacy marked by favors for the wealthy and disregard for everyday people.
Pierce has served the powers-that-be since 2009. Pierce could be counted on to do the bidding of the corporate members of the chambers of commerce, and reject nearly any attempt to protect children, and families unless it would ultimately benefit the wealthy, as has the Medicaid expansion he and former Governor Jan Brewer pushed in 2012.
Pierce served as Whip, President pro-tem and Senate President. Senate President Pierce was deposed from that position in 2012 and replaced Sen. Andy Biggs, a Medicaid expansion opponent, by his fellow lawmakers. In his removal from the presidency, lawmakers argued that Pierce had to go during the Republican Primary races in which he poured money into certain primary races to strengthen his grasp on his own power and to the detriment of the Republican Party in the General Election.
Power Shift In Arizona Senate Forces Pierce Out . . . Andy Biggs, of Gilbert was voted in when senators-elect met yesterday in a private room at the Phoenix Children’s Museum. . . One legislator said, “You know, Andy got caught up in Pierce’s scandal. Pierce is a nasty piece of work
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