‘This should terrify the nation’: the Trump ally seeking to run Arizona’s elections
"Mark Finchem, a supporter of the ex-president’s ‘big lie’ about the 2020 election, could soon oversee voting in the state.
Last September, Donald Trump released a statement through his Save America website. “It is my great honor to endorse a true warrior,” he proclaimed, “a patriot who has fought for our country, who was willing to say what few others had the courage to say, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement.”
Former US presidents usually reserve their most gushing praise – replete with Capital Letters – for global allies or people they are promoting for high office. A candidate for the US Senate, perhaps, or someone vying to become governor of one of the biggest states.
Trump by contrast was heaping plaudits on an individual running for an elected post that a year ago most people had never heard of, let alone cared about. He was endorsing Mark Finchem, a Republican lawmaker from Tucson, in his bid to become Arizona’s secretary of state. . .
The role of secretary of state is critical to the smooth workings and integrity of elections in many states, Arizona included. The post holder is the chief election officer, with powers to certify election results, vet the legal status of candidates and approve infrastructure such as voting machines.
[ ] Communications between Finchem and the organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally earned the lawmaker a knock on the door from the January 6 committee this week. The powerful congressional investigation into the insurrection issued a subpoena for him to appear before the panel and to hand over documents relating to the effort to subvert democracy.
Finchem will have to answer to the committee for what he did in the wake of the 2020 election, or face legal consequences. But there’s a more disconcerting question thrown up by his candidacy for secretary of state: were he to win the position, would he be willing and able to overturn the result of the 2024 presidential election in Arizona, potentially paving the way for a political coup?
“Someone who wants to dismantle, disrupt and completely destroy democracy is running to be our state’s top election officer,” said Reginald Bolding, the Democratic minority leader in the Arizona House who is running against Finchem in the secretary of state race. “That should terrify not just Arizona, but the entire nation.”
Trump has so far endorsed three secretary of state candidates in this year’s election cycle, and Finchem is arguably the most controversial of the bunch. (The other two are Jody Hice in Georgia and Kristina Karamo in Michigan.)
Originally from Kalamazoo in Michigan, he spent 21 years as a public safety officer before retiring to Tucson and setting up his own small business. In 2014 he was elected to the Arizona legislature, representing Oro Valley.Even before Finchem was inaugurated as a lawmaker, he was stirring up controversy. On the campaign trail in 2014, he announced that he was “an Oath Keeper committed to the exercise of limited, constitutional governance”.
The Oath Keepers are a militia group with a list of 25,000 current or past members, many from military or law enforcement backgrounds. They have been heavily implicated in the January 6 insurrection.
The founder of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, and nine co-defendants are facing trial for seditious conspiracy based on allegations that they meticulously planned an armed attack on the heart of American democracy.
Finchem entered the Arizona legislature in January 2015 and soon was carving out a colourful reputation. With his bushy moustache, cowboy hat and boots, and offbeat political views, his hometown news outlet Tucson Weekly dubbed him “one of the nuttier lawmakers” in the state.
. . .
To this day no credible evidence of major fraud in the 2020 election has been presented, yet Finchem continues to beat that drum. Last month he told a Trump rally in Florence, Arizona: “We know it, and they know it. Donald Trump won.”
In his latest ruse, Finchem this month introduced a new bill, HCR2033, which seeks to decertify the 2020 election results in Arizona’s three largest counties. There is no legal mechanism for decertifying election results after the event.
As the August primary election to choose the Republican and Democratic candidates for secretary of state draws closer, attention is likely to fall increasingly on Finchem’s appearance in Washington on the day of the insurrection. . .
In his telling of events, he was in Washington that day to deliver to Mike Pence an “evidence book” of purported fraud in the Arizona election and to ask the then vice-president to delay certification of Biden’s victory. For Finchem, January 6 remains a “patriotic event” dedicated to the exercise of free speech; if there were any criminality it was all the responsibility of anti-fascist and Black Lives Matter activists.
The Guardian reached out to Finchem to invite him to explain his presence and actions in Washington on January 6, but he did not respond.
He has repeatedly insisted that he never came within 500 yards of the Capitol building. But photos and video footage captured by Getty Images and examined by the Arizona Mirror show him walking through the crowd of Trump supporters in front of the east steps of the Capitol after the insurrection was already under way. . .
> Finchem’s campaign to become the next secretary of state of Arizona is going well. Last year his campaign raised $660,000, Politico reported – more than three times Bolding’s haul.
> Bolding sees that as indicative of a fundamental problem. On the right, individuals and groups have spotted an opportunity in the secretary of state positions and are avidly targeting them; on the left there is little sign of equivalent energy or awareness.
“The public in general may not understand what’s at stake here. All Democrats, all Americans, should be concerned about this and what it could do to the 2024 presidential election,” he said.
Dean agrees that there is a perilous void in public knowledge. “What’s so insidious about the Trump plan is that it is focusing on state-level races where voters know very little about what the secretary of state does. That’s a danger, as it gives Finchem a realistic path in which he could win – and Finchem will do what Trump wants.”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70533295/Screen_Shot_2022_02_21_at_12.34.51_PM.0.jpg)
