Former Arizona governor says election denialism is ‘ruining the Republican Party’

Former Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer warned that Republicans should shift away from denying the results of recent elections, saying it is “ruining” the GOP.

Republicans in Arizona have faced several high-profile losses in recent years, including a slate of statewide candidates in 2022 and former President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. Since those bruising losses, the GOP has challenged the results but has been unsuccessful in showing that there were enough voter irregularities or fraud to overturn the results.

Brewer argued in an interview with the Guardian that people will refuse to instill their confidence in Republicans if they continue to claim past elections were stolen.

“The only thing that I know that has to be done is we need people to stand up and talk about it and move on. This is ruining the Republican Party at this point in time. It’s undermining our elections, and if we don’t stop it, the end is that people won’t vote. And who will that hurt if they don’t vote? It will hurt the Republican Party,” Brewer told the news outlet. “We need every vote that we can get at the polls.”

The former governor said that she thinks election denialism from Republicans stems from wanting to win, but she insists it is important to defend the system from “distrust.” Brewer also made a point to say that denying election results was not a GOP-only issue.

“It’s been on both sides. Don’t lay it just on the Republicans, but that happens to be the people that are doing it currently, because we lost the presidency. We had some heated races in Arizona and some of the losers claimed that they were stolen, and they went through all these court cases and they didn’t win and they didn’t have the proof. And evidently, they don’t trust our judicial system either,” the former Arizona governor said.

She also added that the “claims are just outrageous” and believes the level of election denialism is nearing a fever pitch ahead of the contentious primary in the state later this month and the general election in November.

Brewer said that she does not believe the 2020 election was stolen, and she also said that she will vote for Trump in November — noting he is the Republican nominee.

“He did a lot of good when he was president. I just hope that if and when he wins, that it doesn’t all evolve again. Of course, if he wins, then I guess they’ll think the election is okay,” the ex-governor said.

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Several Trump-aligned candidates in competitive races who said the prior presidential election was stolen lost their races in 2022.

In Arizona, 2022 Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake repeatedly said the 2020 election was stolen and then said her loss to now-Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) was also the result of fraud. Lake is running for Senate in Arizona and will likely be the GOP nominee, but she has also toned down her talk of prior elections being stolen.