The Republican Party of Arizona has formally censured the Speaker of the House, Republican Rusty Bowers, declaring he is “no longer a Republican in good standing,” and “unfit to serve” one month after he was a “star” witness in a nationally-televised hearing held by the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Dr. Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona GOP and a Trump acolyte who attempted to have the vote counting stopped on election night, made the announcement late Tuesday. Ward posted the resolution that does not mention Bowers’ testimony but makes claims that accuse him of bipartisanship, and calls on “all registered Republicans to expel him permanently from office in the impending primary election.”
Last month Speaker Bowers testified that numerous top Trump allies, and Donald Trump himself, spoke with him after the election in apparent attempts to pressure him to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, a state Joe Biden won. Among those he said spoke with him were Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), according to The New York Times.
“Mr. Bowers also recalled speaking to Mr. Trump, making clear to the president that he ‘wouldn’t do anything illegal for him,’ as one questioner, Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, said,” The Times reported. “Nonetheless, another lawyer advising Mr. Trump, John Eastman, called Mr. Bowers in early January and urged him to schedule a legislative vote to ‘decertify the electors, because we had plenary authority to do so.'”
Speaker Bowers “also told the House select committee about the harassment he experienced outside his home from Trump supporters in the weeks before Jan. 6, 2021, in which he was called a ‘pedophile’ and other epithets.”
The Times described Bowers as speaking “about the Constitution in reverential and spiritual terms,” saying he “had tears in his eyes as he described his gravely ill daughter enduring some of the harassment outside their house. (She died in late January.)”
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The resolution censuring Bowers accuses him of “supporting a bill giving tax payer funded in-state tuition to illegal aliens at our state universities which is a direct violation of the Republican Platform and numerous resolutions passed by the State Committee which oppose policies that promote and reward illegal ‘sanctuary cities’ and lawlessness.”
It also charges that “Bowers joined Democrats to sponsor a one-billion dollar education spending bill (HB 2039.) without a single committee hearing while simultaneously opposing and killing a bill to permanently reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance in our childrens’ schools”
Other charges state: “Bowers was the only Republican opposed to the bill (HB 2294.) establishing that only two genders should be named on all government documents,” and “Bowers sponsored one of the most horrific attacks on the Republican Party Platform plank on religious liberty by sponsoring a bill with Democrats (HB 2802.) that makes sexual orientation and gender identity a protected class forcing public schools and businesses to allow men identifying as women in womens restrooms and locker rooms, removing parental rights preventing parents from identifying the help that their own child may need in accordance with their religious beliefs and a prohibition of religious-based resources on subjects of sexual identity and orientation.”
Before being censured Speaker Bowers, who is now running for the state Senate, said Monday it will take a “miracle” for him to win the election.