Newly-elected chair of the Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) Gina Swoboda joined Thursday’s edition of The Afternoon Addiction with Garret Lewis on KFYI to discuss why she was reluctant at first to run as the AZGOP chair, explaining how a call from former President Donald Trump ultimately changed her mind.
“It was impossible to say no,” Swoboda said. “It was surreal. I think any one of us when called upon to serve is going to serve.”
Swoboda went on to detail her prior plan to run for the position of national committeewoman for the Republican National Committee (RNC) in Arizona, citing a specific incident in a prior election cycle where she could have used the authority as a committeewoman to possibly stop election fraud.
“I would have deferred to have continued with the life that I was living – I was going to run for RNC committeewoman because I wanted to make sure that I had standing if I’m in the war room on election night and I see things like ballot-on-demand printers are not functioning and 7:30 in the morning, I know 65 percent of the locations are down and I start to agitate everybody in the room, saying, ‘Let’s go to court to keep the polls open, let’s go to court to keep the polls open.’ That went on for eight, nine hours. They didn’t go to court to keep the polls open until 6:30 at night. They got in there, and what did the judge say? He said, ‘It’s laches, you should have come earlier this morning.” I could have fried everyone to a crisp that was in the room,’ Swoboda explained. “So I said, “Okay, I’m going to run for RNC committeewoman.” The current RNC committeewoman is retiring for the position, and I was going to run. That’s what I was going to do.”
Noting her work as executive director of the Voter Reference Foundation, Swoboda said she was resistant to running for AZGOP chair at first, however, changed her mind once she received a call from former President Trump, who not only urged her to run, but endorsed her.
“I run my voter reference foundation, I publish the voter rolls online. I do voter maintenance across the country. And so I had no intention of doing this, and quite frankly for three days I was like, ‘No, I’m not the one, I’m sure there’s somebody else that could do this.’ And then this huge blessing comes and the President of the United States calls me,” Swoboda said. “So yes, of course I’m going to serve, it’s an honor to serve, it’s a privilege to serve. And the fact that a majority of those state committeemen have the confidence in me is an incredible blessing. I’m going to fight with everything I have and we are going to win. There is no other option than winning. So I’m not going to hesitate, I’m going to put everything I have into it.”
“God, look I used to joke about it, but He made me this super nerd for this one thing. Like, I read procedure manuals for fun…I am that boring. My husband is so happy that there are other people that want to listen to me talk about this after 20 years of yammering away about things that are going on…I am all in, I am all in to win and that is what we’re going to do,” Swoboda added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Gina Swoboda” by Gina Swoboda. Background Photo “Arizona Capitol” by David Jiang. CC BY-SA 4.0.
