Election integrity champion Gina Swoboda was elected chair of the Arizona Republican Party on Saturday, prompting negative coverage from the mainstream media. Endorsed by both Donald Trump and Kari Lake, she won the election in a landslide over another MAGA conservative, Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor, but The New York Times portrayed the election as chaotic and evidence of the party’s “yawning ideological divide.”
The article said Swoboda “runs a nonprofit group that has falsely claimed to have found huge discrepancies in voting records in a number of states.” The article linked to a piece by ProPublica which reported on the work of Swoboda’s Voter Reference Foundation (VoteRef). VoteRef discovered discrepancies between the number of voters and the number of ballots cast in numerous states. ProPublica cited objections to the report from several election officials as evidence the work was invalid.
However, at least three judicial decisions from the 2020 election have recognized this as a problem and addressed it. In Daunt v. Benson, a lawsuit was filed in Michigan over inaccurate voter rolls. In response to the lawsuit, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson agreed to perform the same function VoteRef performs — making the voter data available for people to examine and find discrepancies. In a press release, Benson said she would make “publicly available the list of approximately 177,000 voter registrations slated for cancellation because the state has reason to believe the voter has moved away from the registration address. … To ensure that voters who still live at their registered address have an additional opportunity to prior to cancellation, enabling voters and civic groups to review the list and notify local clerks of any list errors or registrations that should be updated rather than canceled.”
Similarly, Judicial Watch successfully sued the state of Colorado over its inaccurate voter rolls. In Judicial Watch v. Griswold, Secretary of State Jenna Griswold entered into a settlement with Judicial Watch agreeing to provide them with public data from a federal survey on an annual basis for the next five years so the group could monitor the voter rolls for ineligible voters.
In PILF v. Boockvar, a lawsuit filed against the state of Pennsylvania for failure to maintain accurate and current voter rolls, the state agreed to compare its full voter registration database against the Cumulative Social Security Death Index in order to identify dead voters, and direct all county election commissions to remove the names of dead voters.
Next, the Times article said Lake was met by boos, citing a post on X by Arizona Republic reporter Yvonne Wingett, who is known for inaccurate reporting and writing fawning pieces like “Arizona official targeted by election deniers now struggles with PTSD,” a 3,700 word interview with Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates, an election fraud denier known for his angry attacks on voters concerned about illegal election activity.
Wingett posted a video clip of the crowd booing, but failed to provide context. The crowd began booing when Lake said, “The elections in Arizona are a corrupt mess.” Instead, Wingett merely said, “Interesting reaction by AZGOP to Kari Lake.” Some attendees told The Arizona Sun Times that they did believe there was booing of Lake at some point, from the slightly over 400 who voted for O’Connor. Swoboda received over 1,000 votes.
The article said the booing was in response to a leaked recording of a conversation between Lake and newly-resigned chair Jeff DeWit. DeWit, who served as COO of Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, was forced out last week due to the recording, which revealed he attempted to pay Lake to keep her out of politics. However, the reaction to the recording has been overwhelmingly positive, with the grassroots glad to find out how maneuvers are done in secret in order to keep the “McCain wing” in power. Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas told The Sun Times, “The massive payola we long suspected flowed beneath the surface in Arizona apparently has been exposed at last.”
The Times article claimed that “Republican strategists said the move leaves an already divided party organization in disarray just as the campaign season is ramping up,” and DeWit’s resignation “revealed the depths of the party’s yawning ideological divide.” However, it only quoted Barrett Marson, long known for his moderate views and criticism of conservative Republicans, and a moderate pollster, Mike Noble.
Sources told The Sun Times that the lack of any non-MAGA candidate for chair showed that Republicans are unified around the MAGA base. Swoboda directed election-day integrity operations in Arizona for Trump in 2020.
The Times article admitted that DeWit “was seen as one of the few Republicans capable of bridging the gap between the state party organization’s hard-right majority and a minority that acknowledges Mr. Trump’s dominance but argues that highlighting more extreme positions is a losing proposition in elections.”
The Times article claimed that “Swoboda joins a contingent of far-right Trump supporters who have steadily increased their control of the party’s finances and policies, forcing aside less extreme Trump backers in the Republican Party’s old guard.” However, the only other option for chair was O’Connor — no “less extreme Trump backers” were forced aside. The article refused to admit that the AZGOP is unified backing MAGA.
Finally, the article failed to point out that even moderate Republicans appeared to accept Swoboda, who has worked in state government and knows many of the players. Karrin Taylor Robson, a moderate who was defeated in the gubernatorial primary in 2022 by Lake, posted on X, “Congratulations to my friend @GinaSwoboda! Gina is a true conservative fighter & I’m thrilled to welcome her to the helm of our State Party! It’s now time for ALL Republicans to unite & focus on beating Biden, Ruben Gallego & the Democrats in the state legislature in November.”
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Gina Swoboda” by Gina Swoboda.
