There’s some irony for ya.
Recently reelected Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward, who enthusiastically boosted ex-President Donald Trump’s bogus “Stop the Steal” scheme and tried to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in her state, now finds her own election results being called into question.
Sergio Arellano, one of Ward’s challengers who lost by a razor-thin margin of 42 votes in the election on Saturday, is pushing for an audit of the results after a candidate for Arizona’s 8th Congressional District’s member-at-large committee, who was initially declared the winner of her race, was later told that she had lost after an error was detected.
Arellano stated in a Facebook post early Thursday morning that his request was about ensuring “election integrity,” not undoing the race results.
“I fully expect any audit to confirm the results that were announced at the State Meeting,” he said.
However, the error in the district race “created an environment where a number of state committeemen are raising concerns and asking me to ask for an audit because only a candidate for party office can do so,” the former candidate added.
Kim Owens, Arellano’s spokesperson, told AZ Central that “[w]ith the absence of the tapes from the machines or any documentation of where votes came from, and in most races, a lack of numbers, of tallies, we need to see evidence that everything is as it should be.”
The state party did not respond to TPM’s request for comment.
Ward was one of Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers in his crusade against the 2020 election results. The GOP leader regularly parroted false claims alleging “abnormalities” in the race and attempted to bring a bogus lawsuit in front of the Supreme Court that aimed to throw out ballots.
The Arizona GOP has gone hard for Trump under Ward’s leadership to the point where its Twitter account asked if supporters were willing to “die” for the then-president amid his effort to overturn the election.
