He did just that, for more than two hours in an interview with the Guardian this week.

“The thought that if you don’t do what we like, then we will just get rid of you and march on and do it ourselves – that to me is fascism.”Ĭome January, Bowers will no longer be an Arizona politician. He had declined to use his power as leader of the house to invoke an “arcane Arizonan law” – whose text has never been found – that would allow the legislature to cast out the will of 3.4 million voters who had handed victory to Joe Biden and switch the outcome unilaterally to Trump.īowers has a word for that kind of thinking. In Bowers’s case, his assailants in the Arizona Republican party wanted to punish him because he had steadfastly refused to do their, and Trump’s, bidding. The thought that if you don’t do what we like, then we will just get rid of you and march on and do it ourselves – that to me is fascism Rusty Bowers The formerly third most powerful Republican leader in the US Congress had been punished too. Six hours after the Guardian interviewed Bowers, Liz Cheney was similarly ousted in a primary for her congressional seat in Wyoming. But it is also an American story that carries an ominous warning for the entire nation. The Trump acolytes who over the past two years have gained control of the state’s Republican party wanted revenge for the powerful testimony he gave in June to the January 6 hearings in which he revealed the pressure he was put under to overturn Arizona’s election result.

The rival, David Farnsworth, made an unusual pitch to voters: the 2020 presidential election had not only been stolen from Trump, he said, it was satanically snatched by the “devil himself”.īowers was ousted as punishment. Last month he lost his bid to stay in the Arizona legislature in a primary contest in which his opponent was endorsed by Donald Trump. After 18 years as an Arizona lawmaker, the past four as speaker of the state’s house of representatives, he has been unceremoniously shown the door by his own Republican party. He paid the price but has no regrets.He is shown here speaking with attendees at the 2022 Legislative Forecast Luncheon.|| Gage Skidmore Rusty Bowers was speaker of Arizona’s house of representatives when he stood up to the former president’s demand that he overturn the election result.

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