![]() Lake’s election-denying ticket mate, Abe Hamadeh, lost the Arizona attorney general’s race by 280 votes. They make up most of the Republican freshman class in Congress. Election deniers won races for secretary of state-the post that oversees election administration-in Alabama, Indiana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. That was an encouraging result for democracy, and a balm to many Americans eager for a return to something like political normalcy.īut it was not the whole story. ![]() Enough of them were defeated to mark a salutary trend: Swing voters did not seem to favor blatant, self-serving lies about election fraud. November’s midterm election was the first in the country’s history to feature hundreds of candidates running explicitly as election rejectionists. I’d come to Phoenix to try to understand this moment in American politics. Today, he is a leading defender-in news conferences, in court, and in election oversight-of Arizona’s democratic institutions. In two successive elections, 20, Gates has had to choose: back his party, or uphold the law. ![]() “I’ve done it so many times,” Gates recalled. Based on what law enforcement regarded as a credible death threat, Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone removed Gates and his wife from their home in Phoenix on Election Night and dispatched them to a secure location under guard. In part as a result of her vilification campaign, Gates is stalked on social media, in his inbox and on voicemail, and in public meetings of the board of supervisors. But Lake shares Donald Trump’s dark gift for channeling the rage of her supporters toward violence that is never quite spoken aloud.įrom the January 2021 issue: Barton Gellman on Trump’s next insurrection “I think we’re right there right now, aren’t we?” she said.Īll of that may seem a little beside the point from afar, an inconsequential footnote to a 2022 election season that, mercifully, felt more normal than the last one. “We’re going to burn it to the ground.” Then she lowered her mic and appeared to mouth, with exaggerated enunciation, “Burn the fucker to the ground.” To uproarious applause, she went on to invoke the Second Amendment and the bloody American Revolution against a tyrant. “They are daring us to do something about it,” she said. Speaking to thousands of raucous supporters in Phoenix on December 18, beneath clouds of confetti, Lake denounced “sham elections … run by fraudsters” and singled him out as the figurehead of a corrupt “house of cards.” Months later, she is still anointing herself “the real governor” and saying that election officials who certified her defeat are “crooks” who “need to be locked up.” She reserves special venom for Gates. When we spoke, Kari Lake was still contesting her loss in Arizona’s gubernatorial election. But the fight came to him, like it or not, because the Maricopa County board of supervisors is the election-certification authority for well over half the votes in the state. He shied away from the role when it was first thrust upon him, after the 2020 election, recognizing a threat to his rising career in the GOP. Now 51 years old, he never set out to become a combatant in the democracy wars. “I’m not sure if I want that out there,” he said.Īs a younger politician, not so long ago, Gates had been pleased and flattered to be spotted in public. Did he carry a gun, or keep one at home? Gates started to answer, then stopped. I don’t necessarily want to be recognized.” He made a point of asking me not to describe his house or his car. ![]() “Pretty much every night, I just go home, you know, with my wife, and maybe we pick up food, but I'm purposely not going out right now. He’d agreed to meet for dinner at an outdoor restaurant in the affluent suburb of Scottsdale, Arizona, but when he arrived, he kept his head down and looked around furtively. “I really haven’t gone out anywhere” since well before the election, Bill Gates, the outgoing Republican chair of the Maricopa County board of supervisors, told me in mid-November. T wilight offered welcome concealment when we met at the prearranged hour.
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