"I love the smell of Arizona Republicans fighting in the morning, or any goddamn time, for that matter ... smells like a Democratic victory."
Chapter One, In Which Kelli Ward Leaves Jeff DeWit a Bag of Shit
Whoo-eee, there’s ugly shit a-brewin’ in Arizona Republican circles, as if it wasn’t already ugly enough at our Republican Legislature, where phobias with a touch of cruelty go to find a bill sponsor. The once wealthy, united, influential AZGOP is sucking MAGA fumes, and it’s been a hoot to watch. Like they say, whatever Trump touches dies. Even he wants to steer clear of the AZGOP mess; his planned trip to Arizona this week was cancelled after Kari Lake helped blow up the internets.
This kerfuffle starts in 2013-15 when Kelli Ward was a State Senator representing northwestern Arizona, i.e., Trump country, and she was head cheerleader. She was so bonkers, forever caught in conspiracy webs, that she earned the nickname “Chemtrail Kelli.” It was her levelheaded policies, like fear mongering about Obama’s helicoptered thugs, that made her the ideal candidate to run for the 2016 Republican Senate primary against John McCain, who had been caught too much for Trump, even that once, and was despised by the far-far-right wing of Arizona’s GOP, Kelli Ward’s wing—the boobs we used to laugh at, but now they had their president. Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes was in town before the election talking about how “McCain should be hung.” Ward’s people. She lost that race, even Arizona isn’t that nuts, then she lost again to Martha McSally in the 2018 Senate primary.
With that accomplished resume, a conspiracy boob who loses elections and pisses off half the Party with her MAGA nuttery on steroids, Ward was the perfect person to become AZGOP Chair in 2019, where she continued her remarkable run: Trump lost Arizona in 2020, freaking out the Fox bobbleheads, while some big donors were allergic to Ward’s polarizing nastiness, especially after her “Stop the Steal” BS went high octane, and the Party lost gobs of money. Most impressively, Ward, along with Trump’s endorsement, managed to lose four statewide races in 2022: Governor, US Senator, Secretary of State, and Attorney General. Good job, Kelli!
Ward was so much in the tank for Trump in 2020 that she helped steer every one of the local election-reversal schemes outlined in the Jan. 6 Report. She directed and participated in the fake elector ploy, filed lawsuits for Trump (all dismissed), campaigned for the Maricopa County “audit” catastrophe (a Trump project, not a local undertaking as it was sold), pushed false flag conspiracies about Jan. 6, and probably had more than a few phone conversations with two of the riot’s planners—Arizona Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs. Jack Smith has her phone records. Given what we know about the Gosar-Biggs-Ward triangle, which is damning but nothing compared to what the Special Counsel knows, stuff’s gonna drop.
With this illustrious record, one that’s only going to get better as Jack Smith digs deeper into Arizona’s role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, where he’ll find Kelli Ward at every junction, she was asked not to run for Party Chair again in 2023. Nearly every day brought news of Republican infighting (it gets better!), so Ward must’ve known she couldn’t win and did not run. The former chief operating officer for Trump in 2016 and 2020, Jeff DeWit, beat a Patriot Party goober who thought the Republicans were too liberal.
Chapter Two, In Which Jeff DeWit Makes the Mistake of Trusting Kari Lake
“He walked into a very difficult situation with a party that is, right now, literally ungovernable” — Robert Graham, former AZGOP Chair
“Ungovernable” is putting it nicely. DeWit, who Trump named NASA’s chief financial officer during his one and only term, was brought in to raise money and unite Arizona’s fractured Republican party. He’s had some success at the first job, but meanwhile three out of four of the 2022 losers are still in court filing meaningless lawsuits, and people are fed the fuck up with their narcissistic shenanigans. Then Kari Lake’s trying to play nice with the McCain voters she pissed off majorly, who she needs for her Senate race, saying how she’s really a moderate, not an extremist, but her new streaming show, which makes Newsmax announcers look like the Murrow boys, will win over exactly no Republican moderates or Independents. She’s Bannon with an out-of-focus background.
Jeff DeWit and some “Republican power brokers in Washington, D.C.” had had enough of Lake’s never-ending grift, the increasingly negative press, her seeming inability to talk about anything other than stolen elections, and the political losses racked up by Lake and other MAGA extremists, who mainstream Republicans wanted gone. DeWit didn’t think Lake would do well against Democrat Ruben Gallego in the Senate race (go, help), and so he wanted her to go to her time-out corner for a couple years. He actually asked, and Lake recorded it.
So earlier this week Kari Lake released the recording of the conversation she had with DeWit, which was almost a year old. When asked why she waited ten months to release it, Lake didn’t say, but she probably waited till she could do the most damage, like a week before the AZGOP annual meeting on Jan. 27. At the time of the conversation, which took place in her house, Lake was working as a communications consultant for a political campaign company Jeff DeWit ran. So, she’s working for the guy she’s hoodwinking. Roll the tape:
DeWit tells Lake in the recording that "powerful people" don't want her to run for Senate and asked her to consider taking their suggestion for a job and a two-year "pause."
DeWit offers Lake a cushy job to STFU and stay out of 2024, and then he all but offers her a cash bribe to stay away, but she says she can’t be bought, and I guess their relationship kinda goes south after that.
‘Just say, is there a number at which....' he begins.
Lake cut in: 'I can be bought? That's what it's about.'
'You can take a pause for a couple of years. You can go right back to what you're doing.'
Lake repeatedly rebuffs him and says she wouldn't do it for a billion dollars.
And here I thought she learned from Trump. He’d do it for a billion, probably less. But Lake knew the tape was running, so there’s that. She not only released the recording to the Daily Mail, even worse for Jeff DeWit, she threatened to release a “new, more damaging recording” unless DeWit resigned as AZGOP Chair. Mission accomplished:
Jeff DeWit resigned as chairman of the Arizona Republican Party a day after Kari Lake, the front-runner to be the GOP’s nominee for the U.S. Senate, released an audio recording in which the party leader dangled a job to keep her out of the race.
DeWitt said he doesn’t know what the “more damaging recording” could be, but he’s not taking chances (I guess there’s something), so he stepped down. Former AZGOP Chair Robert Graham said Lake might’ve gotten rid of Jeff DeWitt in order to consolidate MAGA’s dominance, but he was “shocked” that she took this step because it will forever “damage her ability to work with people going forward,” as if she had any ability left.
DeWit said Lake recording and then sharing a private conversation at her home was an “ethical breach” that certainly calls into question her morals. Take a number. He said he obviously said things he regrets, but he now thinks Lake set up him.
“I believe she orchestrated this entire situation to have control over the state party, and it is obvious from the recording that she crafted her performance responses with the knowledge that she was recording it, intending to use this recording later to portray herself as a hero in her own story,” he said.
I’m shocked! … to think Kari Lake might resort to dirty tricks to gain power. Kari Lake’s people said Kari Lake did not set him up and Kari Lake always tells the truth. Trump sez.
No one has stepped up to steer the party, which former AZGOP Chair Graham now calls “rudderless” as the 2024 election nears. It’s worse than that, Graham, the boat sank. Kelli Ward is available I hear.
