Thread by @jellen805

A mini history re: AZ Senate Seat Politics:
McCain was an AZ Senator for 31 yrs over 5 terms.
In 2015 he was primary challenged by Dr. Kelli Ward, an AZ State Senator and tea party fav.
In a surprisingly brutal primary, where McCain poured HUGE 💰 into, he won. (Did he?🤔)

McCain was re-elected Nov 2016. In early 2017, Sen. Jeff Flake looking at his own re-election 2018, it was ugly.
A vocal Never Trumper, MAGA hated Flake and
the Dems finally saw an opportunity to flip a long coveted seat.

Kelli Ward having come close to primarying McCain previously, declared in Oct of '16 her intent to primary Flake for his seat. That looked like the slate: Ward/Flake
Then, in mid July '17: McCain's office released the announcement of his diagnosis with aggressive brain cancer.

Although the "when" was only certain for one, both of AZ's Senate seats were going to be open sooner than anticipated.
To say the McCain machine and AZ Dems sprung into action would be an understatement. What we didn't clearly know then was how closely their goals would align.

By late Oct '17 Flake's teams internals were so dismal, he announced he would not be seeking a second term. From then on there was one goal, to squeeze out the very popular front runner in the GOP, Kelli Ward. The McCain camp doubled down on their "she's crazy" efforts and...

Encouraged multiple other candidates into the primary, to flood the zone. By mid Jan '18 both "The Sheriff" as he calls himself, Arpaio and Martha McSally a fighter pilot Vet Congressperson from Tucson were in the race, along with several other local names.

The play worked, with both Arpaio and McSally in the race, Ward couldn't succeed in the primary, mostly because of the % that went for Arpaio and McSally was selected to confront the chosen one from AZ Dems: Krysten Sinema

In an oddly familiar process, McSally easily won the Senate seat on election day in 2018. But the counting drug on for 3 weeks after election day and after signature corrections were allowed, and newly invented emergency voting stations ballots counted, it was Sinema who won!

Something that struck me as odd then, besides the fact that the counting was taking weeks when it hadn't been that way before, was how the AZGOP just shrugged and said, "Oh well" and other than a 3rd party strongly worded "report" did nothing about it. Was that a test run?

Now, I've skipped a head a bit because 2018 was a busy year for AZ Senate politics. In late June, Justice Kennedy announced his retirement from SCOTUS. In early July, POTUS nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace him. Then Aug 25, McCain lost his battle with glioblastoma.

A SCOTUS confirmation battle and an open R seat in the Senate were a conundrum. The speculation was rampant in the AZGOP and negotiations were furious with the public strongly behind Gov Doug Ducey appointing Kelli Ward.
But the McCains wouldn't hear of it.

In a move to buy time, Gov Ducey persuaded former Senator Jon Kyl to the position on a temporary basis. Sen Kyl in fact stepped in as the sherpa taking Kavanaugh on his rounds to meet the various Senators prior to his confirmation hearings. Well, we all remember what came next.

When Kyl announced his retirement from that seat at the end of 2018, Ducey appointed Martha McSally to the seat. To many it seemed reasonable, she was the other candidate in the recent race and barely lost to Sinema.

In January of 2019, in a stunning upset, the AZ GOP delegates voted Dr Kelli Ward Chairwoman. That was the beginning of the changes and indeed the split that has become so very obvious post our Nov election. This Chair has the people's interests in mind, not the previous machines

So here we are today, with McSally having lost a winnable Senate race to her D challenger flipping both seats since 2018. AZ is one of 6 contested states, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors have been subpoenaed by the State Senate, court cases are ongoing...

...and the people are still demanding an audit of the machines and the ballots, use of sharpies, the sudden change to polling places vs precinct polls as we'd had for 30+years. Since Nov 3 we've been given one thing though: a clear vision of who is for the rigged system...

...and who is fighting against it. If we're successful, we'll have purged the self interested and those who have rolled in foreign funds from our state. There are many who are fighting the fight.
One of them is @Kelliward for which I'm thankful./

@Kelliward Addendum: Adrian Fontes outgoing Maricopa Cty Recorder is who "invented" emergency voting centers in 2018, plus the "signature curing" for select voters to nail Sinema's seat. He was just voted out. But look, he's to show Pima County how to cheat better now.