MAGA candidates keep losing in Arizona. Andy Biggs is out to break the trend

By Steve Contorno, CNN

Gilbert, Arizona (CNN) — Rep. Andy Biggs, the leading Republican candidate for Arizona governor, likes to tell supporters about the time he teamed up with the late Sen. John McCain to pass a law that helped American Indian tribes send alerts when children go missing.

It’s a line in his stump speech that would be unremarkable if not for how other recent Republican hopefuls in Arizona treated the iconic senator’s legacy.

Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor in 2022, famously encouraged McCain Republicans to “get the hell out” of one of her campaign events. That same year, Senate nominee Blake Masters declared it was “not (McCain’s) Republican Party in Arizona anymore.” Both lost.

Biggs’ embrace of McCain offers an early glimpse into how he intends to navigate one of the central challenges he faces if Republicans nominate him for Arizona governor in Tuesday’s primary election, as expected. A hardline conservative endorsed by President Donald Trump and a central figure in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, Biggs carries similarities with recent MAGA stalwarts who energized the Republican base — and were ultimately rejected by a majority of Arizona voters.

Whether Biggs can convince voters he’s a different kind of Trump Republican than Lake and Masters could determine if the GOP can unseat Gov. Katie Hobbs, the country’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbent, or if it extends the party’s string of narrow defeats in one of the nation’s premier battleground states.

“I don’t believe Arizona is a blue state or even a purple state. It is a red state,” Biggs told CNN Friday as he shook hands with supporters at a get-out-the-vote rally. “We just have to remind people.”

At the very least, the state is a redder shade of purple, with about 300,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats. Operatives on both sides of the aisle believe the state leans to the right, and Trump’s 6.5-point victory here two years ago — his largest margin among the seven battleground states — gives Republicans reason for optimism.

But Lake also lost a Senate bid in that same election, an outcome that deepened the frustration of Republicans who have watched their power diminish in a state they long dominated. It also underscored the existence of potentially hundreds of thousands of ticket splitters up for grab this November in a state where 1-in-3 voters aren’t registered to a political party.

Rep. David Schweikert, who is running against Biggs in Tuesday’s primary, has argued Republicans can’t afford to gamble on another Trump-backed MAGA warrior. Schweikert has repeatedly won one of Arizona’s most competitive congressional districts and says he would bring that track record into a general election likely to be decided by the state’s growing bloc of independent voters.

During the race’s lone debate last month, he posed a question directly to Republicans watching at home.

“Are you tired of losing?”

A long conservative record, for better or worse

On stage, Biggs doesn’t project as the kind of firebrand Lake became during her campaigns. A former local television anchor, Lake regularly generated headlines with bombastic statements that raised eyebrows even within her own party. Nor is he as outspoken as Masters, a venture capitalist who carried into the campaign a trail of unapologetically strident and controversial views that dogged his Senate bid.

A lawyer and a 67-year-old grandfather, Biggs is a Fox News regular who rarely uses oratorical flourishes. His voice is typically measured; his rhetoric comparatively unprovocative.

“He’s no Kari Lake and that does cut both ways,” said Barrett Marson, a veteran GOP strategist in Arizona. “The coverage of her wasn’t positive, but sometimes getting your name out there is half the battle. Biggs barely commands the local TV stations. He’s unexciting.”

Marson, though, added: “But also unlike Kari, he’s a true conservative, and he has a long record, sometimes to his detriment.”

As the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Biggs has served as one of Trump’s most reliable allies while also regularly frustrating House leadership with his hardline positions. Before joining Congress, he spent 14 years in the state legislature, where he earned a reputation as one of the state’s most conservative lawmakers.

That record has endeared him to voters in his ruby-red district, and it helped him secure the backing of Turning Point, the youth-focused political organization founded by the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Before he was killed last September, Kirk personally backed Biggs and his group, based in the Phoenix area, has vowed to put its political muscle behind the congressman, including a ballot-chasing operation that helped Trump win in 2024. Biggs has touted Kirk’s support in television advertisements.

Tyler Bowyer, who leads Turning Point’s political arm, said its operation wouldn’t be as effective behind another nominee.

“You have to have a candidate that the grassroots wants to support,” Bowyer said, “and we have that in Andy.”

His primary opponents have tried to convince Republican voters that Biggs’ history makes him unelectable. One candidate, Scott Neely, has published a list of times Biggs opposed “legislation to protect sexual abuse survivors,” including his House committee vote against subpoenaing the Epstein files. In campaign mailers, Schweikert has criticized Biggs for appearing alongside College Republicans United, a far-right group for young conservatives, and the Proud Boys, a white nationalist militia group.

Schweikert, however, has lacked the resources to consistently air that message on television, nor has he aggressively challenged Biggs on the campaign trail. Other candidates have failed to gain traction.

Biggs, meanwhile, has emphasized less contentious legislation from his career, highlighting not only his work with McCain, but also with former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat-turned-independent, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Ro Khanna, the California progressive. He has focused his attack on Hobbs, criticizing her frequent use of the veto and accusing her of not working with lawmakers to address rising costs.

“I’ve demonstrated that you can be a conservative, a principled conservative, and get things done,” he told his supporters Friday.

Some in the crowd groaned at the mention of Khanna. But they’re also eager for a candidate who can succeed where Lake did not.

“God bless her but we’re just ready for something new,” said Mickie Martinez, a substitute teacher from Gilbert. “It’s time.”

One person remains notably opposed to the Arizona Republican Party’s recent direction: McCain’s widow, Cindy. She and their son Jimmy are scheduled to host a pair of fundraisers for Hobbs in September.

An election denier in charge?

Hobbs has already spent months positioning her reelection bid toward winning independent voters. She has spent $7 million on campaign ads since May with a centrist message largely focused on affordability and reintroducing herself to Arizonians.

With Biggs on the cusp of winning the nomination, she and Democrats are preparing to remind Arizona voters of his record. At a campaign stop Monday in Phoenix, Hobbs noted Biggs’ opposition to Medicaid expansion in Arizona, his past statements on abortion and his role in helping Trump stop the certification of the election.

The House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol reported that Biggs urged Trump not to concede and tried to organize Republican lawmakers in the state to support a pro-Trump slate of electors. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Biggs was among a handful of Republicans who asked Trump for a pardon for their role in halting the certification of the election. Biggs has repeatedly denied the claim.

“If Andy Biggs becomes governor, Arizona will be the first swing state with an election denier in charge,” said Hobbs, who oversaw the 2020 election as Arizona secretary of state at the time. “And the time to stop that is not 2028. It is right now.”

Biggs told CNN he is satisfied with the people now running elections in Maricopa County, the state’s largest county and the focal point of the right’s conspiratorial attacks on the election. Asked if he thinks questions about the 2020 election should be debated this fall, Biggs told CNN: “I’m looking forward.”

“I think we will have a great election,” he added.

His supporters, though, aren’t ready to move on. A local elected leader who spoke before Biggs at Friday’s rally notably said Hobbs was “named” — not elected — governor in 2022. One attendee, Ed Runge, said Republicans have lost recent statewide contests because of “the elephant in the room — the integrity of the elections.”

Runge said he still had “his doubts” about whether Lake and Masters lost. Multiple reviews and audits of the 2022 and 2024 elections have affirmed the results.

Nor has Trump stopped talking about the 2020 election, as reflected by his recent national address and his calls on Congress to overhaul election systems and require proof of citizenship to vote.

More attention could be brought to the issue if Biggs is joined on the ticket by state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, a lawyer who represented several high-profile efforts to challenge Arizona’s 2020 election results and is running for secretary of state. He faces Gina Swoboda, the former executive director the Arizona Republican Party who has Trump’s support but hasn’t fixated on past elections.

It’s unclear, though, if Hobbs will attempt to confront Biggs directly on this history. Hobbs declined to debate Lake in 2022 before narrowly defeating her and would not commit Monday to debating Biggs this fall.

“There’s plenty of time to talk about that in the coming weeks,” Hobbs told CNN.

Biggs’ campaign said he would welcome a debate.

The-CNN-Wire
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