PHOENIX — As Republicans in Arizona’s largest county gathered earlier this month, the routine task of choosing new party leadership and setting priorities for the year ahead devolved into chaos.
Assembled inside a megachurch, longtime local party leaders beseeched the crowd of hundreds to mark their choices on ballots and trust machines to count them. Some in the crowd, suspicious of the accuracy of the equipment, demanded their votes be counted by hand.
For about two hours, they fought over which method was the right one. Some jumped out of their seats and waved their arms in dismay as they demanded hand counts. Others hissed and screamed. From the stage, a party leader shouted back as she struggled to maintain control.
Just a few months ago, Arizona Republicans lost nearly every major statewide midterm race after campaigning for months on false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. That was not always a winning strategy in Arizona or in many other states, but many Republican leaders and their supporters here are still clinging to election-fraud falsehoods, refusing to acknowledge that their candidates lost and resisting attempts to lessen the extreme divisions in the state.
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