By Corinne Murdock |
The newly-elected chair of the Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP), Gina Swoboda, revealed that GOP leadership plans to sue Secretary of State Adrian Fontes over the Elections Procedures Manual (EPM).
Swoboda dropped the news in an interview with Steve Bannon. She said Fontes’ EPM was “off the rails” and worse than the one produced by his predecessor, now-Gov. Katie Hobbs.
“The legislature’s going to drop a lawsuit this week, the AZGOP’s going to drop the lawsuit this week,” said Swoboda.
Bannon questioned why the lawsuits weren’t dropped earlier, to which Swoboda informed Bannon that the EPM was published on Dec. 30.
On top of discarding Fontes’ EPM, Swoboda revealed that the state party would attempt to get rid of unstaffed drop boxes and implement stricter requirements for signature verification.
“What we can do is get in there now, eliminate the things that are the worst of the gaps in the system: the unmanned drop boxes, the lack of any requirements for signature verification, […] and what’s in this procedure’s manual will blow off the door, so if we thought what we saw before is bad, it’s off the rails,” said Swoboda.
Prior to her election as chair of AZGOP, Swoboda was a deputy registrar for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, the AZGOP Election Integrity Committee chair, and the executive director for an organization that published voter rolls online: Voter Reference Foundation (VRF), a subsidiary of Restoration of America.
Swoboda said that she hadn’t originally planned to run for party chair until she received a call from former President Donald Trump.
Top Democratic lawyer Marc Elias referred to her selection as “a worrying choice,” citing her VRF involvement.
Swoboda rebutted that Elias was “scared” of her.
“I think Marc is scared of me and I think they actually tried to do a lot of damage over the last three days,” said Swoboda. “We need to litigate, we need to protect ourselves from lawfare, that’s how they weakened the system in 2020 and we didn’t see them coming. We know where they are.”
Despite expressing worry over Swoboda, Elias said that he didn’t feel threatened by the prospect of further litigation.
In order to engage in that lawfare against Elias and others, Swoboda said the party required more funding. Swoboda disclosed that the AZGOP was “broke” and that there were financial unknowns dating back to a year regarding the party’s profits and losses. Swoboda said that the party was “running on fumes.”
“If I can’t litigate, I can’t protect us,” said Swoboda. “We’ve got to take it to them, we can’t sit here and wait and then try to flail about when it’s too late and it’s already started. We’ve got to do it now, we’re bringing it now, but we need support to do it.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
