Finchem's Jan. 6 presence a lightning rod at debate with Fontes

PHOENIX — The Republican candidate for secretary of state defended his attendance at the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, saying at a debate that his presence there did not make him a participant.

“The last time I checked, being at a place where something’s happening is not illegal,’’ said Mark Finchem.

During a half-hour televised debate Thursday, Finchem said he went to Washington to deliver a “book of evidence’’ to federal lawmakers about claimed irregularities in the 2020 vote in Arizona, material that came out of a hearing in Phoenix involving attorney Rudy Giuliani and other supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Adrian Fontes, the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, said he does not buy that explanation. He said it shows Finchem was not interested in following the legal procedures to contest election results.

“What he did is engage in a violent insurrection and try to overturn the very Constitution that holds this nation together,’’ Fontes said.

Finchem responded: “For him to assert that I was part of a criminal uprising is absurd and frankly, it is a lie.”

There is no evidence Finchem entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 as Congress was certifying the Electoral College win for Joe Biden.

He was, however, part of the crowd just outside. He posted a photo on Twitter of the rioters, saying this is “what happens when people feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud.’’

He acknowledged he’s been interviewed by the Department of Justice and the Jan. 6 congressional committee, though he said it was as a witness to the events of that day.

Some of Thursday’s debate focused on Finchem’s continued insistence the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Finchem previously said he would not have certified the results if he had been secretary of state. But on Thursday, he dodged the issue.

“There are too many hypotheticals to really answer that question because we didn’t know what we knew after the election until after certification of the canvass occurred,’’ Finchem said. “But knowing what we know today, there are certain counties that should have been set aside as irredeemably compromised,’’ he said, specifically naming Maricopa and Yuma counties.

“We’ve got the evidence,’’ Finchem said. “The media has just refused to look at it.’’

For example, he said there are more than 140,000 ballot images out of Maricopa County that were “allegedly scanned by Dominion equipment’’ that have no audit head stamp. He pointed out that two people have pleaded guilty in Yuma County to “ballot harvesting,’’ including filling out and casting ballots for others. No evidence has been uncovered to show problems large enough to change Trump’s loss in Arizona.

Finchem, however, provided no answer of what he believes should have been done at the time.

“I’m not talking about overturning an election,’’ he said. But he said there needs to be some remedy when an election is “mismanaged,’’ especially if there is evidence it altered the outcome.

Fontes said he sees something else behind the conspiracy theories about the 2020 vote.

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“What we now have is an entire set of fiction that has somehow managed to make a lot of money for some people outside of the regular norms that we expect,’’ he said. “This is a chaotic way of redressing a political loss.’’

But much of the discussion was about who was fit to be not only the state’s chief election officer but also first in the line of succession if the governor leaves office.

“You can decide between community building and stability or conspiracy theories and cantankerousness,’’ Fontes said. And he said the “conspiracy theories and lies’’ advanced by Finchem “end up eroding the faith we have in each other as citizens.’’

Finchem, for his part, pointed out that Fontes, then the Maricopa County recorder, had to be stopped by a judge from pursuing his plan in the 2020 presidential preference primary to send ballots to all voters, regardless of whether or not they had asked for an early ballot.

Fontes was unapologetic. He said he was trying to address the fact that there were people who, due to the COVID pandemic, were afraid to leave their homes.

Finchem also cited problems in the August 2018 primary where some polling places did not open on time.

“In fact, people stood in line for hours,’’ said Finchem. “He was fired by the taxpayers,’’ noting Fontes’ loss in his 2020 bid for reelection.

Finchem, a state legislator from Oro Valley, said the secretary of state should not make law but should follow the laws approved by the Legislature.

He used that to dodge questions about whether he wants to kill early voting, a system that has proven wildly popular, what with close to nine out of every 10 ballots cast in 2020 sent early to voters.

“That is up to the Legislature,’’ he said.

“But you’ve called for that,’’ Fontes interjected.

“What I want doesn’t matter,’’ Finchem responded.

Fontes said if Finchem got his way, the only way to vote would be on Election Day, standing in line at an assigned polling place.

“What if you’re one of Arizona’s hundreds of thousands of older voters, or a disabled veteran?’’ Fontes asked.

Finchem called that a “false choice,’’ saying he supports “absentee votes,’’ like in Tennessee. That state allows ballots to be mailed, but only to people who meet certain conditions such as being 60 or older, being outside the county on Election Day, or being hospitalized or physically disabled.

That is similar to the system Arizona had prior to 1991, when the Republican-controlled Legislature enacted the current “no excuse’’ early voting. A lawsuit by the Arizona Republican Party to scrap that law was dismissed earlier this year.