Tim Steller's opinion: Path to Jan. 6 came from Arizona, circled back

They were the object of ridicule in late 2020.

Some Arizona Republicans would not accept Donald Trump’s defeat in the presidential election. So they held a big public meeting in Phoenix Nov. 30. And the state GOP certified its own slate of electors on Dec. 14, the same day the state’s official electoral votes were cast for Joe Biden.

One Arizona Republic columnist wrote mockingly: “On Monday, the state GOP’s 11 fake electors met, as required by no one, and cast their nonexistent votes for Trump, as required by their desperate need to continue to live in fantasyland.”

It felt like a joke at the time to me, too. But what seemed pitiful then seems sinister in retrospect and continues to endanger our democratic system going forward. It’s the attempt by an electoral minority, propelled by a profound sense of grievance, to seize power they feel they deserve though they could not win it.

State Rep. Mark Finchem, the Oro Valley Republican, embodies that powerful persecution complex, as well as its potential. He hosted the Nov. 30 meeting that featured Rudy Giuliani and other members of the small group that propelled the Big Lie forward in December 2020, consulting with the White House and ultimately helping to foment the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Among that cabal’s key strategies, we now know, was this: Have the state parties or legislatures propose alternative slates of electors. Congress could then reject the certified election results and consider alternative electors.

John Eastman, a lawyer advising the Trump team, laid out the strategy for the Jan. 6, 2021, meeting of Congress in a now-infamous memo:

“1. VP Pence, presiding over the joint session (or Senate Pro Tempore Grassley, if Pence recuses himself), begins to open and count the ballots, starting with Alabama (without conceding that the procedure, specified by the Electoral Count Act, of going through the States alphabetically is required).

“2. When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.

“3. At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of ‘electors appointed’ — the language of the 12th Amendment — is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe. A ‘majority of the electors appointed’ would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.”

To a significant degree, Arizona brought the country Jan. 6. Finchem promoted and attended events at the Capitol Jan. 5 and 6, though he says he did not break any laws there, and U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs worked with event organizer Ali Alexander, as Alexander has said.

Trump, president at the time, heralded those who attended his Jan. 6 speech before the march to the Capitol as “real people” — as if the tens of millions of Americans who voted against him were fake.

“They try and demean everybody having to do with us,” he said. “And you’re the real people, you’re the people that built this nation. You’re not the people that tore down our nation.”

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

But then they did tear things down. On Twitter that afternoon, Finchem celebrated the people entering Capitol grounds as “What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud.”

In the Capitol, shortly before members of Congress were evacuated, Gosar asked Pence not to accept Arizona’s electors.

“Remand the slate back to the governor with the following instructions,” he said. “Until a full and complete electoral forensic audit is allowed by the secretary of state, the electors currently certified will not be counted.”

Soon, hell broke loose.

Among the first 377 people arrested for acts at the Capitol that day, most were not members of big right-wing groups like the Oath Keepers, a group that Finchem has belonged to. Nor were they emissaries from Trump strongholds nationwide. Nor were they unemployed or desperate.

The University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats analyzed that group of arrestees and found most were white, male, employed and came from counties either won by Biden or closely contested. The most outstanding demographic feature of those counties is that they are places where the white population is declining fastest compared to the nonwhite population.

It all might have ended on Jan. 6, ignominiously, as a shameful and failed effort to thwart the will of the American people as a whole.

But instead, the action picked back up in Arizona. Motivated by calls from Republican constituents, state Senate President Karen Fann agreed to a review of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County. That subset of Americans that Trump called “real people” had seized control of the story again.

It turned out to be exactly the pointless and polarizing experience that was predicted. The self-proclaimed experts Finchem had called together in Phoenix in November floundered as they attempted something they did not have the expertise to achieve: an election audit.

Still, the process did achieve one thing. While polls have found most Americans believe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, most Republicans do not. And they continue to govern Arizona.

So now at least we can see that all this is neither comical nor pitiful. It’s simply dangerous — an effort by a disappointed and aggrieved minority to seize power even if it means destroying our democratic system.