Republican state Sen. Shawnna Bolick
appears to have fended off a far-right contender who is seeking his
third different elected office since 2020.
Bolick holds a nearly 10-point lead over her opponent, local businessman Josh Barnett, according to preliminary results.
Bolick was appointed to the Arizona
Senate in July 2023 to serve out the remainder of Sen. Steve Kaiser’s
term after the Phoenix Republican abruptly resigned following the high-profile failure of an affordable housing reform package he had championed.
Bolick previously served as a state
representative for the same district, which covers much of northern
Phoenix, from 2019 to 2023. In 2022, she ran Arizona Secretary of State
and finished third out of four candidates in the GOP primary.
Barnett, an avid conspiracy theorist
and election denier, was one of two other Republicans nominated as a
potential replacement for Kaiser. This marks the third consecutive
election cycle in which the QAnon follower has lost bids for elected
office; he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2020 and 2022.
Bolick herself is no stranger to election denialism. In 2021, she authored legislation that would have allowed lawmakers to override the presidential choice of Arizona voters with a simple majority — something Republicans have held in the state legislature for decades.
This year, despite a staunch pro-life
stance, Bolick made headlines for being one of just two GOP state
senators to vote with Democrats to repeal a near-total abortion ban from 1864.
Bolick, in a nearly 30-minute floor speech,
shared how she had undergone a dilation & curettage procedure when
one of her pregnancies was deemed unviable. The procedure is often used
to both treat miscarriages as well as perform abortions, and Bolick said
she was concerned allowing the territorial-era law to stand could
jeopardize care for women facing difficult pregnancy complications like
she did.
During her speech, she made clear,
however, that her opposition to the 1864 law is not an indication of
support for abortions or the abortion rights initiative headed for the
November ballot. Later, Bolick voted to send a summary of the Arizona
Abortion Access Act to voters that includes the phrase “unborn human
being” in the first sentence. The campaign behind the initiative filed a lawsuit
against that language, and Bolick, along with the rest of the
GOP-majority legislative panel that voted to approve it, vowed to appeal
a recent ruling that found it to be unlawful.
Bolick’s husband, Arizona Supreme
Court Justice Clint Bolick, was one of four justices who drafted the
ruling that reinstated the 1864 near-total abortion ban. A campaign to
unseat two of those four justices facing retention in November,
including Clint Bolick, quickly emerged. GOP lawmakers responded by
approving a ballot measure that gives Arizona judges lifetime
appointments, and Bolick drew criticism when she supported the referral.
This article was originally published by a www.tucsonsentinel.com . Read the Original article here. .