Cheney: Arizona GOP candidates a threat

She asserts they have said they would only honor election results they agree with.

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., called Republican candidates for Arizonagovernor a threat to democracy, saying they have said they would not honor results of an election they did not agree with.

Phoenix • Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney on Wednesday said the Republican candidates for Arizona governor and secretary of state pose a huge risk for democracy because both say they will refuse to certify election results if they don’t like the results.

Cheney, a prominent critic of former President Donald Trump and one of just 10 U.S. House Republicans who vot- ed to impeach him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, made the comments at an event organized by the McCain Institute at Arizona State University.

Cheney also leveled broadsides as what she said was a growing “Putin wing” of the Republican Party who want America to withdraw from the world stage and refuse to defend freedom in other countries.

She has spent a lot of time thinking about Arizona and the upcoming elections here.

“In Arizona today you have a candidate for governor in Kari Lake, you have a candidate for Secretary of State in Mark Finchem, both of whom have said — this isn’t a surprise, it’s not a secret — they both said that they will only honor the results of an election if they agree with it,” Cheney told the audience filled with ASU students.

She said both looked at Trump’s 2020 loss in Arizona, and both know that it was carried out following state law, and that there were counts, recounts, audits and court challenges that all went against Trump.

Cheney, who is vice chair of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress and was trounced in Wyoming’s Republican primary as a result of her refusal to back Trump, spoke of what she believes is a wider threat to the nation from a Republican Party that is now fully in Trump’s control.

“The first thing that we have to understand is that we’ve never been where we are,” Cheney said. “We’ve never been in a phase, a place where we’re facing this kind of a threat. And that’s because we’re facing a threat from a former president who is attempting to unravel the Republic.”