By Tara Kavaler | Arizona Agenda
Can Republicans have nice things?
We shall see at Saturday’s Arizona Republican Party statutory meeting.
Republicans will elect their next leader at the meeting, and they have two very different choices for the job:
- Current Chairwoman Gina Swoboda, a quietly competent former election officer who has united the party, filled the coffers and helped Republicans secure their first major victories here in eight years.
- Or Cory McGarr, a one-term lawmaker and pest control technician who was the only Republican lawmaker to lose his reelection this November, and the only Republican we know of who thinks the 2024 election was rigged.
By all accounts, the Arizona Republican Party has been more successful under Swoboda than under any chairman in recent history.
President Donald Trump personally drafted Swoboda, then a third vice chair of the party, to replace former AZGOP head Jeff DeWit last year. The state party needed a new leader at the time because Kari Lake had just firebombed DeWit’s political career by leaking an audio recording of him appearing to “bribe” Lake to get out of the U.S. Senate race by offering her a cushy corporate job.