2020 election denier wins GOP primary for secretary of state in Arizona

Alexander Kolodin just won a primary to become the person in charge of running Arizona's elections, and the first line of his résumé is that he's a lawyer who tried to overturn the last one. That's not a smear, it's just the record. He fought to contest 2020, drew a state bar complaint over it, and Republican primary voters looked at all that and decided he was the guy for secretary of state anyway. Say what you want about the wisdom of it, but that's the party speaking, not some outside force imposing him.

Here's the thing conservatives should sit with: this isn't really about Kolodin personally. It's about what Arizona Republicans have decided matters more than administrative competence when picking an election chief. If the case for him is "he'll fight harder for our side," that's a worse argument than it sounds, because the job isn't supposed to have a side. Fontes is going to run against him as Exhibit A for "election denial," and he'll have real material to work with, not just vibes.

We'd rather see the party nominate people who can win the argument about 2020 without needing to relitigate it every time they're on a ballot. Arizona is close enough that this race will be decided by independents who are exhausted by 2020 as a topic, not energized by it. Kolodin may be a sharp attorney and a capable legislator. But handing him the keys to the state's voting machinery, given exactly what he's known for, is a gamble Republicans didn't have to take.