Republican Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers has lost his bid for a state Senate seat after refusing former President Donald Trump’s pleas to help overturn the 2020 election results and testifying before Congress about the efforts.
Bowers was trying to move to the state Senate because of term limits but faced an opponent in Tuesday’s GOP primary who criticized him for refusing to help Trump or go along with a contentious 2021 “audit” that Republican leaders in the Senate commissioned.
He lost to former state Sen. David Farnsworth.
Bowers faced an uphill battle in the eastern Phoenix suburb of Mesa, especially after the state Republican Party censured him following his June testimony before the panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.