Back in Arizona, Bowers has long been known for being unusual, ready to fight the increasingly extreme elements of his own party – sometimes with hefty layoffs or cunning showmanship.
Earlier this year, for example, instead of simply working on a bill that would give the state legislature the power to reject future election results, Bowers used a vague procedural maneuver to kill him: he assigned it to 12 committees at once.
At the time, Arizona journalist Jeremy Duda described the removal of Bowers as “killing the bill, cutting it, setting it on fire, then digging up the ashes and throwing it into the ocean.” In a column earlier this year, Arizona Republican columnist Lori Roberts called the 69-year-old Bowers one of the “few Republicans in the Capitol of the United States” who refused to succumb to the collective psychosis that infected some of the lowest parts of the political world. his base.
Bowers’ testimony before a House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol demonstrates his propensity to follow his own moral compass, as he describes the occasional resistance to a campaign of pressure from former President Donald Trump, then a lawyer. Trump’s Rudy Giuliani and other Republicans will remove voters for Joe Biden.
The demands, he told lawmakers on Tuesday, violated not only his oath as legislator, but also one of his “most fundamental beliefs”.
Bowers, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said he believed the U.S. Constitution was “divinely inspired” and not easy to reject.
Bowers backed Trump’s candidacy, but added, “I don’t want to be a winner by deception.”
Bowers, a professional artist, paid a high price for his resistance. The Arizona Patriotic Party launched a campaign to recall him last year because, among other things, he refused to support a controversial “audit” of votes by Cyber Ninjas in Maricopa County, Arizona. At one point, Bower joked with the Republic of Arizona about a possible check of documents used in the bamboo withdrawal campaign – a reference to a strange conspiracy theory that Chinese ballots were stuffed into the state’s electoral system. Download effort failed.
Bowers and his family also endured repeated protests outside his home east of Phoenix, including by people who called the father of seven a corrupt politician and pedophile, he said Tuesday. At one point, he said, an armed man appeared and seemed to be threatening his neighbor.
Tears welled up in his eyes on Tuesday as he described the effects of the harassment on his wife, Doneta, and his then seriously ill daughter. His daughter died in January 2021.
Bowers has a limited seat in the House of Representatives and announced an offer for the US Senate earlier this year.
Bowers and another witness at Tuesday’s hearing, former Fulton County, Georgia, election official Wandrea “Shay” Moss, received the John F. Kennedy Courage Awards this year.
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