Republican officials in her legislative district want former state Rep. Liz Harris to fill her own vacant Arizona House of Representatives seat, after she was expelled from the chamber last week.
On Monday night, the precinct committeemen from Harris’s District 13, which covers Chandler and Gilbert, met to nominate three candidates to fill the legislative seat that was vacated after Harris was booted from the House for organizing a committee hearing at which government officials and leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were accused of a litany of crimes.
Harris then lied to the House Ethics Committee, telling them she didn’t know about Jacqueline Breger’s testimony, despite evidence showing she both knew what Breger would say and helped hide it from GOP leaders before the hearing.
After a lengthy meeting during which the media was kicked out and then let back in out of fear that the committeemen were violating Arizona’s open meetings law, the precinct committeemen nominated Harris, Julie Willoughby and Steve Steele.
The nominees will be forwarded to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which will ultimately decide who fills the seat, since Harris’s district is in Maricopa County.
It’s unlikely that the board will vote to reinstate Harris, who has built her political career on denying the results of Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss and has repeatedly accused Maricopa County elected officials of rigging elections.
Willoughby ran as a team with Harris in 2022, and narrowly lost to Harris for the district’s second House seat. She also campaigned alongside failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and received her endorsement. She was also endorsed by failed Republican Secretary of State Candidate Mark Finchem.
Willoughby did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Steele told the Arizona Mirror that he didn’t want to comment on whether he was an ally of Harris, though he has appeared in election denial videos alongside her. He said that several people from District 13 asked him to consider going for Harris’s seat.
Steele said he’d been involved with the Legislative District 13 Republicans since he moved to Arizona in 2019 and has represented the district at Arizona Republican Party meetings.
“I’m green as grass, and I don’t know much at all about politics,” he said. “It’s going to be a steep learning curve if the Board of Supervisors picks me.”
A small group of protestors who want to see Harris reinstated gathered outside of the Legislative District 13 meeting on Monday night, chanting “We want Liz.”
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