Republican ‘election crybabies’ want to split Maricopa County after Cyber Ninjas ‘audit’ flopped: columnist

For fifteen months, Arizona Republicans closest to Donald Trump have cast aspersions on the election in Phoenix's Maricopa County — the state's largest.

Even after the widely-panned Cyber Ninjas "audit" of the vote confirmed Joe Biden beat Donald Trump, Republicans have continued to attack urban votes as somehow not as legitimate as those from rural counties.

Laurie Roberts, columnist for The Arizona Republic, sounded the alarm over the "latest plan by the election crybabies at the Arizona Legislature."

Roberts explained how state Rep. Jake Hoffman has introduced a plan to split Maricopa County into four, smaller counties: Maricopa, Mogollon, O'odham, and Hohokam.

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"Maybe you’ve heard of this esteemed stateman. Before getting elected to the Legislature in 2020, Hoffman was running what amounts to an internet troll farm – paying teenagers to post conservative talking points and baseless conspiracy theories aimed at getting President Donald Trump reelected. Hoffman’s Rally Forge paid teens, some of them minors, to set up fake personas and blanket social media with thousands of nearly identical posts designed to undermine confidence in the validity of election and downplay the impact of COVID-19," she explained. "In other words, Hoffman wanted to fool you into thinking these were real people spontaneously expressing deeply held conservative beliefs instead of what they were — a group of kids being paid to deceive you."

Roberts noted that Hoffman was one of Trump's phony electors after Republicans lost Arizona.

"Normally, I would say this bill has no chance of seeing the light of day, but do not underestimate the level of Republican legislative anger at their brethren on the GOP-run Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the ones who dared to speak the truth when Republicans all around them were clinging to conspiracy theories," Roberts explained. "Hopefully, House Speaker Rusty Bowers, and Mesa Republican and one of the few adults over at crybaby central, will consign this bill to the same fate as Rep. John Fillmore's proposal to allow the Legislature to simply veto the results of any election it doesn’t like."

The bill is co-sponsored by House Majority Leader Ben Toma, Senate Majority Leader Warren Petersen, Reps. Travis Grantham, John Kavanagh, and Justin Wilmeth along with Sens. Sine Kerr, David Livingston, and J.D. Mesnard.

Read the full column.