James O'Rourke, Colorado Times Recorder

The far-right members of the Freedom Caucus have publicly fought with the Republicans who backed the transportation tax vote legislation, saying the plan wastes tax money by funding public transit — particularly Maricopa County’s light rail system.

But some have gone beyond traditional conservative opposition to taxes and government spending and say the transportation plan is actually part of a covert plot to implement totalitarian control over Arizona.

Climate conspiracy fearmongering

In the immediate wake of the legislature passing the bill to extend Proposition 400, several Freedom Caucus critics of the measure linked it to conspiracy theories that claim urban development and transit projects are really nefarious attempts by the government to trap people in ghettos so they can be controlled more easily.

That, they claim, is done by creating so-called “15-minute cities,” in which urban areas are developed so that all necessities are available within a 15-minute walk. The primary benefit would be reducing the average person’s reliance on automobiles, leading to an overall decrease in carbon emissions, which are a lead cause of climate change.

To bad-faith critics and conspiracy theorists, it’s actually meant to block citizens from moving out of small areas.

“What this is, is an attempt by … the climate alarmists to go out there and actually have a way of making travel more difficult,” Rep. Cory McGarr, R-Tucson, said in a July 31 interview on KNST in Tucson. “So, they say the 15-minute city, well, you don’t get there overnight, but what you do is you condense down the road — it’s called a road diet… You’re making a four lane road down to two, and then you’re adding, like, a bike lane, because everybody I know bikes to work, except for nobody I know bikes to work.”

The furor around 15-minute cities is the latest version of fearmongering around national and global sustainability initiatives, and it echoes outrage on the right from a decade or so ago, when a similar outcry was raised over Agenda 21, a 1992 non-binding United Nations resolution to promote sustainable development worldwide. In 2015, then-Republican state Sen. Judy Burges introduced a bill that would have made it illegal for the state of Arizona to “adopt or implement the creed, doctrine, or principles or any tenet” of Agenda 21.

McGarr has previously mocked the idea of human-caused climate change, even though changes in the climate have intensified heat globally, leading last month to be the hottest month in recorded history. He also branded the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 as an attack on freedom that the government could use again. Reduced reliance on cars, he said, would only play into this tyrannical plan.

“Transportation is freedom. They want to take it,” McGarr continued. “They want you to at least choose. They want to make it so difficult, they want you to choose to give away your freedom. Join this public system that, then, they control. Now, imagine during COVID if you didn’t have a vehicle and you had no way of getting around because they shut down the public transit, transportation. This is, this is government control, and it’s tyranny.”

In a separate July 31 interview on KNST, Rep. Rachel Jones, who represents the same Tucson-based district as McGarr, said that the measure incorporated “Green New Deal” verbiage, referencing a broad plan by national Democrats to combat climate change by reducing emissions. Similarly to 15-minute cities, following its initial proposal, the Green New Deal has become a boogeyman of the political right, with some calling it a socialist takeover.

“And then they have air quality measures in there. So, all of this lingo just screams Green New Deal. And we all know that the Green New Deal stuff also includes 15-minute cities,” Jones said. “Now, all of this is about controlling the people and why we have Republicans, you know, compromising in the 11th hour on this and making it more, just easier to implement the Green New Deal. I’m dumbfounded by it.”

Compromise is surrender

With Republicans holding a one-seat majority in both legislative chambers, the Freedom Caucus has been a driving force behind many of the party’s controversial policy initiatives — including attempts to ban certain books from schools, outlaw drag shows and criminalize homelessness.

Jones said that some have accused the Freedom Caucus of turning voters against Republicans: Critics have said the legislators’ incendiary, divisive tactics could cost the party future elections and eventually the house majority.

But Jones argued that any losses are the fault of the moderate Republicans who are open to compromising with Democrats, with the passage of the Prop. 400 extension being a prime example.

“Let’s go together as a Republican legislature and let’s figure out how to make the best for the people, and not compromise with the Democrats necessarily,” Jones told KNST listeners. “That is why we have a one-seat majority for a reason, because over the last few decades or last couple of decades… we compromise and we compromise and we compromise, and there were too many legislators willing to do that.

“And, so, it whittled down to a one-seat majority, which now, you know, the Freedom Caucus, we’re getting blamed for that. We’re getting blamed for, ‘Oh, you’re going to make us lose the legislature in 2024.’ I’m sorry, but we have lost, almost lost, our state. Because of the weak and corrupt Republicans that are willing to compromise it away to the Left.”

Neither Jones nor McGarr responded to an email requesting comment. This article will be updated with any response received.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who’s currently appealing her four-month sentence of home detention (along with 120 hours of community service and a $750 fine) for attempting to obstruct authorities from taking an iPad on which she allegedly recorded video of a court hearing, is not the only former elected official to face steep consequences for embracing election conspiracies. Earlier this month, she was joined in this ignominy by Liz Harris, who was ousted from her seat in Arizona’s state legislature following complaints of disorderly conduct.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which will choose Harris’ replacement, appears unlikely to reinstate her, according to local news reports.

Originally a real estate agent, Harris entered the political limelight with a door-to-door canvassing effort, searching Arizona for “anomalies” in voting records from the 2020 election. She would later release her findings in a report, but it came under scrutiny for easily verifiable falsehoods. In one instance, the report claimed votes were cast from an empty lot; Arizona Mirror reporters investigated the address for the supposed empty lot, and instead found a house that was clearly visible from the street.

Last November, voters elected Harris to represent Arizona’s 13th House District after she edged past one of her opponents by two tenths of a point. But Harris’ unwavering election denialism quickly created friction with fellow house Republicans when she announced she would refuse to vote on any house bills until the state of Arizona conducted a complete do-over of the 2022 election. In doing so, she threatened to cost the Arizona GOP their one-vote majority in the state legislature.

The final straw came in February, when Harris invited realtor Jacqueline Breger to testify on election integrity before the AZ House Elections committee. During her testimony, Breger baselessly accused a bipartisan array of Arizona officials, including sitting legislators, of being involved in a money laundering scheme orchestrated by the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Despite the lack of evidence for Breger’s claims, they spread like wildfire on fringe conservative media. At one point, Anna Ferguson, an election fraud conspiracy activist who has since been elected Secretary of the Colorado GOP, retweeted video of Breger’s testimony on her Twitter account.

Harris claims that she was not aware of Breger’s intent to make criminal allegations during her testimony, even though texts obtained by the House Ethics Committee indicated otherwise. While Harris even says she told Breger not to impugn her colleagues, she does not seem to think Breger was wrong – at least, that was what she indicated in an interview on the fringe podcast “Blood Money.”

“I think this was, to some degree, a setup. But here’s the big issue and here’s what the people across the country want,” Harris said. “If she made those allegations, why are we not, why is Arizona not doing an investigation into them? Because if she made those allegations and they prove false, they can sue. I mean, she’s responsible for what she says. Liz Harris is not responsible for what a person comes to the microphone and says.” (15:39 – 16:13)

The event on Sunday was not the first time Tina Peters and Liz Harris met face to face. In October, Harris posted a photo of herself posing with Peters alongside Arizona conspiracy activist Gail Golec, both of whom she called “amazing women fighting for this country.”

Following Harris’ expulsion earlier this month, Golec made a Telegram post comparing her ouster to the crucifixion of Jesus.

Beyond facing consequences for spreading election conspiracies, Harris and Peters have a few things in common. Both have ties to national election denier Mike Lindell – Harris represented Arizona at Lindell’s 2022 Moment of Truth Summit, where she spoke on the findings of her debunked canvass during the “State of the States Address.”

Peters and Harris have also both claimed that fighting for election integrity has put them and their associates in mortal peril. Peters claimed without evidence in a February podcast interview that Mesa law enforcement used hit-and-runs to murder family members of her former staff, in order to intimidate those staff members into testifying against her. However, neither of the deaths Peters mentioned actually resulted from hit-and-runs.

Similarly, Harris claimed during the Moment of Truth Summit that multiple of her colleagues in the canvassing effort died under suspicious circumstances. Though she admitted that one died due to complications from COVID-19, she claimed that one was killed during a hit-and-run in Florida.

“So, Aaron, it may have been COVID, but the person who developed our app for the canvassing was mysteriously killed in Florida in a hit-and-run. And they never found the person that killed him,” Harris said. “And the person that uploaded the data into the app on the first day of our official canvassing that the Senate told us to cancel—but we went and did it anyway—his plane went down that morning. Now he survived with fifth degree burns. He’s still working with us, but that was suspicious.”

A 2018 report by ABC News found that the vast majority of hit-and-runs in Florida are never solved, making it difficult to confirm or deny the claim Harris’ unnamed colleague was killed by the powers that be.

In the wake of her expulsion, Harris has made the rounds on fringe media as being unfairly persecuted for standing up for election integrity. But in an interview on Colorado conspiracist Joe Oltmann’s podcast “Conservative Daily,” she said she was glad to be out of the Arizona statehouse, as it left her with more free time to investigate election conspiracies – especially those linked to Breger’s allegations.

“But one thing that I’ve done is I did look at some of these phony medical claims and I’m like, oh, my goodness, the names on these phony medical means, they fall into the phantom voter category,” Harris told Oltmann. “So now I’m free to do that research, and I’m very excited to do that research because now I have a proprietary database that goes back to 2004 so I can find how a lot of these fraudulent documents tie into the phantom voters. Do you see how excited I am? It’s like I’ve a new job. I have no income now. The housing market has slowed down here, so I can’t even do my realtor duties necessarily. But I’m like, there’s like, God put me in this role. What happened today happened for a reason.” (19:41 – 20:37)