Populist Apocalypticism in Arizona

“The fight isn't over tomorrow.”

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

PRESCOTT, ARIZONA—“The fight isn't over tomorrow. They want to take it,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on the steps of the Yavapai County courthouse Monday night. “They want to prevent Donald Trump from being seated when he wins.”

“Let’s live and live and live, and if we have to die, we’ll die fighting for right,” he added.

“If we have to die” is an odd sentiment to express at a get-out-the-vote event—a bit more Yukio Mishima than Karl Rove. But this casual apocalypticism has become a regular theme in Republican politics. The leaders of the modern Republican party are preoccupied with death and violence. It’s a messaging priority that comes from the top of the ticket.

Biggs, a former Freedom Caucus chairman and regular chaos instigator on Capitol Hill, was quite candid during his speech at Kari Lake’s final campaign event Monday night. In fact, all of the speakers were, including Lake. Biggs and his colleagues will scheme to undermine the election results if Republicans don’t come out on top. They did so in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and they will happily do it again. After all, it’s what the boss demands.

In their speeches, Biggs, his House colleague Eli Crane, and Abe Hamedeh—a House candidate who sought to overturn his own failed election for attorney general in 2022—gave a preview of the weeks and, perhaps, months ahead.

“They’ve been trying to take me out, but they haven’t got me yet,” said Crane, gesturing at the camera crews and reporters. “They're pushing these candidates, they’re pushing this ticket. It’s very totalitarian, and you guys know it, don’t you.”

“We all know what happened in the last election in 2022,” Hamedeh said. “We all know what happened in 2020, and yet, here we are, in front of the courthouse here in Yavapai County, to say that we will restore law and order, we will restore the Constitution. We will restore the America that they stole from us.”

As the various speakers rattled off their similar stump speeches attesting to the greatness of Trump, the evil of the media, and the unfairness of the election, attendees sneered and heckled reporters. It was all a very typical MAGA rally in that way. At this point, the template is feeling quite shopworn.

They’re responding to their voters and egging them on

These Republican candidates and lawmakers’ belief in a rigged system is a byproduct of their voter base, who skew very far right and consume information from a variety of questionable and untrustworthy sources, up to and including Trump himself. 

It’s hard to put it any other way: The attendees I spoke with believe things that are at odds with reality. The big one I kept hearing was the line that Trump is going to win, and win big. If he doesn’t, several of them said, the result is the product of cheating and should be thrown out. They don’t just want their candidate to win: They are incapable of accepting a different outcome on an epistemological level, as Ptolemy could not accept a cosmos in which the earth orbits the sun.

I spoke with Debbi Avila, a woman holding two flags: one, a standard Old Glory, and the other, a black “TRUMP NATION” flag. (When I approached, she was fumbling the latter banner because her friend—the other flag bearer—was late.) Avila has no concerns about the election results. She believes that it’s going to be the blowout to end all blowouts.

“Trump’s leading in every single state,” Avila said. “I mean, the legit polls are showing that. I don’t think there's a contest. I’m not worried about it.”

Leslie Beuter, a woman wearing a red “KARI WON” hat, assured me it wasn’t a joke. She truly believes that Lake didn’t lose her gubernatorial bid in 2022. (For that matter, she doesn’t believe Trump lost in 2020, either.) However, Beuter did say something that surprised me: She said it would be irresponsible of Trump to declare victory before the votes have all been counted.

“He should wait till the game’s played out,” she said. “But if there’s evidence of foul play, then that needs to be addressed.”

Beuter doesn’t have a lack of faith in elections so much as an undying faith in Donald Trump. Sounding much more hopeful than the Republican politicians who all spoke in dark tones during the rally, Avila put it this way:

I am really not concerned about this election at all. I think anyone that’s looking at the facts, it’s a clear cut decision. What he did in four years was incredible. He kept us out of war. We had an incredible economy. And if we look at Kamala’s record, come on. It’s, yeah, it’s pretty easy to make a good decision. I think the people will do that when they get to the polls, or when they make their vote, and wherever they are. I’m good. Not a care in the world.

It’s worth noting that in this deep red corner of the state, there was nary a swing voter or normie Republican in sight. Lake had chosen to make her final election pitch in Yavapai County, which Trump won by nearly 30 points in 2020. It’s a curious choice—one that may indicate Lake is relying on the GOP base supporting her Senate bid more than any swing demographic.

This behavior alienates would-be Republican voters

The vibes have been consistently different with Democrats. At each event I’ve attended, they have either been cautiously optimistic or stressed to the point of trembling like a chihuahua on July 4th. 

Still, many Democratic voters would be glad for an excuse to tolerate, or even maybe vote for, a Republican. This is Arizona, after all. But the current circumstances aren’t giving them much of an opportunity in that regard.

Ricardo Reyes, a Marine veteran I met in Phoenix who runs Arizona’s operations for Common Defense, an organization that lobbies on behalf of military veterans, told me the sort of rhetoric Arizonans hear from Lake and other right-wing populists is pushing voters away from the Republican party and helping turn Arizona a deeper purple hue.

“We should align more with the Republican party—at least the things they say that they align with,” Reyes said. He added that politicians like Trump, Lake, and the rest “represent everything that we don’t like about the Republican party.”

“You know, family values, religion, hard work, all these are things that go hand in hand with the Latino community,” he said. “But because every year they want to use us for their scapegoating, they push us harder and further to the left.”

I saw the same thing in rural Pennsylvania. Voters who seem like average Republican voters sent from central casting are breaking away from the party because their candidates either lack integrity or cling to issues wholly irrelevant to their constituents’ interests.

Whether there are enough of these R-to-D voters to swing the election in Harris’s favor tonight—well, I actually know this, but I’m not going to say it yet. (Just kidding. We’ll all find out soon enough.)