Republican Arizona Mayor John Giles endorses Harris over Trump

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John Giles, mayor of Mesa, Arizona, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris over his party’s nominee on Monday. Giles pointed to late Republican Sen. John McCain’s ‘country first’ approach

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The Republican mayor of a Phoenix suburb endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Monday, invoking the name of Arizona political titan John McCain.

Mesa mayor John Giles endorsed the vice president in an opinion column in The Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network. In the endorsement, Giles strongly rebuked his party’s nominee, saying: “This year too much is at stake to vote Republican at the top of the ticket.”

“Since Donald Trump refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, Republicans have yet to course correct,” Giles wrote. “In the spirit of the late Sen. John McCain’s motto, ‘Country First,’ I call on other Arizona Republicans to join me in choosing country over party this election and to vote against Donald Trump.”

Giles pointed to federal infrastructure funds appropriated to Mesa under President Joe Biden and Harris as a reason to vote for the vice president, adding that she’s “the competent, just and fair leader our country deserves.”

Election denial, subversion themes in endorsement

Giles wrote that Arizona has faced the brunt of Republican attempts to subvert the 2020 election results.

“The Grand Canyon State is ground zero in the fight against repeated false claims to disrupt our electoral process − from fake presidential electors attempting to undermine Arizona’s election, to a sham ‘audit’ by Arizona Senate Republicans that was spurred by conspiracy theories,” Giles wrote.

The Republican-held state Senate held a since-discredited “audit” of the 2020 election results, resulting in a two-year legal battle between The Arizona Republic, the Senate, and Cyber Ninjas, the firm tasked with conducting the audit. The newspaper sought to force the disclosure of emails, texts and other documents related to the audit.

The battle ended in November with a settlement between the parties that produced a legal document dated July 10 in which Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan accused former Senate President Karen Fann of refusing to help him comply with court orders to produce thousands of documents, even though he was working directly for the Senate.

Eighteen people, 11 Arizona Republicans and seven top aides to Donald Trump, were indicted by a state grand jury for participating in a scheme to falsely certify that Donald Trump won the state in 2020.

The nonprofit election security organization States United Democracy Center found that 43% of the Arizona State Senate were election deniers and nearly one-third of the Arizona State House denied the 2020 election.

Mesa conservative suburb in key battleground state

The cross-partisan endorsement could prove critical in the Grand Canyon State as the once ruby-red state has been turned into a toss-up.

Biden and Harris won the state by less than 10,500 votes and won in Maricopa County, where Mesa is located, by just over 45,000 in 2020.

Mesa had a population of 511,648 in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The city was named the most conservative city with a population of over 250,000 by Pew Research in 2017.

Harris has narrowed Trump’s lead in the state since becoming the presumptive nominee and as Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly has become one of the favorites to be chosen as her vice-presidential nominee.

Contributing: Stacey Barchenger, The Arizona Republic

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