Arizona lawmaker says fake electors are like civil rights heroes? Uh, nope

Quick, what do Arizona’s now-indicted fake electors and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. have in common?

If you said they’re all heroes then congratulations, you’re a member of the far, far, far-out right that on Saturday reaffirmed its death grip on the Arizona Republican Party.

During Saturday’s state GOP convention, the party’s delegates elected Sen. Jake Hoffman — who stands accused of forgery, fraud and conspiracy in the fake elector scheme to overturn Arizona’s presidential election — as Arizona’s Republican National Committeeman.

Expelled Rep. Liz Harris, an election denier who lasted just three months in office before she was tossed out of the GOP-run House, was voted the state’s Republican National Committeewoman.

An election denier defends fake electors

Count Republican consultant Tyler Montague among the many stunned at the party’s choice of leaders.

“I'm bearish on the AZGOP,” Montague said on social media on Saturday evening, shortly after word leaked out on delegates’ choices to sit on the Republican National Committee.

“That they would choose Indicted Fake Elector Jake Hoffman, and disgraced defamer Liz Harris who was removed from office, as the National Committeemen shows a lot where the crazy activist base is right now. They’ve lost their minds.”

Not so, according to Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, and Exhibit No. 1 in the category of lost minds.

Kolodin, an attorney, is something of a legend in the election denial circles, having filed several rather spectacularly unsuccessful lawsuits, several of which landed him in hot water with the State Bar of Arizona.

He’s also the guy who recently slammed the late Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as an “undistinguished jurist.”

Hoffman is like a civil rights leader?

Now he’s casting Hoffman and his fellow phony electors as righteous warriors, akin to the Civil Rights Movement and a man who literally gave up his life in the hope that his four little children would one day live in a nation where ... well, I don’t need to tell you what he said.

King’s influence, six decades later, is such that you know.

“MLK was arrested like 30 times,” Kolodin replied to Montague on Saturday evening. “Would you have been bearish on the civil rights movement too?”

“The people who would have been part of the civil rights movement are the people getting indicted right now,” Kolodin continued. “The folks mocking them for it would have been the ones with the firehoses.”

Thousands of white people in their red MAGA hats, on the march from Selma to Montgomery?

Sure, I can totally see it.

MLK reached up. Electors reached down

As every school child and even some members of the Arizona Legislature know, King was a giant in the Civil Rights Movement — a man of faith, resolute in his belief that racial equality could be achieved through nonviolent action.

He was indeed arrested and went to jail 29 times, as Kolodin pointed out, on charges ranging from civil disobedience to trumped-up traffic violations.

Indictments are fine: But vote against GOP and you'll pay

The fake electors, meanwhile, face nine felony counts, accused by a state grand jury of being a part of a conspiracy to overturn Arizona’s vote in 2020 so that Donald Trump could remain president despite an election he did not win.

King spent his life reaching for the mountaintop and dreaming of a better day, whereas the fake electors descended into the depths of MAGA madness where they plotted a future in which democracy was optional.

Fake electors point the way for Republicans

Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership of the Civil Rights Movement.

Hoffman, just three days after he was indicted, was awarded a seat on the national committee that sets policy for the Republican Party. His fellow indictee, Sen. Anthony Kern, also was honored, elected as a delegate to the party’s national convention this summer, as was Kolodin.

The Civil Rights Movement is one that continues this day as we are challenged still to become that dreamed-of place that King so eloquently described.

Kolodin’s delusions to the contrary, there is no righteous justification for the Republican Party’s 3-years-and-counting temper tantrum. Their guy, Trump, lost an election and he — and thus, they — simply can’t get over it.

I do agree with Kolodin on one thing, though. A few firehoses would come in handy about now.

The Republican Party is in dire need of a thorough cleanse.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @LaurieRoberts or on Threads at @laurierobertsaz.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: MAGA lawmaker compares fake electors to Martin Luther King? Get real