Arizona Republicans are now 0-for-27 in election challenges. Maybe it's time to move on?

The Arizona Republican Party on Tuesday lost yet another case in the ongoing, unending failed attempts to challenge the results of the state’s elections.

I’ve lost track of what this particular lawsuit claimed. Something about the party’s outrage that a state-mandated sample hand count audit of ballots in 2020 — one that turned up zero evidence of a problem — was done at voting centers rather than precincts.Suffice it to say, the party lost. Again.

And now has been ordered by the Arizona Court of Appeals to pay nearly $9,000 to cover the taxpayers’ cost of the appeal. That’s in addition to $18,000 already awarded to cover the taxpayers’ cost of defending the lawsuit.

Donors fund winners, not loser lawsuits

While $27,000 sounds like pocket change, it’s more than half of what the state Republican Party had in the bank as of March 31, according to federal filings.

Money has flown out the door in the once-Grand Old Party’s now three-year-old quest to overturn the election, with precious little coming in to replace it.

At this point four years ago, Reuters reports the state party had nearly $770,000.

It seems big GOP donors prefer backing winning candidates to backing losing lawsuits — or paying lawyers to fend off trouble from the fake elector scandal.

Meanwhile, with less than 13 months until the primary election, Kari Lake, the party’s likely Senate nominee, continues making the rounds of pretty much any far right podcast that’ll have her, wherein she waxes on about the many ways in which the 2022 election was stolen.

Never mind that every one of her claims has been rejected by the courts.

National committee isn't trying to win here

In between interviews, she hawks her new book about the many ways in which the election was stolen and holds rallies, preaching to her choir about the many ways in which the election was stolen.

While she plays pretend governor, Politco reports the National Republican Senatorial Committee is busy recruiting and endorsing candidates in the other key states where it thinks it has a chance to pick up a seat.

Places like Nevada and Montana.

“Aggressively recruiting quality candidates is the only way Republicans will retake the Senate majority,” Senate Leadership Fund President Steven Law told Politico. “Every one of these top-tier races will be very tough, and sub-par candidates only help Democrats.”

Politico describes it as the group’s “most aggressive Senate primary intervention strategy in nearly a decade”.

A strategy that apparently doesn’t extend to Arizona.

Meanwhile, Arizonans can look forward later this month to what I’m sure will be a riveting speech by white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who is coming to the state to speak at a national convention of College Republicans United.

DeWit can't turn the state party around

I find myself feeling almost sorry for state GOP Chairman Jeff DeWit, who in January inherited this mess from the one-woman wrecking crew that was Kelli Ward.

DeWit is a Trump supporter but he’s also a former state official who knows what it takes to win a statewide campaign.

What he is not is a miracle worker.

He appears to have no hope of convincing the far right wing that controls the party that its continued obsession with stolen elections and RINO Republicans is a losing campaign strategy.

Heck, several of the party’s legislative district committees have even censured DeWit for his refusal to throw in with the madness.

Another view: AZ GOP may be broke. But it has a larger problem

They’re plotting to run primary challengers against Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell and Recorder Stephen Richer, traditional Republicans who have managed to win countywide offices.

With a sneer, they dismiss those all-important independent voters, the ones who decide races and now outnumber Republicans both in the state and in Maricopa County.

They'll lose more seats if this continues

I’ve long said that reports of Arizona turning blue are premature.

What we are is black and blue, from years of crazy conspiracy theories and Cyber Ninjas and Kari Lake and Kelli Ward and Wendy Rogers and all of the far-right fanatics who have sold their supporters a bill of goods.

And sold out their party, relegating it to also-ran status.

The result is an Arizona now led by two Democratic senators, a Democratic governor, a Democratic secretary of state and a Democratic attorney general.

Not because election workers cheated but because the true believers are determined to purify the party to the point of political irrelevance.

If they’re not careful, they’ll not only fail to retake the U.S. Senate seat next year, there’s a good chance they’ll also lose the Arizona Legislature.

Speaking of losing, Richer reports that Tuesday’s Courts of Appeals ruling is the 27th loss by Republicans challenging the county’s elections since Joe Biden won the state in 2020.Put another way, Republicans are now 0-for-27, with more likely to come.

And that doesn't even count their losses at the ballot box.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona Republicans now 0-27 in election lawsuits. Time to move on?