On Wednesday, the Arizona House voted 46-13 to expel MAGA lunatic Liz Harris who reprsents a swing district in the Phoenix suburbs (Chandler, Gilbert, Sun Lakes). It was especially noteworthy because the GOP margin was just 2 seats (30-28) and with the expulsion is now just a single seat. Harris, a real estate agent and raving QAnon freak, was a freshman first elected last November by defeating a (slightly) less insane Republican, Julie Willoughby, by 275 votes. She claims that every election in Arizona— other than her own— was fraudulently conducted, especially losses by Trump in 2020 and Kari Lake and Blake Masters in 2022.
Although beloved of the MAGA set, establishment Republicans in the legislature hated her as much as the Democrats did. Last February she was the only Republican to vote against their budget package, causing it to go down in defeat. The same month, she invited another local QAnon nut and fellow real estate agent, Jacqueline Breger, to testify before a joint hearing of the House and Senate elections committees. She spoke for 40 minutes, baselessly claiming Governor Katie Hobbs, several members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, a dozen Maricopa County Superior Court judges, and the mayor of Mesa had all taken bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel through a housing deed scam as part of a vast money laundering, racketeering, and election fraud scheme. She also claimed that the Mormon Church was part of the conspiracy.
Harris was expelled because she knew in advance the details of the dishonest testimony even before inviting Breger to testify, and refused to disclose her knowledge to state Senate staffers who asked for the details of the presentation. As you can imagine, the crazies in the legislature, led by demented psychopath Wendy Rogers, fully supported Harris (and Breger’s delusional fantasies). The resolution to expel reads that Harris “undermined the public’s confidence in this institution and violated the order and decorum necessary to complete the people’s work in the State of Arizona.”
Eighteen Republicans, including Speaker Ben Toma and Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci, joined 28 Democrats in voting to oust Harris. One Democrat did not vote. It takes 40 votes (2/3s of the members) to expel a legislator. They mustered 46. KTAR News reported that “By law, Harris must be replaced by a Republican. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will choose from a list of three candidates nominated by the GOP precinct committeemen in her district. House Democratic Leader Andrés Cano said it was a ‘sad’ but ‘necessary’ day. ‘Misinformation, lies, and conspiracies are not harmless, and it’s not just politics,’ Cano said in a statement. ‘The defamatory allegations that Rep. Harris invited her guest speaker to make are patently absurd, but there are many people who believe them. They believe the lies, and they continue to threaten retribution because we dispute them.’”