“Several days ago I was notified that a lawsuit had been filed, alleging fraud on my petitions for office. The odd part of the story was that the fraud was being alleged by two Democrat activists who were officers in the District 29 Democratic organization. It seemed ludicrous because Republicans trying to get on the ballot don’t seek Democrat signatures and would have no reason to forge Democrat signatures, since they don’t count. Nevertheless, it was something I took seriously because the coordinated attack included press releases and social media activity and other things that made it clear that this was a well-organized effort,” writes Republican Arizona state Representative/Turning Point USA director Austin Smith and this bullshit goes on for a while.
“I’ve never been involved in a lawsuit so I will confess to that initial adrenaline rush, but after talking with people in the political world, and recognizing that the claim was silly on its face, I felt better.”
As you might have already guessed from the headline, it didn’t actually get better.
“Then I was told the Democrats were actually going to challenge hundreds of signatures in an effort to find signatures that didn’t match and claim fraud on my part. If they could convince a judge that any one signature was forged, all of my signatures would be invalidated and I would get kicked off the ballot. And as per Arizona law I would also be banned from seeking office for five years. So I got serious again and started asking questions. What I was was this was a very intense effort to ‘get me’ and I needed to be prepared to spend tens of thousands to defend myself, not only against the civil elections matter, but most likely against some sort of criminal investigation that would be launched by those on the left who are unhappy with my politics. With no limit to the length of time that such an investigation might take, and no limit to the number of billable hours I would end up paying to defend myself, those who wanted to do me real harm might well succeed,” and blah blah blah.
It takes him a while to get to the point but here it is: “I recently got married to an amazing woman, and we’re just starting our life together. We have our plans and aspirations, and none of them involve starting out tens of thousands of dollars in debt as a price of being involved in public service. Even if I won, I would have to pay those debts. So we spoke and prayed and decided that we’d learn from this and live to fight another day. To protect my family today, I’ll withdraw as a candidate.”
So yeah he’s done, because of fraud. It was fraud. Yes fraud. Yes, kind of lame that he didn’t go all in on the “Deep State” conspiracy angle, and that probably hurts his MAGA street cred.