Oath Keeper Mark Finchem Would Serve His True Master, Not AZ Voters, as AZ Secretary of State
State Representative from Oro Valley and Candidate for AZ Secretary of State Mark “Oathkeeper” Finchem, wearing his absurd signature cowboy cosplay (he’s from Michigan…), took the stage at the recent Florence, AZ rally, and, at first, cannily and carefully claimed that the “election is proven to be compromised” and “the margin of error exceeds the margin of victory” and other such mealy-mouthed circumlocutions meant to cast doubt upon the 2020 Presidential election in Arizona.
This sort of vague implication is pretty common for Finchem, who, unlike some the other coup plotters, is generally somewhat more careful in his attempts to preserve deniability that he’s an outright election conspiracist. He usually keeps his bat signals on the down-low with his QAnon and election conspiracist endorsements. But the crowd wasn’t warming to his skirting the central issue of the rally, so he went further than he usually goes in public and unequivocally stated, “Donald Trump won.” Finchem did Der Gropenfuhrer’s bidding, and thus demonstrated who holds his true fealty.
Finchem is an election conspiracist, a participant (and perhaps more..?) in the Jan6th insurrection, and a QAnon nut – all of which certainly demonstrate poor judgment and fell intent against our democracy – but by publicly denying the validity of a legitimate and certified election (the very same election which re-elected him and a narrow GOP majority to the State House and Senate, of course), Finchem has disqualified himself from any public office, especially one having anything to do with supervising and certifying our elections. A vote for Finchem is a vote for a coup. Finchem will clearly violate his oath by not signing certification of Democratic wins he doesn’t like as Secretary of State.
Finchem also stated his support for the state legislature (of which he is a voting Member, so it’s safe to say he’s a “Yes” vote) to “set aside and irredeemably flawed election” under the powers of the 10th Amendment. So he also wants to ‘decertify’ the 2020 election, presumably just the federal part that gave AZ’s electoral votes to Biden, and a U.S. Senate seat to Mark Kelly. Blue Meanie posted on this issue today for more context.
Read more: https://blogforarizona.net/oath-keeper-mark-finchem-would-serve-his-true-master-not-az-voters-as-az-secretary-of-state/