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Sheriff who blamed Jan. 6 on 'the Hillary Clintons that have gone unpunished' joins AZ Senate race [1]

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Date: 2023-04-11  

Lamb, who has shown sympathy for the fringe belief that sheriffs are the top legal authority in America, attracted more attention during the early months of the pandemic when he refused to enforce then-Gov. Doug Ducey’s stay-at-home order. Naturally, he went on Fox to promote his decision to defy his fellow Republican. (Lamb himself came down with COVID in June of 2020.) Around that same time, he also formed a civilian “posse” in response to Black Lives Matter protests, even though none of those protests took place in his county.

He later reacted to the Jan. 6 attack by telling a pro-Trump rally that took place that same day, “This is about the other issues that have happened—the Hillary Clintons that have gone unpunished.” Lamb also used that gathering to denounce the Supreme Court for declining to hear a case to overturn Trump’s defeat, declaring, “This is about the fact that our Supreme Court isn't hearing our voices. This is the fact that our governor and our governments are not hearing our voices.” The sheriff added, “​​I don’t know how loud we have to get before they start to listen to us and know that we will no longer tolerate them stripping our freedoms away.”

Lamb later in 2021 would later tell Politico that the Jan. 6 rioters were “very loving, Christian people” who “just happen to support President Trump a lot,” and he’d also appear on a network infamous for its antisemitic content. Lamb would support Kari Lake’s failed 2022 campaign for governor, declaring at one of her rallies, “We are going to make sure that we have election integrity this year. Sheriffs are going to enforce the law—this is about the rule of law.” Lamb ominously added, “We will not let happen what happened in 2020.”

Lamb may not be enough of a Big Lie backer for Lake, though, who is mulling a Senate bid even as she continues to deny she lost the governorship to Democrat Katie Hobbs. While NBC reported in December that Lake was encouraging Lamb to run for Sinema’s seat, an unnamed Lake advisor now tells the Washington Post that she might attack him over his “hypocrisy” for telling Congress this year he’d seen “zero evidence” of “material, large-scale fraud.” Lamb himself, though, tried to shore up his far-right defenses Tuesday when he argued he was only talking about Pinal County, with the Associated Press writing he “sidestepped questions about whether voters can trust that the last two elections were fair.”

The sheriff, for his part, stressed his old anti-immigration platform rather than election lies in his kickoff video. He highlights how his son, who he said “struggled with drug addiction,” died in a December crash with Lamb’s 1-year-old granddaughter, with the candidate declaring, “I know what deadly drugs and the criminals peddling it are doing to families and communities.” Lamb goes on to say, “It’s time to declare the drug cartels terrorist organizations and use military force to wipe them out just like we did to ISIS.”

Several other Republicans are also mulling bids ahead of what will be one of the top Senate races of 2024, including several of last cycle’s losers. Blake Masters and Abe Hamadeh, who were the party’s respective nominees for Senate and governor, have each shown interest even as they’ve signaled they’d defer to Lake. The same cannot be said of Karrin Taylor Robson, who narrowly lost the gubernatorial primary to Lake, or Jim Lamon, a fellow self-funder who failed to deny Masters the nomination, though neither has committed to anything. Sinema herself, meanwhile, is keeping everyone guessing if she’ll run again now that she’s abandoned her party affiliation, while Gallego has no serious intra-party opposition.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/11/2163364/-Sheriff-who-blamed-Jan-6-on-the-Hillary-Clintons-that-have-gone-unpunished-joins-AZ-Senate-race

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