在亚利桑那州认证2020年总统选举结果的仪式开始后不久，时任州长道格·杜西（Doug Ducey）的手机开始播放《统帅万岁》（Hail to the Chief）。来电的是时任总统唐纳德·特朗普，当时他正在施压摇摆州的共和党官员，要求他们不要敲定乔·拜登的胜选结果。
Moments into the ceremony certifying Arizona’s 2020 presidential election results, Gov. Doug Ducey’s phone began to play “Hail to the Chief.”It was President Donald Trump, who was then pressing Republican officials in battleground states not to finalize Joe Biden’s victory.
身为共和党的杜西挂断了电话，并签署了认证文件。他几天后表示，特朗普并未要求他不要签署；《华盛顿邮报》后来报道称，特朗普曾在私下施压他协助推翻选举结果。
Ducey, a Republican, silenced the call and signed the certification. He said days later that Trump hadn’t asked him not to sign; The Washington Post would later report that Trump privately pressed him to help overturn the results.
那天坐在他身旁、铺着桌布的桌子旁的，是时任亚利桑那州国务卿的凯蒂·霍布斯（Katie Hobbs）。近六年后的今天，霍布斯接替了杜西昔日的职务，而她并不确信这位试图从她手中夺走该职位的共和党人会拒绝特朗普的电话。
Seated beside him at the cloth-draped table that day was Katie Hobbs, then Arizona’s secretary of state. Almost six years later, Hobbs holds Ducey’s old job, and she isn’t sure the Republican trying to take it from her would have refused Trump’s call.
这位共和党人是众议员安迪·比格斯（Andy Biggs），他是获得特朗普背书的众议院自由核心小组（House Freedom Caucus）前主席，曾试图推翻2020年的选举结果。如果他在11月3日的选举中获胜，他将成为签署亚利桑那州2028年总统选举结果的州长。共和党人还提名了2020年大选结果否认者竞选国务卿和总检察长，这两个办公室的负责人也必须出席以认证选举结果。
That Republican is Rep. Andy Biggs, the Trump-endorsed former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, who tried to overturn the 2020 results. If he wins on Nov. 3, he will be the governor who signs off on Arizona’s 2028 presidential results. Republicans have also nominated 2020 deniers for secretary of state and attorney general, the two other offices whose holders must be present to certify them.
长期以来被认为是全国最脆弱的民主党州长的霍布斯，已将这一点作为她最后的竞选论点。据Punchbowl News报道，在本月早些时候在卡萨格兰德（Casa Grande）举行的一场集会上，她重新讲了杜西接听电话的故事，并表示“无法保证”比格斯在2028年不会接听同样的电话。
Hobbs, long considered the most vulnerable Democratic governor in the country, has made that her closing argument. At a rally in Casa Grande earlier this month, she retold the story of Ducey’s phone call and said there was “no guarantee” Biggs wouldn’t answer the same call in 2028, Punchbowl News reported.
霍布斯对MS NOW表示：“我认为这次选举是一场我们必须关注未来的选举，因为，你知道的，如果安迪·吉格斯当选州长，那么亚利桑那州将成为第一个由选举结果否认者掌权的摇摆州。而且安迪·比格斯可不是普通的选举结果否认者。”这个问题已不再是假设。特朗普的司法部正就获取选民数据一事起诉亚利桑那州国务卿，并且在3月，一个联邦大陪审团传唤了州参议院对马里科帕县（Maricopa County）2020年大选审计的相关记录。
“I think that this election is an election where we have to focus on what comes next, because, you know, if Andy Biggs is governor, then Arizona is the first swing state that has an election denier in charge,” Hobbs told MS NOW. “And Andy Biggs is not a run-of-the-mill election denier.”The question is no longer hypothetical. Trump’s Justice Department is suing Arizona’s secretary of state for access to voter data, and in March a federal grand jury subpoenaed records from the state Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County.
2020年12月，比格斯支持一项胜算渺茫的诉讼，请求最高法院推翻拜登在佐治亚州、密歇根州、宾夕法尼亚州和威斯康星州的胜选结果。2021年1月6日上午，他致电时任亚利桑那州众议院共和党议长的拉斯蒂·鲍尔斯，要求他支持取消该州选举人团资格，鲍尔斯后来在作证时透露了此事。当天美国国会大厦遭袭击数小时后，比格斯投票反对接受亚利桑那州和宾夕法尼亚州的选举人票。随后，他无视众议院调查该袭击事件特别委员会的传票。
In December 2020, Biggs backed a long-shot lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to invalidate Biden’s victories in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, he called Rusty Bowers, then the Republican speaker of the Arizona House, and asked him to support decertifying the state’s electors, Bowers later testified. Hours after the attack on the U.S. Capitol that day, Biggs voted to reject the electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania. He went on to defy a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the attack.
比格斯也明确表达了他对杜西处理2020年大选的看法。CNN的KFILE团队挖出的一段当年晚些时候的电视采访显示，他抱怨州长拒绝深入调查舞弊指控，并称杜西“本可以通过审计使大选无效”，但对此不感兴趣。
Biggs has also made clear what he thought of Ducey’s handling of 2020. In a TV interview late that year, unearthed by CNN’s KFILE, he complained that the governor wouldn’t dig into fraud allegations and said that Ducey “could have invalidated the election” through an audit but wasn’t interested.
比格斯近期将2020年大选议题排除在竞选核心之外；一名发言人今年告诉《华盛顿邮报》，他的关注点一直是霍布斯。在凤凰城的一档广播访谈中，他拒绝表态拜登是否合法获胜。在霍布斯缺席的10月初辩论会上，比格斯表示将接受今年大选结果，并“乐意认证”结果。当《Punchbowl News》询问他对霍布斯攻击的看法时，他一笑置之。比格斯竞选团队发言人未回应MS NOW的多次置评请求。
Biggs has lately kept 2020 out of the center of his campaign; a spokesperson told The Washington Post this year that his focus has been Hobbs. In a Phoenix radio interview, he declined to say whether Biden legitimately won. At an early October debate that Hobbs skipped, Biggs said he would accept the outcome of this year’s election and be “happy to certify” it. When Punchbowl asked him about Hobbs’ attacks, he laughed them off. A spokesperson for Biggs’ campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment from MS NOW.
在党内基本盘中，该议题仍引发共鸣。“一直在搞猫腻，这就是我们支持亚历克斯·科洛丁的原因，”皮马县共和党志愿者加里·奥尔森说。
Among the party’s base, the issue still resonates. “There’s been shenanigans going on, and that’s why we’re supporting Alex Kolodin,” said Gary Olson, a volunteer with the Pima County Republican Party.
科洛丁是一名州众议员，曾推广特朗普关于2020年大选被窃取的虚假言论，于7月赢得共和党提名，角逐亚利桑那州州务卿一职，该职位负责监督该州选举。他正在挑战寻求连任的民主党人阿德里安·方特斯。
Kolodin, a state representative who has promoted Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, won the Republican nomination in July for secretary of state, the office that oversees Arizona’s elections. He is challenging Democrat Adrian Fontes, who is seeking a second term.
两人过去曾有过交锋。2020年大选结束后的第二天，科洛丁起诉了马里科帕县官员，其中包括时任该县记录员的丰特斯，声称选民在选票上使用的粗头记号笔导致计票机出现故障。在那起诉讼无果而终后，科洛丁担任了一起广泛联邦诉讼的律师。该诉讼由前特朗普律师西德尼·鲍威尔精心策划，指控当时坐在认证桌旁的霍布斯和杜西两名官员存在“大规模选举欺诈”。该诉讼同样被迅速驳回，亚利桑那州律师协会此后因科洛丁在该诉讼中扮演的角色而对其进行了训诫并处以缓刑。
The two have tangled before. The day after the 2020 election, Kolodin sued Maricopa County officials, including Fontes, then the county recorder, claiming that the Sharpie markers voters had used on their ballots caused vote tabulators to malfunction. After that suit went nowhere, Kolodin was a lawyer on a sweeping federal lawsuit, crafted by former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, that accused Hobbs and Ducey, the two officials at that certification table, of “massive election fraud.”It, too, was swiftly dismissed, and the State Bar of Arizona later admonished Kolodin and placed him on probation for his role in the litigation.
奥尔森还对州参议院议长兼总检察长共和党候选人沃伦·彼得森给予了高度赞扬。正是彼得森遵守了3月份的大陪审团传票，将共和党委托进行的审计记录交给了联邦调查局，这项审计是他担任州参议院司法委员会主席期间负责监督的审查。
Olson also had high praise for Warren Petersen, the state Senate president and Republican nominee for attorney general. It was Petersen who complied with the March grand jury subpoena, handing the FBI records from the Republican-commissioned audit, a review he had overseen as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
霍布斯的论点能否打动选民则是另一个问题，她自己的电视广告表明她并非完全依赖这一点。她竞选团队最持久的攻击目标是比格斯在2013年担任州参议院议长期间，曾拖延一项本可允许外部执法力量接管一个被指控庇护一夫多妻制教派的地方警察局的法案。比格斯称这些广告是谎言。
Whether Hobbs’ argument moves voters is another question, and her own TV ads suggest she is not relying on it alone. Her campaign’s most persistent attack targets Biggs’ decision as state Senate president in 2013 to stall a bill that would have let outside law enforcement take over a local police force accused of protecting a polygamous sect. Biggs calls the ads lies.
亚利桑那州以前经历过这种情况。2022年，共和党人提名了选举否定论者竞选相同的三个职位——凯里·莱克竞选州长，马克·芬奇姆竞选州务卿，阿比·哈马德竞选总检察长。这三人全部落败，其中两人败给了霍布斯和丰特斯。
Arizona has been here before. In 2022, Republicans nominated election deniers for the same three offices — Kari Lake for governor, Mark Finchem for secretary of state and Abe Hamadeh for attorney general. All three lost, two of them to Hobbs and Fontes.
对亚利桑那州的共和党人来说，拒绝接受其党派输掉的选举已被证明是初选中宝贵的资本。但在大选中，这一资本却很难兑现。追踪选举否定论者的组织“合众为民主中心”在2024年10月进行的一项调查显示，略多于三分之一的亚利桑那州人表示，他们不太可能支持声称2020年大选被操纵以对抗特朗普的候选人。
For Arizona Republicans, refusing to accept elections their party loses has proved to be valuable currency in primaries. In general elections, it has been harder to spend. In an October 2024 survey by the States United Democracy Center, a group that tracks election deniers, just over a third of Arizonans said they would be less likely to back a candidate who claimed the 2020 election was rigged against Trump.
据《亚利桑那国会山报》报道，霍布斯的竞选团队比比格斯的团队多花了约1200万美元，不过已成为亚利桑那州共和党主导力量的保守派团体“转折点”发起了1800万美元的媒体宣传攻势，以帮助缩小差距。特朗普本月前往布尔黑德城为比格斯造势。
Hobbs’ campaign has outspent Biggs’ by about $12 million, though Turning Point, the conservative group that has become the dominant force in Arizona’s GOP, has mounted an $18 million media blitz to help close the gap, according to the Arizona Capitol Times. Trump traveled to Bullhead City this month to rally for Biggs.
近期公开民调显示霍布斯领先，但领先幅度差异很大：Equis Research的一项调查显示领先约7个百分点；而曾为资助攻击比格斯广告的团体工作过的HighGround公司的一项民调显示领先近17个百分点。HighGround发现，比格斯仅获得了大约71%的共和党人支持，在独立选民中则落后超过37个百分点；Equis则发现，大约十分之一的特朗普2024年选民支持霍布斯。
Recent public polls show Hobbs ahead, by widely varying margins: about 7 points in a survey from Equis Research; and nearly 17 in a poll by HighGround, a firm that has worked for a group funding ads attacking Biggs. HighGround found Biggs winning only about 71% of Republicans and trailing among independents by more than 37 points, and Equis found roughly 1 in 10 of Trump’s 2024 voters backing Hobbs.
运营HighGround并曾参与约翰·麦凯恩首次参议员竞选的查克·考夫林表示，该州的共和党已不再是麦凯恩的党派。
Chuck Coughlin, who runs HighGround and worked on John McCain’s first Senate campaign, said the state’s GOP is no longer McCain’s party.
“我不知道温和派共和党人是否还存在，”考夫林说，“你知道的，这个党已经被MAGA吞噬了，而且这里的政党在职能上甚至已经不复存在了，因为这个党是由‘转折点’掌控的。”霍布斯的竞选搭档或许就是这一论点的证明。2014年至2025年担任梅萨市长的约翰·贾尔斯曾是一名长期担任共和党人的人，此后已成为独立人士。他在2020年支持了拜登，并在2024年民主党全国代表大会上发言支持卡玛拉·哈里斯。
“I don’t know that a moderate Republican exists anymore,” Coughlin said. “You know, the party’s been consumed by MAGA and the party functionally doesn’t even exist anymore out here because the party is run by Turning Point.”Hobbs’ running mate may be proof of the point. John Giles, Mesa’s mayor from 2014 to 2025, was a longtime Republican who has since become an independent. He endorsed Biden in 2020 and spoke in support of Kamala Harris at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
“我确实感觉到该党发生了变化，尤其是过去几年，”吉尔斯对《密西西比现在》杂志说。“我一直是共和党人，共和党内一直有些因素让我觉得无法认同。但我也觉得这是一个足够大的帐篷，能容纳我和许多像我这样的人。”吉尔斯和比格斯一样，都是耶稣基督后期圣徒教会成员，两人都毕业于杨百翰大学。后期圣徒曾是亚利桑那州可靠的共和党基本盘，在梅萨拥有据点。
“I do feel like the party has changed over, particularly over the last few years,” Giles told MS NOW. “I’ve been a lifelong Republican, and there were always elements of the Republican Party that I didn’t feel like I aligned with. But I also felt like it was a big enough tent that it accommodated me and a lot of folks like me.”Giles, like Biggs, is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and both men graduated from Brigham Young University. Latter-day Saints were once a reliably Republican bloc in Arizona, with a stronghold in Mesa.
但2020年，足够多的后期圣徒背离特朗普，帮助拜登赢下该州，许多人对特朗普的粗鲁作风及其攻击移民的言论感到反感，这些与教会强调欢迎难民的理念相冲突。
But in 2020, enough of them broke with Trump to help Biden carry the state, many put off by his crudeness and his attacks on immigrants, which clashed with the church’s emphasis on welcoming refugees.
“我确实感觉到共和党发生了变化，特别是在过去几年以非积极的方式变化，这有点迫使我离开，”吉尔斯说。他补充称，霍布斯专注于解决问题而非党派斗争，可能吸引那些已准备好翻过2020年这一页的亚利桑那州选民。谁在11月3日获胜，将在2028年坐上杜西曾坐过的位置。
“I do feel like the Republican Party has changed, in particular, in not positive ways over the last few years, and it’s kind of forced me to leave,” Giles said. He added that Hobbs’ focus on solutions, rather than partisan politics, could appeal to Arizona voters who, he said, are ready to move past 2020. Whoever wins on Nov. 3 will sit where Ducey sat in 2028.
杜西表示，他在仪式结束后回拨了特朗普的电话。那时，文件已经签署完毕。
Ducey has said he returned Trump’s call after the ceremony. By then, the papers were signed.