Recall supporters had until June 17 to submit the necessary signatures to recall Arizona state House speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers (R). The Patriot Party of Arizona submitted an estimated 24,500 signatures at the deadline. Since the recall campaign did not attach the statutorily required date-stamped recall application to each of their 2,040 petition sheets, the secretary of state’s office rejected their filing.
The Patriot Party of Arizona started the recall effort on February 17 and needed to submit at least 22,331 signatures to require a recall election. The recall petition criticized Bowers over his failure as House speaker to call a special session during the coronovirus pandemic and for his failure to protect the integrity of the 2020 election.
Bowers said he was surprised that the recall effort failed. “I was gearing up to go through a recall,” he said. Bowers has served in the state House since 2015 and became House speaker in 2019. He was re-elected in 2020 with 35.5% of the vote.
As of June 9, 2021, Ballotpedia had tracked 164 recall efforts against 262 officials. This was the most recall efforts for that point in the year since the first half of 2016, when we tracked 189 recall efforts against 265 officials. In comparison, we tracked between 72 and 155 efforts by the midpoints of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
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