Time is running out to be on it
“It’s OK to vote against Donald Trump,” Mesa, Arizona’s Republican mayor, John Giles told a press conference on Monday. Giles remains a registered Republican but is stumping for Kamala Harris. He hopes to see the GOP “get away from the personality cult our party has become.”
“I think the time has come for us as Arizona Republicans to admit the obvious,” Giles told reporters, “which is that our party’s nominee is not qualified for office and that we need to vote for the adult in the room, and that is Kamala Harris.”
“Character matters,” said former GOP state Rep. Robin Shaw.
The Harris campaign days ago named Giles and Shaw to head up a task force to do outreach to Arizona Republicans:
“As a lifelong Arizonan and longtime Republican, I strongly believe in defending democracy and standing up for our personal freedoms. Donald Trump and JD Vance represent the greatest threat to American values and institutions that I have seen in my lifetime – and that’s why I am committed to defeating him in November,” Giles said in a written statement.
Giles authored a July 29 guest column in The Arizona Republic asking fellow Republicans to “put country over party.” Not unlike President Joe Biden putting country over personal ambition.
Giles wrote:
Since 2014, I have had the honor of being mayor of Mesa, the nation’s 36th-largest city and one of the most conservative. Under Trump, American cities didn’t get the support they deserved. Infrastructure week was made into a joke.
But under the Biden-Harris administration, Mesa has seen historic federal funding for the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, along with investments to make sure our streets and public transit systems benefit from modern technology.
With the CHIPS Act, Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden are delivering thousands of new jobs to Arizonans and helping us grow critical industries.
Several Republican former mayors joined Giles and Shaw:
Many of the Republicans backing Harris are also supporting Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in his Senate race against Republican Kari Lake.
Peggy Neely, the former vice mayor of Phoenix, tied her support for Harris to reproductive rights and the fall of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case. Additional supporters from city government are former Scottsdale City Council member Virginia Korte, former Mesa Vice Mayor Claudia Reeder Walters and former Paradise Valley Vice Mayor Dan Schweiker.
“Donald Trump’s radical and regressive agenda poses the biggest threat to women’s rights in decades, not just in Arizona, but across the entire country. Donald Trump must be unequivocally defeated at the ballot box to safeguard our future,” Neely said in a written statement.
Others in the advisory group include former Maricopa County Clerk of the Superior Court Judith Allen, former Arizona state Republican Party executive director Jane Lynch and finance director Todd Bradford, and former First Assistant Arizona Attorney General Robert Carey.
Someone recently warned that those attached to MAGA and fascism-curious movements around the world risk being recorded along with history’s villains. It’s too late for most of the Trump administration, for the Trump family, and for the “toxic” Trump Organization. But for Republicans who kept silent during the reign of Trump hoping he would just go away, time is running out.
The time to get on the right side of history is now.
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