Arizona House speaker receives award for refusing to overturn 2020 election results

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5/AP) — Arizona’s Republican House speaker has been awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award for his refusal to consider overturning the 2020 election results. Speaker Rusty Bowers rebuffed repeated direct efforts by former President Donald Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani and others to overturn President Joe Biden’s narrow victory over Trump in Arizona.

“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election,” Bowers said in a statement. “I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.” John F. Kennedy Library Foundation explained Bowers endured “persistent harassment and intimidation tacts” from Trump supporters because of his stand on the 2020 election results. He also stopped GOP-backed bills that would have allowed the Legislature to overturn the results of an election.

Trump and Giuliani urged Bowers in a phone call to retroactively change Arizona law to allow the Legislature to choose a different slate of presidential electors than picked by voters. Bowers said in a Thursday statement that standing up for the people’s choices at the ballot box is not heroic and is “the least that Arizonans should expect from the people elected to serve them.”

Other recipients of the Profile in Courage award include Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, an elections department employee in Fulton County, Georgia.

The award created by Kennedy’s family in 1989 is designed “to recognize and celebrate the quality of political courage that he admired most” and is given each year to one or more political figures. This year’s award honors those who showed “courage to protect and defend democracy in the United States and abroad.” The awards will be presented at a May 22 ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

Arizona’s Family News Staff contributed to this report

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