It’s easy to be cynical about politicians. Disappointment and betrayal breed cynicism.
Fortunately, there are people — on both sides of the aisle — who redeem the profession by doing the right thing, even when there is a price to be paid for doing it.
Take Rusty Bowers.
On Feb. 1, 2022, HB 2596 was introduced in the Arizona House of Representatives. The bill would have altered voting in primaries and in the general election by eliminating early voting and by restricting all voting to paper ballots.
More troubling was a provision that would have given the legislature the power to accept or reject the results of an election, and if the legislature rejected the results, a single elector would have had the power to demand that a new election be held.
Standing in the way of the passage of HB 2596 was the Republican speaker of the House, Russell “Rusty” Bowers, 30 years an elected official, father of seven, beekeeper, orchardist, watercolorist and fierce lover of the Constitution.
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If Rusty Bowers had simply wanted to kill the bill, he could have sat on it. It wasn’t likely to pass anyway. But he wanted to make a statement. He sent the bill to committee. Well, not to a committee. He sent it to 12 committees, a legislative maneuver that, according to New York Times reporting, “left even veteran statehouse watchers in Arizona awe-struck at its audacity.”
“We gave the authority to the people,’’ Bowers told Capitol Media Services. “And I’m not going to go back and kick them in the teeth.’’
Shortly after the 2020 election, Bowers famously clashed with Donald Trump, Rudy Guiliani and John Eastman in a series of phone calls.
To Bowers, who described himself as a “conservative Republican (who) voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him,” the purpose of the calls was shocking.
According to the recent indictment of Donald Trump, the president and Guiliani asked Bowers to replace legitimate electors for Biden with a “new slate for the Defendant.”
Bowers recalled his response when he testified before the Jan. 6 committee: "(They were) asking me to do something that is counter to my oath, when I swore to the Constitution to uphold it. And it is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired. So, for me to do that just because someone asked me to is foreign to my very being. I will not do it.”
In an interview on ABC News, Bowers explained, “The idea of throwing out the election of the president is like, OK, so what part of Jupiter do I get to land on and colonize?”
Bowers’ courageous defense of the Constitution did not go unnoticed.
In April 2022 he was named a recipient of the Profile in Courage Award, along with Liz Cheney, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Fulton County (Ga.) election worker Shaye Moss and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
“Each (was) chosen for the courage they’ve shown protecting democracy in the United States and abroad,” the program said.
Meanwhile, back home, Rusty Bowers learned that there is sometimes a price to be paid for taking a righteous stand.
“I’ve had people walk up and say, you know, just cold turkey, ‘I’m ashamed of you,’ ” he said. He was called a “traitor” and a “pedophile” and told that “the price of treason is hanging.”
The noise and disturbances in front of Bowers’ house on Saturday nights upset the neighborhood and was especially disturbing to his daughter, who was seriously ill inside.
Kacey Rae Bowers, 42, died on Jan. 28, three weeks after the assault on our nation’s Capitol, seven days after Joe Biden was inaugurated.
The final blow — politically speaking — came in July 2022 when the chairwoman of the Arizona GOP, Kelli Ward, issued a news release in which she announced, "The AZGOP Executive Committee formally censured Rusty Bowers tonight. He is no longer a Republican in good standing, and we call on Republicans to replace him at the ballot box in the August primary."
Bowers lost his bid for a seat in the Arizona Senate to an opponent who had been endorsed by Trump.
For the first time in three decades Rusty Bowers no longer served the people of Arizona in an elected position.
"If you are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, Jesus said, you’re in good company. For so persecuted they the prophets — and an occasional politician — who were before you." (Matthew 5:11-12; my paraphrase.)