Arizona Freedom Caucus member Kolodin running for secretary of state in 2026
Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, on Jan. 13, 2025. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror
Republican state Rep. Alexander Kolodin on Monday announced his plans to run for Arizona secretary of state in 2026.
Kolodin, who was first elected to represent Scottsdale in 2022, is an election denier and a member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus.
He's also an attorney who was sanctioned by the State Bar of Arizona in 2023 for taking on lawsuits challenging the 2020 election, including the infamous 'kraken' lawsuit that made implausible and evidence-free claims of massive election fraud.
'I'm Alex Kolodin and I'm running for Secretary of State to restore transparency to our elections once and for all,' Kolodin wrote in a social media post on Monday. 'Arizona elections continue to be a laughing stock under (Democratic Secretary of State Adrian) Fontes. Voter confidence is at historic lows. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. I'm running for Secretary of State to restore transparency, honesty, security, and lawfulness to our elections.'
In a video announcing his bid for the state's top election official, Kolodin walks toward the camera with a slightly blurred Arizona Capitol building in the background. In the video, Kolodin claims that the head of the Arizona Republican Party, Gina Swoboda, asked him to run and endorsed him.
But Swoboda issued a statement later on Monday saying that she hadn't endorsed Kolodin and wouldn't endorse any candidate in the Republican primary. She added that she would support Kolodin if he wins the primary, as she had previously said she would.
In fact, Swoboda is strongly considering a run for the office herself, something she told multiple reporters on Monday.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Since he took office, Kolodin has been an outspoken member of the House Elections Committee, where he's advocated for significant changes to the state's election laws, many of them based on conspiracy theories that have fundamentally reshaped how Republicans view elections in Arizona and across the country.
During some of those meetings, Kolodin chided those who don't believe claims that elections are marred by widespread fraud or have outcomes that are rigged by elections officials.
'These days, I feel like I'm living in the Orwellian world,' Kolodin said during a House Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee meeting in February 2024. ''We trust our election officials. They would never put their thumb on the scale. They would never try to cheat.' Well, we know that's demonstrably false, and it's demonstrably false in the way a 6th grader could know that it's demonstrably false.'
His evidence was that Donald Trump was not on GOP primary election ballots in two states — Colorado and Maine — after his candidacy was challenged on the grounds that he was ineligible to serve under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because he incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
In Maine, the secretary of state determined Trump couldn't appear on the ballot. But in Colorado, the Democratic secretary of state allowed him on the ballot only to have the state Supreme Court rule that he was barred by the 14th Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court overruled that decision, and Trump appeared on the ballot in all 50 states.
Kolodin supported legislative changes that would have made it easier for people like Kari Lake to challenge the results of an election, to get rid of no-excuse early voting and to return the state to all-precinct voting with precincts capped at 1,000 voters, an idea that experts at the county level said would be unworkable.
For years, representatives of Arizona's rural counties begged Kolodin and the other Republicans on the Elections Committee to consider how difficult and costly it would be to implement some of the election changes that they supported. But Kolodin said during a January meeting that he only really believed the complaints from the rural counties after former Freedom Caucus member Justin Heap took office as Maricopa County Recorder and relayed the same concerns to him.
'To be honest, we've never really had somebody that we trusted on the other side to tell us these things in a way that we would believe them,' Kolodin said during a Jan. 15 House Ad Hoc Committee on Election Integrity and Florida-style Voting Systems meeting.
Kolodin was the chairman of that panel, and he drafted legislation aimed at speeding up the state's election results, based on systems already being used in Florida. The proposal passed through the House and the Senate, both under Republican control, but was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. A similar resolution, which would bypass Hobbs to be sent straight to voters in 2026, passed through the House on a party line vote and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.
Kolodin was the driving force behind an election timeline fix bill that passed with bipartisan support in February 2024, which will allow voters who drop off their ballot in person on Election Day to show identification and have their ballot tabulated immediately, instead of dropping it off for signature verification. The change, meant to speed up the reporting of election results, will take effect in 2026.
This year, Kolodin sponsored legislation that would repeal the law banning Arizonans from owning machine guns, silencers, sawed-off shotguns and even pipe bombs.
He was reelected in November. It is unclear if he will resign his legislative post to mount his statewide campaign.
Fontes, who has passed on opportunities to run for governor and Congress, has not announced whether he's planning a reelection bid.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump Posts Thinly-Veiled Message to Judges on Tariffs
With courts threatening to unravel his global trade war, Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday to send a not-so-subtle signal to the judges standing in his way. The president suggested he expects an appeal to go his way following a week of legal whiplash over his signature economic policy. On Wednesday, a federal trade court struck down his sweeping 'Liberation Day' tariffs on global trade partners, ruling he had overstepped his constitutional authority. But just a day later, an appeals court put that decision on hold while it reviews the case. Trump catastrophized in his post that a court loss would spell economic disaster. 'If the Courts somehow rule against us on Tariffs, which is not expected, that would allow other Countries to hold our Nation hostage with their anti-American Tariffs that they would use against us,' he wrote. 'This would mean the Economic ruination of the United States of America!' The initial ruling came in response to a lawsuit from small businesses that said the tariffs put their operations at existential risk by driving up costs associated with importing goods. The U.S. Court of International Trade sided with the plaintiffs, with the three-judge panel concluding that the 1977 law Trump relied on to impose the tariffs did not give him 'unbounded authority' to do so. Trump and his mouthpieces have characteristically lashed out at the judiciary in response. His White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Thursday cast the panel as 'activist judges'—despite the fact that two of the three were appointed by Republican presidents, including one by Trump himself. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has also reaffirmed the administration's intent to push forward with the tariff policy—via other means if necessary—regardless of the legal setback. 'We're going to take that up to higher courts, the president's going to win like he always does. But rest assured, tariffs are not going away,' Lutnick said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. 'He has so many other authorities, that even in the weird and unusual circumstance where this was taken away, we just bring on another or another or another.' Trump has spent months framing his tariffs as a bargaining chip to force overseas trade partners to make new agreements. To date, the administration has finalized only one such agreement—with the United Kingdom—and a separate 90-day truce with China to roll back steep tariffs on both sides. A federal appeals court has set a June 5 deadline for plaintiffs in the trade court case to respond and June 9 for the administration.
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
Scott Bessent dismisses Jamie Dimon's debt concerns, saying none of his past predictions have been right
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that he doesn't agree with Jamie Dimon's prediction that the bond market will crack. "I've known Jamie a long time and for his entire career he's made predictions like this. Fortunately, none of them have come true. That's why he's a banker, a great banker. He tries to look around the corner," Bessent said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation." Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, told attendees at the Reagan National Economic Forum on Friday that the US "massively overdid" spending and quantitative easing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dimon predicted this will lead to a "crack in the bond market." "It is going to happen," Dimon said on Friday. "I just don't know if it's going to be a crisis in six months or six years, and I'm hoping that we change both the trajectory of the debt and the ability of market makers to make markets," he added. Bessent said the government is working on shrinking its deficit, and the administration intends to "leave the country in great shape in 2028." "So the deficit this year is going to be lower than the deficit last year, and in two years it will be lower again. We are going to bring the deficit down slowly. We didn't get here in one year, and this has been a long process," Bessent told CBS. Last month, House Republicans passed President Donald Trump's " big beautiful bill." The bill, in its current form, is expected to raise the deficit by $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years, per the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The bill is now with the Senate, and GOP lawmakers hope to have it on Trump's desk by July 4. Dimon isn't the only one who has raised concerns about the US deficit. Last week, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in an interview with "CBS Sunday Morning" that he was " disappointed to see the massive spending bill." A clip from Musk's interview was released on Tuesday. The full interview aired on Sunday. "I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing," Musk said. Musk was the leader of the White House DOGE office from January to May. He announced his departure from the Trump administration on Wednesday. "I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful. But I don't know if it could be both," Musk told CBS.
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Nassau DA warns of Albany push to approve early parole for violent convicts
The Democratic-run New York state legislature could rush through a series of bills to give convicts early parole and prevent law enforcement from keeping dangerous criminals off the streets, Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly warned Sunday. In recent years, Democrats clawed back controversial cashless bail and discovery laws after serial criminals were let loose, triggering massive political blowback. 'These bills undercut everything we work for every day — building strong cases, securing convictions, and ensuring justice is served,' Donnelly, a Republican up for re-election this fall, told The Post. Advertisement 3 Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly. Brigitte Stelzer 'When prosecutors do the hard work of putting violent offenders behind bars, we should be backed by laws that protect that progress — not laws that allow those same criminals to return to our communities years before their sentences are complete,' added Donnelly, who is holding a press conference Monday announcing her opposition to the bills. Among the bills drawing concern is the Elder Parole bill — which would require inmates aged 55 and older who have served at least 15 years of their sentence to be considered for early release, regardless of the seriousness of the crime committed. Advertisement The measure is sponsored by Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D-Manhattan) and Assemblywoman Maritza Davila (D-Brooklyn). Another bill, the Earned Time Act, would make most violent felons eligible for time allowance credits, potentially slashing their prison sentences in half, Donnelly said. The earned time bill is sponsored by Sen. Jeremy Cooney (D-Rochester) and Assemblywoman Anna Kelles (D-Ithaca). 3 Madeline Brame's son, Hason Correa, was murdered in a scuffle outside a Harlem apartment building seven years ago. Steven Hirsch Advertisement A third bill — the Second Look Act — would permit prisoners to petition the courts for a sentence reduction after serving 10 years, including inmates convicted of violent crimes. The legislation is promoted by Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblywoman Latrice Walker (D-Brooklyn). GOP Long Island lawmakers oppose the early parole bills, including Assemblyman Edward Ra and Sen. Jack Martins. 3 The New York State Capitol building. Hans Pennink for the NY Post Advertisement Crime victims' advocate Madeline Brame, whose Army Sergeant son Hason Correa was murdered in a scuffle outside a Harlem apartment building seven years ago, expressed outrage at the proposals to give violent cons a break. 'These proposals completely disregard the pain and effort that go into holding criminals accountable,' she said. 'We need to help prosecutors put violent offenders behind bars — not give criminals new ways to get out early.' Gov. Kathy Hochul toyed with early release proposals in April as a way to try to alleviate the prison population amid an illegal prison guard strike and a staffing shortage. She was forced to bring in the National Guard to staff the prisons. She proposed opening eligibility for merit time in the state budget, then backed down after it was revealed doing so could lead to people who were in for violent crimes to be released early. Donnelly was among those who raised the alarm. Inmate advocates have pushed for early parole and other reforms after prisoners were allegedly killed at the hands of guards over the past year.
