Rusty Bowers was a star Jan. 6 committee witness. He says it'll take 'a miracle' to win his next election.
Curtis Ruhl doesn't care much for politicians.
MESA, Ariz. — Curtis Ruhl doesn't care much for politicians. He doesn't consider himself to be a Republican or a Democrat and is not planning to vote in Arizona's high-stakes primary next month.
But if he did vote in the Aug. 2 contest, it would be for Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker now fighting for his political life after his emotional testimony to Congress about the intense pressure he withstood from then-President Donald Trump to subvert the results of the 2020 election in his state.
Bowers "is a different person," Ruhl, 63, said in an interview outside a local grocery store. "He’s a human being. A man I respect."
While Ruhl has known Bowers personally for three years, most Americans were only introduced to the conservative legislator weeks ago, when he traveled to Washington for a public hearing held by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. His race serves as the first and possibly only test this cycle of whether a Republican can publicly cross Trump before the Jan. 6 panel and still win a GOP primary — one that is taking place while Bowers' testimony is still fresh in voters' minds.
Bowers himself has no illusion about the task ahead of him — one in which he needs to have voters like Ruhl, part of Arizona's large, independent voting bloc, choose to cast a Republican ballot on his behalf.
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