Shelby Bush, vice chair of the Maricopa County Republican Committee in Arizona, threatened to lynch the county’s top elections official.
Bush said in the video that Maricopa County Recorder Steven Richer “would be lynched if he walked into this room.”
Richer, who is seeking reelection, Posted a clip He posted on his account on social media platform X on Monday.
He noted that Bush is the Maricopa County Republican Party’s 2023 Volunteer of the Year and is also an adviser to Republican Senate candidate Kali Lake.
“Interesting word choice. It’s not ‘I’m gonna beat him up,’ or ‘I’m gonna kill him,'” Richer said. “It’s ‘lynching.’ Why would that word come out of her mouth, given the historical context?”
In the video, Mr. Bush singled out an audience member as a “good Christian” who he said would bring unity if he ran for county recorder, and he contrasted the man with Mr. Richter, who is Jewish and a Republican.
“We can work together on that, right?” she said. “That’s unity. To say, ‘We can shake hands, agree to run a good Christian platform campaign, take care of each other, and get through this together.’ That’s unity.”
Her comments were met with applause from the audience, after which she criticised Richer, drawing laughter.
“I will not unite with people who do not believe in the principles that we believe in and the American cause that this country was founded on,” Bush continued, “so I want to be very clear about that when I talk about what unity means.”
Bush’s comments were made at a campaign event in March for Republican candidate for U.S. House of Representatives, Jerron Davison. The event was titled “Uniting Patriots to Win.”
In his post, Richer questioned the audience’s reaction: No one spoke out against Bush’s threats or said he was going too far, he said.
“This is not healthy and this is not responsible behavior. This is not something we should want as part of the Republican Party,” he wrote.
Richer told Politico. He learned of the video over the weekend but has not heard from Bush since it was posted.
“It is unfortunate that we are in this current political climate. Her comments are extremely troubling, particularly her use of the word ‘lynching,’ a word that is so historically loaded and painful,” Richer said in a statement to Congress. “I look forward to returning to civil debate and a Republican Party where we debate issues like tax rates and government spending, without issuing violent threats to one another.”
Davison responded to Richer’s post.He defended Bush, saying he was a friend and “not a racist at all.” He called Richter’s post “an excuse to deflect pressure from how the election was rigged.”
The Anti-Defamation League and the Phoenix Metropolitan Jewish Community Relations Council said in a joint statement that they were appalled by “these vile remarks.” They called on Bush to retract his comments and apologize to Richer, and called on the Maricopa County Republican Committee to “stand against such comments.” The Arizona Republic reported.
Arizona is a battleground state won by President Biden in the last election, but Republicans have raised questions about the security of the state’s elections and there have been a series of threats against election workers after former President Trump and his allies tried to overturn Biden’s narrow victory in the state.
Bush is a member of the We the People AZ Alliance, a conservative group that has falsely claimed the election was stolen from Trump.
The Hill has reached out to the Maricopa County Republican Committee for comment.
This story was updated at 6:56 p.m.
