Former Navy SEAL Eli Crane, who went on Shark Tank to pitch a company that turns bullets into bottle openers, won Tuesday's GOP primary election for the 2nd Congressional District. He beat seven challengers, including Arizona's first black Republican state legislator and another believed to be a key player of the QAnon movement. Crane will face incumbent Rep. Tom O'Halleran, one of the most endangered House Democrats in the country, in November's general election.
O'Halleran is a third-term Democrat whose district had been solidly blue before it was recently redrawn. Arizona's 2nd Congressional District still spans the northeastern part of the state but also now includes Prescott Valley, one of the most conservative and rural areas in Arizona.
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During a primary debate, of which Crane chose to sit out, state Rep. Walt Blackman and Ron Watkins, rumored to be the architect of the QAnon movement, argued over the 2020 presidential election. While both men agreed former President Donald Trump should have won, Blackman believes it's time for Arizona to move on, while Watkins refuses to give up.
"When the election was stolen, I was out there fighting tooth and nail to bring the information to the politicians," Watkins said. "I was the guy who discovered that the machines were stealing the votes. I posted it on Twitter and President Trump was retweeting me. … The politicians didn't do anything with it. They certified the election."
Blackman, a veteran who fought overseas for more than two decades, maintained that there was no way to "decertify" the election results, as Trump and his allies have repeatedly demanded.
He also told the Washington Examiner in a sit-down interview in Tempe, Arizona, last month that calls by several members of his party to "redo the election" are just not feasible.
"How do we redo the election? How do we do that in the Constitution?" he said. "It's a slippery slope because, say we do everything that some of these folks want to do, and in 2024, the Democrats don't do well. Are they going to have a do-over as well?"
Crane, who has a picture of his family with Trump plastered on his website, says he will "fearlessly fight for clean elections and will push back aggressively against voter fraud." His campaign did not respond to numerous requests for an interview, so a lot that is known of him comes directly from his social media accounts.
According to them, Crane believes that the country "must reinstate Election Day voting, bolster polling sites, end unregulated mail-out balloting and enact stronger voter ID laws and stiffer penalties for anyone caught harvesting ballots or found guilty of voter fraud."
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He has "called out the RINOs in Arizona for their refusal to decertify the 2020 election" and also proudly "congratulated the Maricopa County GOP for rejecting" an election he says was stolen.
As an ex-Navy SEAL who served in Iraq, Crane said he would "work tirelessly to stop human traffickers, cartel drug dealers, and terrorists from entering our southern border."