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Rusty Bowers was a star Jan. 6 committee witness. He says it'll take 'a miracle' to win his next election.
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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.

Politics

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."

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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.

"It's so hostile," Bowers told NBC News in a phone interview, noting the overwhelming pro-Trump preference of his state Senate district, Arizona's 10th, east of Phoenix. "If I pull this off, it's going to be a miracle."

Still, roughly a dozen voters, strategists and insiders who spoke with NBC News felt he had a better chance of defeating his opponent, former state Sen. David Farnsworth, than Bowers himself predicted. Farnsworth did not respond to requests for comment.

"I do think he has a shot because he's a well-known, well-respected statesman who's been here a long time," said Sean Noble, an Arizona Republican strategist not affiliated with any primary race in the state. Noble added the race "really comes down to whether the goodwill that Rusty has built over the years overcomes kind of the tirade of the Jan. 6 defenders."

Bowers, who has served a combined 17 years between Arizona's state House and Senate, shot to the forefront of the political universe last month when he recounted to the Jan. 6 committee how Trump and his allies sought his help to invalidate the 2020 election results, something he knew to be unconstitutional.

"It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired, that this is my most basic foundational belief," Bowers, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told the committee. "And so for me to do that because somebody just asked me to, is foreign to my very being; I will not do it."

Bowers said his stance caused longtime friends to turn against him. He teared up as he detailed the harassment he and his family faced as a result of refusing Trump's demands. He said he has faced repeated protests at his home, adding that supporters of the former president have driven trucks through his neighborhood with video panels claiming he is "a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician."

Much of the vitriol came as his adult daughter was gravely ill and living with him. She died just weeks after the Capitol riot.

"So it was disturbing," he testified. "It's disturbing."

A recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this year, Bowers said the response in his district to the testimony has been mixed.

"Among my friends and people that I know personally in the district, it's been good," he said. "But generally, it is not seen as good. It's been: 'There you go. The traitor.'"

He also disagrees with people who tell him his decision to testify took courage.

"I don't see me having some courageous Don Quixote-esque [moment]. Maybe that's it, but certainly not a Joan of Arc," Bowers said. "But I did what I had to do. I knew that there might be consequences, and in some cases, I knew that it would end relationships. But I have to tell the truth. That's it. Beyond that, nothing else."