It would mean another political battle for a man who’s been fighting them since childhood.īiggs, a Tucson native, was the third of five children. ![]() I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t get primaried.”Ĭapitol riots: New videos emerge tying Andy Biggs to the 'Stop the Steal' movement Growing up in Tucson, getting political There was an intellectual heft to what he was doing, but I think he’s lost that. “He’s always been far right, but he’s always had a certain dignity about him and a decorum. “He’s so used to playing far-right, red-meat politics that he doesn’t know how to appeal across the spectrum, and he’s done nothing but pour gas on that fire in this last year. “He’s kind of sabotaged his ability to win a statewide general election,” Montague said. Tyler Montague, a Republican consultant who was on the losing end of Biggs’ 2016 GOP primary victory, sees Biggs as drifting to the fringe of his party, limiting his political appeal in a state that has shifted more to the political middle. “I think Andy Biggs plays his cards close to his vest,” he said. Kyrsten Sinema that neither has made to this point, he said. But mounting such a race will require heavy fundraising and a mistake from either Democratic Sen. Many members of Congress, and those around them, have visions of a Senate run, said Tom Freestone, a longtime Phoenix-area politician said. ![]() If it seems an unlikely bet, well, Biggs has beaten the odds more than once as he has risen through the political ranks.īiggs, who is increasingly a presence nationally on Fox News and other conservative media, declined The Arizona Republic's request for an interview. “There's a discussion at high levels in the Republican Party about, to be blunt, whether it's worth trying to change the Republican Party because the current version is way too far to the right, and the country is changing.”Ī few months after Biden’s narrow victory in Arizona and a string of other Democratic triumphs, Biggs has said he believes his state, if not the country as a whole, is poised to snap back to a more conservative agenda. “Generally speaking, the Republicans in the House do not want to be defined by people like Biggs and Greene and Jordan,” Sabato said. Not that he's as bad as she is, but, he's certainly embraced his share of conspiracy theories." "The more-mainstream Republicans in the House are becoming more and more aware of the Andy Biggses and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes. “Among Democrats, he’s a pariah, that’s for sure," Sabato said. More: 'Around here, Trump is king': How Marjorie Taylor Greene got to Congress by running as the MAGA candidate Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Greene, but he has gotten everyone’s attention. Larry Sabato, the political scientist who directs the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said Biggs hasn’t overshadowed other arch-conservatives on Capitol Hill, such as Rep. And he is cheered by many of the same Arizona Republican Party activists who recently voted to censure Gov. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., newcomers who have quickly become among the House's most polarizing members. In a past political life at the Arizona Legislature, Biggs emerged as a major supporter of Senate Bill 1070, the state's controversial immigration-enforcement law, and as the main GOP opponent to Medicaid expansion. Senate run next year that would test the appeal of his high-octane conservative message in a once-red state that is now considered purple.īiggs' conservative bona fides are undeniable. ![]() Capitol and five people died.īiggs, the chairman of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is sometimes viewed as a possibility for a U.S. 6 riot in which supporters of former President Donald Trump ransacked the U.S. He also is among a group of Republican lawmakers under scrutiny over their roles in the run-up to the Jan. His national stature as a political outlier only has grown in the stormy aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, when Biggs repeatedly raised doubts to undermine the process and sought to set aside millions of legitimate votes. While Biggs has always been known in Arizona as a conservative, his unwavering loyalty to former President Donald Trump, his potentially dangerous counter-programming on coronavirus measures and other moments have introduced his thinking to a wider audience.īiggs, 62, is by any measure among the most conservative members of Congress. More often, it’s because the three-term Arizona Republican is content to go to battle where few others will, from attacking the mainstream medical response to the COVID-19 pandemic to spreading baseless conspiracy theories about President Joe Biden's ballot box victory on Nov. Andy Biggs is often a man apart from the crowd, a far-right brawler often in the right place at the right time.
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