Arizona Democratic Party Chairman Robert Branscomb II was voted out of his position on Wednesday after engaging in a monthslong feud targeting top Democratic power players.
The dispute erupted in April, when Branscomb accused the state’s most powerful Democrats of attempting to threaten and intimidate him over whom to hire as the party’s new executive director. Gov. Katie Hobbs, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, state Attorney General Kris Mayes, and U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego fired back, accusing Branscomb of lying and saying he had “lost our trust.”
The public squabbling ended this week when Arizona Democratic state committee members cleared the two-thirds majority threshold needed to remove Branscomb from office. The recall vote Wednesday evening came after 180 committee members signed a petition calling for his removal. The state party’s executive board also censured him for sharing internal communications and not returning a report on how he accessed those communications.
“Today’s recall effort is rooted in misrepresentation, divisive tactics, and does not reflect our democratic values,” Branscomb said at the Wednesday recall vote. “This effort is not about the strength of the party. It’s about distraction and dividing us at a time when unity is more important than ever.”
Branscomb, an insurance executive who became the first black leader of the state party when he secured the position following an upset victory in January, has alleged that opposition to him is due to racism, not to mismanagement or strategic disagreements.
“The electeds said I can’t be trusted, but they never said why,” he told the Phoenix New Times.“I haven’t done anything for them not to trust me. I think it’s a way for them to try to frame me as someone who is unworthy of their trust and disparage my credibility. I take it that, I don’t know, it could be profiling me, thinking that because I’m a black man, I’m unsavory. I was barely in office before they said they couldn’t trust me.”
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Branscomb’s comments follow a letter he received from Democratic leaders, including Arizona’s governor and both senators, warning that he had lost their trust.
The letter from key leaders, including Hobbs, Gallego, and Kelly, came after Branscomb said the two senators had threatened to withdraw support for the state party because he appointed Michael Ruff as the party’s executive director instead of the lawmakers’ preferred candidate.