State Representative Alexander Kolodin, an Ivy League-educated lawyer who has echoed President Trump’s unfounded claims of fraud in the 2020 election, on Tuesday won the Republican primary to become Arizona’s top elections official, The Associated Press said.
Mr. Kolodin will face Adrian Fontes, the Democratic incumbent, in the November election for secretary of state.
Mr. Kolodin defeated Gina Swoboda, a former chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party. Their bitterly fought primary offered a stark contrast over how elections have been conducted in Arizona, a swing state that could play a major role in the 2028 presidential election.
Mr. Kolodin was backed by Turning Point USA and other hard-right organizations. Mr. Trump had endorsed Ms. Swoboda when she initially announced a congressional bid, but he did not explicitly endorse anyone after she switched to the secretary of state race.
Mr. Kolodin represented Mr. Trump’s allies who challenged election results in 2020 and in 2022, when Kari Lake, an ally of the president, lost her bid for the governorship. He was later censured by the state bar for bringing cases in bad faith. An often contrarian legislator from Scottsdale, he has sponsored a measure that, if approved by voters in November, would require people who cast their ballots by mail to provide proof of identity.
Ms. Swoboda, a former Democrat, touted her experience working under Republican and Democratic administrations at the secretary of state’s office, which also handles campaign finance and lobbying reports.
The Democratic incumbent, Mr. Fontes, won in 2022 over Mark Finchem, another election denier, by about four percentage points.
That was an atypically large margin for an open statewide seat in Arizona. The same year, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, defeated Ms. Lake by 17,000 votes, or 0.7 percentage points.
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