Kelli Ward

Kelli Ward ( Kaznoski; born January 25, 1969) is an American politician who served as the chair of the Arizona Republican Party from 2019 to 2023.

She graduated from Bridgeport High School in 1987, as the class valedictorian.

Ward obtained a BS in psychology from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina in 1991; a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.) degree from West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine in Lewisburg, West Virginia in 1996; and a master's in public health (M.P.H.) from A.T. Still University of Health Sciences in Kirksville, Missouri in 2005.

The ad was an identical copy of a 2008 ad published by then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, except that Ward replaced Romney's approval message at the end of the video with her own.

Romney's lawyers contacted Ward and her campaign ordering her to cease any further use of the ad, stating Romney for President did not authorize any use of the ad. Ward's campaign did not dispute the similarities, telling reporters that "Mitt Romney got it right."

Stephen Sebastian, Ward's spokesman, added "If the shoe fits, wear it. The substance is still the same. Some things never change."

After Republican state senator Ron Gould left the Legislature and left the District 5 seat open, Ward won the three-way August 28, 2012, Republican primary in a highly contested election with 9,925 votes (42.2%) in a field which included State Representative Nancy McLain.

Ward won the November 6, 2012 general election with 49,613 votes (71.2%) against Democratic nominee Beth Weiser, who had run for a Senate seat in 2010.

She previously served in the Arizona State Senate from 2013 to 2015.

In January 2014, Ward introduced the Arizona Fourth Amendment Protection Act, which would "ban the state from engaging in activities which help the NSA carry out their warrantless data-collection programs, or even make use of the information on a local level."

When Ward ran for re-election in November 2014, she was unopposed in both the primary and the general election.

On July 14, 2015, Ward announced she would be entering the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Arizona, against long-time incumbent John McCain, who was viewed by many political analysts as a top target of the Tea Party movement and by other Republican conservatives.

On December 2, 2015, Ward announced that per Arizona's resign-to-run laws, she would resign from the state senate, effective December 15, in order to dedicate her time to running for the U.S. Senate.

She was succeeded by Sue Donahue.

She challenged incumbent Senator John McCain in the Republican primary for the United States Senate in 2016.

Resigning from the state senate to focus on the race, Ward was defeated 51% to 39%.

On July 11, 2016, Ward published an ad on her Facebook page saying that John McCain, her primary opponent for the 2016 Republican primary Senate election, was too friendly with Secretary Hillary Clinton.

The ad said that they were nearly identical in their political beliefs, stating that "they agree" on issues such as "amnesty for illegal immigrants," opposing President George W. Bush's tax cuts, a gasoline tax, and "blocking conservative judges".

In August 2016, Ward lost the primary to McCain.

In October 2016, Ward announced that she would run in the 2018 Republican primary against incumbent Senator Jeff Flake (who later announced he would retire from the Senate).

Ward criticized Flake for being "an open-borders, amnesty globalist," describing herself as "a build-the-wall, stop-illegal-immigration Americanist".

In the primary, Ward faced U.S. Rep. Martha McSally and former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Arpaio and Ward were considered in contention for the same group of primary voters, as they are both highly conservative and staunchly pro-Trump, whereas McSally has a more moderate record.

Billionaire Robert Mercer—who had supported Ward's 2016 campaign—announced that he would donate $300,000 to a Super PAC supporting her 2018 run.

Also in that month, a video attack ad appeared accusing Ward of agreeing with the chemtrails conspiracy theory and referring to her as "Chemtrail Kelli".

The advertisement was sponsored by the Senate Leadership Fund, aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and may have been the first time Ward came to the attention of "many outside Arizona" according to journalist Clare Malone, (an ad on the subject of chemtrails and Ward first appeared in the 2016 Senate race with McCain).

PolitiFact rated the claim that Ward "hosted a town hall on 'chemtrail conspiracy theories' and is open to sponsoring chemtrails legislation" as "mostly false," and factcheck.org labeled the ad "misleading."

Ward criticized the ad as demonstrating "sexism reserved for conservative women."

In July 2017, after McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer, Ward said that she hoped that McCain would resign as quickly as possible.

In August 2017, several events affected her campaign.

She expressed her support for Trump's pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had been convicted of criminal contempt of court.

In October 2017, Ward was formally endorsed by former Senior Counselor to the President Steve Bannon in her 2018 campaign.

She ran in the 2018 Republican primary election for the U.S. Senate, initially against Jeff Flake, and then against Martha McSally, after Flake's decision not to seek re-election.

Ward was defeated by McSally in the Republican primary.

Ward said in a radio interview, "I hope that Senator McCain is going to look long and hard at this, that his family and his advisers are going to look at this, and they're going to advise him to step away as quickly as possible. So that the business of the country and the business of Arizona being represented at the federal level can move forward. ... We can't have until the 2018 election, waiting around to accomplish the Trump agenda, to secure the border and stop illegal immigration and repeal Obamacare and fix the economy and fix the veterans administration, all those things need to be done and we can't be at a standstill while we wait for John McCain to determine what he's going to do."

Ward said that she hoped that Arizona's governor would consider appointing her to fill McCain's seat.

She became chair of the Arizona Republican Party in 2019.

After the 2020 United States presidential election, in which incumbent President Donald Trump lost in 25 states, including Arizona, she filed lawsuits seeking to nullify the state's election results.

When she did this, she provided no evidence of wrongdoing in the election and by December 9, federal and state judges had dismissed all of her challenges against President-elect Joe Biden's victory in Arizona.

Kelli Ward was born Kelli Kaznoski in Fairmont, West Virginia.