ARIZONA, USA — Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers is among five people named Thursday as recipients of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for acting to protect democracy.
The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation said Bowers and four others were chosen for standing up for free and fair elections, as the system is challenged in ways it has never been before.
They are: Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Fulton County, Georgia, elections worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.
Bowers, a Republican, broke ranks with many in his party in December 2020 when he rejected a request from Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani for the Arizona Legislature to step in and replace electors legally pledged for Joe Biden with others who would support Trump.
The foundation said Bowers made a “decision of conscience,” for which he endured persistent harassment and intimidation tactics from Trump supporters, and he acted again to protect the integrity of Arizona elections by stopping a wide-ranging election bill that would eliminate nearly all forms of early voting and require ballots to be counted by hand, though Republicans are still trying to pass these changes.
Caroline Kennedy and her son, Jack Schlossberg, will present the awards May 22 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. The award was created by the family of the late president to honor public figures who risk their careers by embracing unpopular positions for the greater good, and is named after Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Profiles in Courage.”
“There is no more important issue facing our country, and the world, today than the fight for democracy,” Kennedy said in a statement. “The war in Ukraine has shown the world that we can’t take freedom for granted, and the courage of our elected officials in the U.S. reminds us that as citizens we each have a responsibility to protect our democracy and exercise our fundamental right to vote.”
Previous recipients of the JFK award have included President Barack Obama, former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and Sen. John McCain.
RELATED: We asked Arizona lawmakers about who won the 2020 presidential election. Here are their answers.
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