The GOP-controlled Arizona House of Representatives expelled freshman Republican state Rep. Liz Harris in a bipartisan vote on Wednesday.
Harris was expelled by a majority of her fellow Republicans and all Democrats for disorderly behavior after inviting a speaker to a committee hearing who made unsubstantiated allegations of drug cartel bribery and election rigging against a number of elected officials, judges, and others.
The House 46–13 vote included 18 out of 31 Republicans and all 28 Democrats.
According to an ethics committee report, Harris was aware that the person she invited to the legislative hearing in February would make accusations of criminal activity against her colleagues. The report also stated that she tried to conceal this information from House leaders beforehand and provided misleading information during the committee’s investigation into her actions.
House Speaker Ben Toma, a Peoria Republican, introduced the resolution calling for Harris’s expulsion. The resolution alleged that she had violated her obligation to protect the integrity of the House and undermined the public’s trust in the institution.
“This comes down to the integrity, in my opinion, of this institution and us as leaders,” said state Rep. David Livingston, a Republican who voted to expel Harris. “This is not personal.”
Harris had only been in office for three months, having been elected in 2022. She is now the fifth member of the Arizona Legislature to be expelled.
Harris’s precinct will now have five days to nominate three GOP candidates to fill the vacant seat. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will then choose which candidate will fill the rest of Harris’s two-year term.
The empty seat means Republicans have lost the one-vote majority they had in the House and will no longer have the 31 votes needed to pass legislation on a party-line vote.
The Allegations
Harris faced the expulsion vote after she invited Jacqueline Breger, an insurance agent from Scottsdale, to speak at a joint elections committee hearing in February.
