Kelli Ward is an American politician and osteopathic physician who served in the Arizona State Senate from 2013 to 2015. She ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2016 and 2018 before being elected chair of the Arizona [[Republican Party]] in January 2019, a position she held until early 2023. Ward positioned herself as a staunch ally of [[Donald Trump]] and used her role as state party chair to align Arizona's GOP apparatus with the MAGA movement. Following the 2020 presidential election, Ward became one of the most prominent proponents of [[Election Denialism]] at the state level. She publicly promoted claims that the election had been stolen from Trump and pushed for partisan audits of Maricopa County's ballots, culminating in the Arizona Senate's [[2021 Maricopa County Presidential Ballot Audit]]. Her efforts contributed to the broader narrative of [[The Big Lie]] that the 2020 results were fraudulent, and she pressured state and county officials to decertify the results. In 2024, Ward was indicted by an Arizona grand jury in connection with the state's fake electors scheme, in which a slate of unauthorized pro-Trump electors submitted forged certificates claiming Trump had won Arizona. The indictment charged her alongside several other Republican operatives and attorneys involved in the post-election effort to overturn the certified results.