Couy Griffin

Couy Dale Griffin (born 1973) is a former politician who served from 2019 to 2022 as a county commissioner for District 2 of Otero County, New Mexico, which covers Tularosa, Three Rivers, La Luz, the western parts of Alamogordo, and the Mescalero Apache Reservation. In September 2022, Griffin was removed from office pursuant to the Insurrection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution due to his actions in the January 6 United States Capitol attack. He is a member of the Republican Party. Political career In 2018, incumbent district 2 commissioner Susan Flores did not seek re-election, and Griffin joined the race to succeed her. On June 5, Griffin won the Republican primary with 708 votes (55%) against Christopher Rupp and Gregory Bose, who garnered 252 (20%) and 317 (25%) votes respectively. Griffin won the general election on November 6, 2018, with 3,090 votes (65%) against Democrat Christopher Jones with 1,635 votes. He took office in January 2019. In 2021, a committee began circulating a petition to recall Griffin from office, accusing him of missing numerous county meetings, improperly filing a travel voucher, acting in a way that got him banned from the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and using county resources to further his group Cowboys for Trump. The committee fell short of the required signatures, only getting 1,229 of the required 1,574 signatures by the September 29 deadline. Citing lingering concerns of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, the county commissioners hired a firm run by election conspiracy promoter Shiva Ayyadurai, who had worked on the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit. As with Maricopa County's audit of the election results, no evidence of fraud was found in the results for Otero County. Nonetheless, in January 2022, Griffin and the two other Otero County commissioners refused to certify the official 2022 election results for their county. New Mexico secretary of state Maggie Toulouse Oliver then sued the commission to complete their certification duty. Subsequently, the New Mexico Supreme Court ordered the commission to certify the election. The two other commissioners relented and complied, enacting the certification via a majority vote, but Griffin refused, asserting, "It’s not based on any facts. It’s only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that’s all I need."