Republican voters in several key swing states could select election deniers as their nominees for governorships and other top offices in primaries Tuesday.
The issue is at the heart of high-profile races in Arizona and Michigan — two of the most important presidential battlegrounds — weeks after Republican voters elsewhere selected promoters of former President Donald Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election as nominees for several posts that could position them to manage key states’ election machinery in 2024.
Arizona, in particular, has been the epicenter of Trump’s election denialism. Once a Republican stronghold, the state has become one of the nation’s most competitive, with Democrats winning the presidential race and both Senate seats there in recent years. That political shift was met with a sham, partisan review of the 2020 election results ordered last year by the GOP-led state Senate.
Here’s a look at the election deniers on the ballot in key races Tuesday:
The GOP could be poised to nominate a statewide ticket of Trump-backed election deniers on Tuesday.
In the race to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, Trump-endorsed former television journalist Kari Lake has built her campaign around lies about election fraud. She referred to the refusal of her leading rival, Ducey-backed Karrin Taylor Robson, to indulge those lies as “disqualifying.”
The race for secretary of state — Arizona’s chief elections officer — also features an election denier endorsed by Trump in Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker who was in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, and wrongly claims that Trump won the 2020 election.
Trump-backed Blake Masters, who is seeking to face Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, hasn’t just claimed that Democrats “pulled out all the stops” to cheat in 2020, but has suggested the 2022 midterms won’t be fair. Masters faces other Republicans who have rejected the 2020 election outcome, including businessman Jim Lamon, who touts his efforts to fund the bogus review of Maricopa County’s 2020 results. Another candidate, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, sent a letter claiming to have uncovered election fraud, without detailing any fraud in how the election was managed.
Trump’s chosen candidate in the race for attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh, said he would “take the fraud in our 2020 election seriously and bring justice to those who’ve undermined our Republic.”
Trump on Friday endorsed Tudor Dixon in the wide-open Republican primary to take on Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is seeking her second term.
Dixon, a conservative commentator, has falsely claimed that Trump won the 2020 election. She is also backed by Michigan’s GOP establishment, including former US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ family, the state Chamber of Commerce and Michigan Right to Life.
That GOP gubernatorial primary features several other election deniers, as well. One candidate, Ryan Kelley, was in Washington on January 6, 2021, and has pleaded not guilty to four misdemeanor charges stemming from allegations of his participation in the riot at the US Capitol. Retired pastor Ralph Rebandt said he is “convinced that we would find the fraud” in the 2020 election with a “full forensic audit.” And chiropractor Garrett Soldano has touted a film that promotes an unproven conspiracy theory about the 2020 election.
In the Grand Rapids-based 3rd Congressional District, Rep. Peter Meijer — one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment following the insurrection at the Capitol — faces a Trump-backed challenger in John Gibbs.
Gibbs has fully embraced Trump’s election lies. He wrongly claimed in a debate with Meijer that the results that led to Biden’s win in 2020 were “simply mathematically impossible” and said that there were “anomalies in there, to put it very lightly.”
Democrats have attempted to boost Gibbs — whom they believe would be easier to beat in November’s general election — with ads casting him as a Trump-aligned conservative.
Michigan Republicans are also expected to pick Trump-backed election deniers in the races for secretary of state and attorney general. At a convention in April, the state GOP endorsed Kristina Karamo, an educator and right-wing commentator who claimed to have witnessed irregularities in 2020’s election, for secretary of state, and Matthew DePerno, who was a lawyer on a case challenging the 2020 results, for attorney general. But those races aren’t on Tuesday’s primary ballot; instead, Republicans will make their choices official at a party convention in August.
Read about the election deniers on the ballot in Missouri, Washington, and Kansas here.
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