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FILE – Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano addresses supporters at the Election Night campaign event at the Penn Harris Hotel in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, Nov. 8, 2022. Some of their highest profile races.
Republicans made an impressive decision earlier this year to nominate candidates for the top post statewide in battleground states that helped reverse President Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat. Most of these candidates lost in the midterm elections.
Doug Mastriano, who arranged buses to take Pennsylvanians to the Jan. 6, 2021 protests in Washington, failed in his bid to be governor of the state. Community Christina Caramo, a lecturer at her college who spread misinformation about voting on her Twitter even on election day, was squashed by the state’s Democratic Secretary of State.
Attorney Matthew Deperno, who filed a lawsuit in Michigan in 2020 spreading Trump’s election lies, lost his bid to become attorney general in that state. Supporting political novice Audrey Trujillo lost to New Mexico’s Secretary of State.
The two races, Arizona and Nevada, were too close to call on Wednesday. And in more conservative states, from Indiana to Kansas, election conspiracy theorists still held a prominent place.
Many observers argued that the 2022 midterm elections showed a democracy in jeopardy was not politically successful.
“Trying to overturn the election proved not to be all that popular with the American public,” said veteran Republican pollster Witt Ayers.
It extends to Arizona, Ayers added. There, prominent former TV newscaster turned election conspiracy theorist Kari Lake remains in the right gubernatorial race with Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, whose campaign has been widely criticized.
“The fact that we have a very sophisticated, very good Republican candidate and a very weak, very unsophisticated Democratic candidate in close proximity shows how much the Republican candidate weighs in on electoral denial. ,” Ayers said.
Election lies and conspiracy theories have run so deep into the Republican arena in 2022 that almost a third of the party’s 85 gubernatorial, secretary of state, and attorney general candidates have voted to reverse their 2020 defeat. accepted Trump’s efforts.
Except for candidates like Chris Kovach, who won the Kansas Attorney General election in 2016 and was a member of President Trump’s voter fraud committee, and Chuck Gray, a Wyoming congressman who ran as an independent. were almost all incumbents. Secretary of State in a Republican state.
FILE – Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels takes to the podium to address supporters at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee on Wednesday, November 9, 2022. Election deniers who backed Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election have failed in several high-profile campaigns. (AP Photo/Kenny Yu, File)
More important are the results in six states where Trump and his allies contested Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.
In most of these states, as in most of the country, the secretary of state is the highest elections official, and the governor and attorney general often play an important role in voting rules and certification of election results.
In Georgia, Trump failed to back election conspiracy theorists in May’s Republican primary, seeking revenge against incumbent Republicans who refused his demands to reverse the defeat.
On Tuesday, Trump lost bids to install supporters in three more of those vital states.In Pennsylvania, Mastriano has the power to appoint a secretary of state to oversee the vote But he was defeated in the gubernatorial race by Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro. In Wisconsin, Trump-nominated Governor Tim Michels lost to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, dooming Republican dreams of dissolving or significantly overhauling the state’s bipartisan election commission.
In Michigan, Karamo and Deperno played a major role in spreading misinformation about Trump’s 2020 defeat. Along with Republican gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon, who repeated Trump’s election lies, they dragged Republicans along and helped the Democrats gain complete control. State Capitol for the first time in decades.
In two other competing states, Minnesota and New Mexico, the Republican secretary of state candidates mirrored Trump’s election lies and suffered heavy losses, outperforming their respective top voters.
Former Michigan Speaker Jeff Timmers said: “More and more pro-democracy Americans are not Democrats, they look at Republicans and say, ‘That’s not for me.'” . Republican Party.
Nevada and Arizona will continue to test that idea as votes are tallied in a head-to-head race for the top post statewide.
In Nevada, former state legislator Jim Marchant organized a coalition of electoral conspiracy theorists to run for polling stations across the country, and himself ran for secretary of state.
Democracy supporters were optimistic Wednesday, especially as some Republicans acknowledged the loss without claiming massive fraud.
Emma Steiner, who monitors disinformation for Common Cause, said she “seems to be fighting for the right message” among election deniers online.
She said concessions by candidates such as Michigan’s Dixon and Pennsylvania’s Mehmet Oz “make it a little bit harder for those who deny the election to continue.”
But despite the acclaim, advocates kept a vigilant eye on Arizona and Nevada, acknowledging that Trump had severely damaged the faith in democracy that helps bind the nation together.
States United’s Joanna Lydgate, who has tried to spread the dangers of election conspiracy theorists, said: “Without a doubt, election veto is alive and well, and this is an ongoing threat. But she took comfort in Tuesday’s results. I got
“It was a really good night for democracy,” said Lydgate.
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AP writer Jeff Malvihill of Cherry Hill, New Jersey contributed to this report.
