Senator answers Trump’s call for election challenge
WASHINGTON — Josh Hawley of Missouri on Wednesday became the first senator to take up President Donald Trump’s demand that lawmakers challenge the results of the 2020 election, saying he would object to Congress’ certification of the Electoral College results scheduled for next Wednesday.
The move has little hope of altering the election outcome, but it will force Republicans to publicly affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in a politically fraught test of loyalty to Trump.
Hawley, an ambitious freshman senator, framed the objection as “an effort to highlight the failure” of states “to follow their own election laws as well as the unprecedented interference of Big Tech monopolies in the election.” He didn’t repeat the president’s claim of widespread voter fraud.
“Millions of voters concerned about election integrity deserve to be heard,” Hawley said in statement. “I will object on Jan. 6 on their behalf.”
The decision ensures that the certification process, typically a formality, instead will become a debate on the House and Senate floors.
The Constitution requires that challenges to the certification
process be endorsed by lawmakers in both the House and Senate. While Trump’s most strident allies in the House already had announced that they would object to Congress’ effort to certify the Electoral College results, they hadn’t been able to persuade a member of the Senate to publicly back their effort.
For most in Hawley’s party, his announcement came as an unwelcome gesture. Republican leaders had hoped to shield their members — especially those up for re-election in 2022 — from such an up-or-down vote, which requires that they publicly endorse or object to the election results.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell privately had urged lawmakers this month to refrain from registering an objection.
But Hawley hinted Wednesday that other senators could join his effort.
“A number of offices have reached out via staff to ours and said we’re interested,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill. “But does that mean that they will? I don’t know yet.”
“At a time when you would expect the party to be uniting in opposition to the Biden agenda, it is instead increasingly divided over Trump’s 11th-hour actions,” said Alex Conant, a veteran Republican strategist. “There is no political capital to be gained from these fights. This is a very serious person doing a very unserious thing.”
The objection will force the Senate to debate Hawley’s claim for up to two hours, followed by a vote affirming Biden’s victory. Rejecting the challenge requires a simple majority vote. For Congress to sustain Hawley’s opposition, both chambers would have to do so, a virtual impossibility given that Democrats control the House.