Military mandates

Candidate Steven Chess said that anyone involved in discharging service members from the military for violating orders to get COVID vaccinations “should be incarcerated.”

Swaffar said “everyone involved in that process should be prosecuted,” though she didn’t specify what crimes she was alleging.

All the candidates said service members discharged for violating orders to get vaccinated should be reinstated if they wish; most said they should be given back pay.

And some said there should be no vaccine mandates imposed on service members at all. Chess, a retired chiropractor, said that “no one should be required to put anything in your body that you don’t want in your body,” adding that people should “stand up. Resist this tyranny.”

Other issues

James Pruden, another candidate, said there’s a threat to the U.S. from the United Nations.

“The most pressing issue

that’s facing us today is the U.N. agenda 2030. There’s this 2030 agenda that’s designed to have a reorganization of all the free economies in the world and have us turn into a socialist organization managed on a worldwide basis,” he said. “They want to reorganize our social, our political and economic structure and completely have a redistribution of wealth.”

Chess said his top concern is “fiat currency,” a topic he raised more than once.

“There is nothing backing up your dollar other than the faith and credit of the United States. It’s unacceptable,” he said.

Party leadership

Another measure of the influence of the party’s Trump motivated-base was the candidates’ responses about whether they’d vote to elevate U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the current Republican minority leader, the House speaker if the party wins control in November.

The responses ranged from lukewarm to impassioned opposition.

“I call myself a non-establishment, evangelical conservative Republican. And Kevin McCarthy reeks of establishment. There is no way I would vote for him,” candidate Joe Budd said. Budd was an early supporter of Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis, when many members of the Republican establishment supported different candidates.

McLaughlin said she, too, “absolutely would never vote for Kevin McCarthy.”

Several said there isn’t yet a contest with another candidate, leaving open the option of supporting the current minority leader for the job. Pruden was most supportive: “At this particular time, I’d have to vote for Kevin McCarthy.”