State’s GOP doing its best to ignore Trump’s claims of stolen election
The first week of 2022 marks the start of a midterm election year and the anniversary of the stunning assault on the U.S. Capitol by protesters egged on by Donald J. Trump’s demonstrably false claim that the election was stolen.
Trump’s insistence the election was rigged and his animus to Republicans who say otherwise is a distraction that GOP candidates in Connecticut say they are intent on ignoring, while Democrats promise to make that impossible.
With polling consistently showing at least two-thirds of Republican voters saying Biden did not win, GOP officials who merely acknowledge reality do so at the risk of antagonizing significant elements of their base.
But Connecticut Republicans largely are avoiding equivocating or expressing doubts about Biden’s win, reasoning that to do only would keep Trump as an unwelcome wingman in 2022.
Trump may be on the ballot in 2024, but the Connecticut Republican state chair, Ben Proto, said his advice to candidates is to acknowledge Trump’s defeat in 2020 rather than engage in a fight that undercuts GOP campaigns in 2022.
“If we want to change things in Connecticut, if we want to take us out of the bottom of every important category that judges a state and get us back on track, then we need to change the people who are making the decisions in 2022,” Proto said. “Twenty-twenty-four will come around soon enough. But our job is to deal with 2022.”
Bob Stefanowski, the 2018 gubernatorial nominee and a likely candidate this year, dodged questions about Trump’s claims a year ago, the day before rioters tried to stop Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the results. On Wednesday, he answered a question about Biden’s legitimacy without equivocation.
“Joe Biden won the election, and it’s past time to move on from 2020 and focus on CT residents trying to figure out how they are going to keep the lights on, gas up their car, get a simple COVID test without waiting in line for hours,” Stefanowski said in a text message.
A rival for the nomination, former House Republican Leader Themis Klarides, offered the same opinion today as she did a year ago: She had no objection to Trump pursuing every legal avenue to confirm the accuracy of the vote prior to certification but not his continuing efforts to mislead Americans about the results.
“He had a constitutional right to those challenges, and not one of them changed the results,” Klarides said. “It’s time to move on. I feel the same way as I felt last year.”
Even Republicans who insist voter fraud is a significant issue in American elections, including Connecticut’s, say it did not rise to a level capable of delegitimizing Biden’s solid popular vote victory of 81 million to 74 million.