Election deniers moving closer to GOP mainstream, report says
WASHINGTON — In the hours after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Ohio’s then-Republican senator, Rob Portman, voted to accept President Joe Biden’s win over the defeated former president, Donald Trump, despite Trump’s false allegations that Biden only won because of fraud.
But as Trump charges toward his rematch with Biden in 2024, Portman has been replaced by Sen. JD Vance, a potential vice presidential pick who has echoed Trump’s false claims of fraud and said he’ll accept the results this fall only “if it’s a free and fair election.”
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Florida
Sen. Marco Rubio, other possible VP picks, also declined to object to Biden’s victory over Trump, but have been less committal this year. Rubio said recently if “things are wrong” with November’s election, Republicans won’t stand by and accept the outcome.
And the new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, helped organize Trump’s failed legal challenge to Biden’s win. He demurred when asked if he believed the 2020 election was legitimate during an event with other Trump allies about the upcoming election.
As Trump makes a comeback bid to return to power, Republicans in Congress have become even more likely to cast doubts on Biden’s victory or deny it was legitimate, a political turnaround that allows his false claims of fraud to linger and lays the groundwork to potentially challenge the results in 2024.
A new report released Tuesday by States United Action, a group that tracks election deniers, said nearly one-third of the lawmakers in Congress supported in some way Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 results or otherwise cast doubt on the reliability of elections. Several more are hoping to join them, running for election this year to the House and Senate.
“The public should have a real healthy dose of concern about the real risk of having people in power who’ve shown they’re not willing to respect the will of the people,” said Lizzie Ulmer of
States United Action.
The issue is particularly stark for Congress given its constitutional role as the final arbiter of the validity of a presidential election. It counts the results from the Electoral College, as it set out to do on Jan. 6, 2021, a date now etched in history because of the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by a proTrump mob.
In its report, States United found that in Congress, 170 representatives and senators out of 535 lawmakers overall can be categorized as election deniers. Heading into the fall elections, two new Senate candidates and 17 new House candidates already are on the ballot this fall seeking to join them.
It’s not just Congress that has been seeded with people who supported trying to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss, but the highest ranks of the Republican Party.
“This is deeply alarming,” said Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy programs at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “A democracy can only function if the participants commit to accepting the results of popular elections. That is it. That’s the entire political system.”
The former president picked Michael Whatley, who has echoed Trump’s election lies, to become cochairman of the Republican National Committee, with his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. Christina Bobb, who was recently indicted for her alleged involvement in a scheme to recruit fake electors in Arizona, has been named the RNC’s head of “election integrity.”
Under Trump’s direction, the RNC is making the elections process its top priority, bringing in the new personnel and adding resources, said Danielle Alvarez, an adviser to both the Trump campaign and the party committee.
“Biden is in the White House, that’s true,” Alvarez said, “but there were issues in the election.”
To be clear, there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election that cost Trump reelection. Recounts, audits and reviews in the battleground states where he contested his loss all affirmed Biden’s victory, and courts rejected dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies.