How Trump’s Endorsements Elevate Election Lies and Inflate His Political Power
159 are Election Deniers
127 won their primary
16 lost their primary
16 primaries upcoming
The unifying thread through the majority of Mr. Trump’s endorsements has been a candidate’s willingness to help him spread the lie that he won the 2020 presidential race. Many of these candidates either took concrete actions to subvert the election, such as voting in Congress or state legislatures to delay certification of the vote, suing to overturn results or backing partisan reviews of the ballot count. Others made clear public statements in political ads, social media posts or on the campaign trail that expressed doubts about the 2020 election.
Here are some of Mr. Trump’s most closely watched election deniers and how they have fared:
Mr. Trump invested an immense amount of political capital on a failed bid to oust several Republicans who insufficiently backed or outright rejected his bid to overturn the election results in Georgia. An embarrassing night of failures included his signature loss of the primary season: Mr. Perdue’s 52-point defeat by Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican incumbent.
Mr. Vance’s position on election fraud grew less nuanced over the course of his primary race, and eventually helped him win a late Trump endorsement that pushed Mr. Vance over the finish line in a crowded primary, delivering the former president one of his key victories in an early show of strength.
Few governor’s races have been as closely watched as Arizona’s, where Ms. Lake’s rise can be credited to her unyielding support for Mr. Trump’s election lies. Her victory in the primary followed a bitter proxy fight between Trump loyalists and more traditional Republican governors who have campaigned on local issues. The winner in Arizona in November will have vast influence over a crucial 2024 battleground state.
Mr. Finchem is in the vanguard of a coalition of more than a dozen 2020 election deniers seeking once-obscure secretary of state posts across the country. He wants to ban early voting, has sued to suspend the use of electronic vote-counting machines and has co-sponsored legislation to give the state’s Republican-led Legislature authority to overturn election results.
Republicans have controlled the governor’s office for the past eight years in this Democratic stronghold thanks to the moderate, bipartisan leanings of Gov. Larry Hogan, who is being forced out by a term limit. Mr. Trump took a different approach, backing Mr. Cox, who has made a long list of false claims about the election, wrote on Twitter during the Capitol riot that Vice President Mike Pence was a traitor, and raised little money for his race. Mr. Cox’s victory increases the chance Democrats win back this seat.
Kristina Karamo
Awaiting formal nomination for Michigan secretary of state.
Ms. Karamo has denounced yoga as a satanic ritual, called the rapper Cardi B a tool of Lucifer and falsely claimed the election was stolen from Mr. Trump and that he actually won Michigan (he lost by 140,000 votes). She has put election conspiracy theories front and center in her bid to be the top elections official in a state whose 16 electoral votes were decided in 2020 by under three percentage points.
Mr. Gibbs, a former federal housing official, defeated Representative Peter Meijer, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. But in this moderate district, Mr. Gibbs’s victory only increased the chance for Democrats to pick up the seat.
A little-known commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration before Mr. Trump’s endorsement elevated her national profile, Ms. Tshibaka hopes to unseat Senator Lisa Murkowski, the incumbent Republican who has represented her state for two decades — and who voted to convict Mr. Trump during his second impeachment trial. Both have won spots on the November ballot.
Ms. Hageman trounced Representative Liz Cheney, the Republican incumbent. Ms. Cheney’s votes aligned with Mr. Trump’s wishes 93 percent of the time during his presidency. But she not only voted to impeach Mr. Trump over Jan. 6, she became the star of the House committee investigating his role in the attack on the Capitol.
Dr. Oz is one of several Republican candidates who have tried to strike a balance, raising enough questions about the 2020 election to fuel doubts about it and to win Mr. Trump’s endorsement, while also trying to appeal to mainstream voters. During a single radio interview in March, Dr. Oz said both that there was “definitely fraud” that may have cost Mr. Trump the election and that the election hadn’t been stolen.
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