Are the 2020 Governors of Arizona (and the Grand Canyon State) Really Going to Swing States? The Case of Kari Lake, Jordan Hobbs, and Blake Masters
A big question going into the 2020 cycle was how Republican candidates would reflect the views of the GOP base. A clear majority of Republicans believe that President Joe Biden does not actually win the election.
A lot of Republicans are running for office too, and they believe that as well. Which candidates may end up running states where elections tend to be close? The answer is no for most of the time. Most election deniers running for governor have only a small chance of winning or are from states former President Donald Trump easily won.
Neither of those GOP Senate candidates are vying to lead a swing state, though. And the name recognition for the aforementioned secretary of state candidates is significantly lower than it is for Lake.
The point was illustrated by three polls that were all within the margin of error. A CBS News/YouGov poll had Lake and Hobbs tied at 49%. Fox’s poll put Hobbs at 44% to Lake’s 43%. Lake was at 46 percent and the other was 45%.
Lake is running considerably stronger than Blake Masters, the the state’s GOP nominee for US Senate. Masters is in a close race with Mark Kelly, with Masters trailing by more than 5 points in all polling.
In fact, 2020 election denial has been a hallmark of losing gubernatorial campaigns in swing or blue states. Although the current and departing governors of their states are Republicans, they are getting destroyed in the polls by their opponents.
You might be tempted to think that Lake has a chance because voters in the Grand Canyon State believe the 2020 election was stolen. That seems not to be the case. An August Fox poll found that only 28% of voters were not at all confident that votes in the 2020 election were cast legitimately and counted fairly.
Additionally, the Marist poll showed that a mere 6% of voters are not at all confident that the 2022 election in Arizona will not be run fairly and accurately. Another 23% are not very confident; the vast majority (71%) are confident it will be.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/05/politics/kari-lake-arizona-governor-swing-state/index.html
An Analysis of CNN Analysis of the 2020 Democratic Primary: Herschel Walker, Ron Johnson, Adam Laxalt, and Seth Role of Donald Trump
Lake has a secret. She had a successful past as a television anchor. She seems to be doing a good enough job reaching voters in the middle of the electorate.
CNN analysis show that in at least 11 states, the Republican nominee for election chief is someone who has questioned, rejected or sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The case is that Ron Johnson is a slight favorite to win another term despite voting against certifying the 2020 election. Adam Laxalt played a leading role in reversing Biden’s victory in Nevada after raising questions about the 2020 election. He’s in a tight race with Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.
If the 2020 presidential race is close, like it was in 2016 if Trump or Biden are selected, then Arizona might be in the mix again.
Editor’s Note: Geoff Duncan, a Republican, is the 12th Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has lots of opinion articles.
The surprise involving Herschel Walker in Georgia’s US Senate race has thrown one of the nation’s most close races into turmoil five weeks before Election Day, but it never had to be this way. Just as there should not be two Democrats representing a center-right state like Georgia in the US Senate, the Republican Party should not have found its chance of regaining a Senate majority hanging on an untested and unproven first-time candidate.
Walker won his Senate primary not because of his political chops or policy proposals. His friendship with Donald Trump is no longer guaranteed, but he was able to trounce his opponents because of his football performance 40 years ago.
Everyone in America deserves due process, and Walker vehemently denied the Daily Beast report suggesting he had paid for a woman’s abortion in 2009 after the two conceived a child while they were dating. Walker has opposed abortion rights. He went so far as to threaten legal action against the publication as a recourse. But the impact in the court of public opinion was immediate and intense. Even influential conservative personality Erick Erickson described it as “probably a KO.”
The nervous GOP infrastructure must hope that Walker can weather the storm. To his political credit, Walker has faced other serious allegations, including domestic abuse, an exaggerated business career and an erratic personality. So far, he has had a Trump-esque Teflon quality of surviving scandals that would sink mere mortals. Walker’s latest test is his most serious, not just by its nature, but in its October timing.
Meanwhile, the Georgia governor’s race offers Republicans a better path forward as a party. What was billed as a blockbuster re-match between the incumbent GOP Governor Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams has turned into a relative snoozer. Abrams has so far failed to re-capture the magic of her 2018 run when she raised nearly $28 million dollars and became a rising national Democratic star.
Her stock plummeted after that. Abrams famously refused to concede her 2018 defeat. Just days ago, a federal judge tossed out her group’s lawsuit claiming the election was decided improperly. She also faced an investigation by the State Ethics Commission about her fundraising practices in 2018, which was dismissed this past summer.
Yet Kemp is breathing easier this year for factors that extend beyond Abrams’ flaws. He has his own record to fall back on, and it is one of accomplishments and results. Georgia was recently named the best state for business for the ninth consecutive year by Area Development magazine. In a decision that has aged well over time, Kemp re-opened our state from the pandemic faster than many others, angering even then-President Trump. As more people and businesses have re-located to our state for our business-friendly climate, Georgia has taken meaningful strides toward becoming the technology capital of the East Coast.
Deep Funds from iVote Help to End Warnock’s Taming of the 2020 Election: Arizona vs. Indiana
Meanwhile, incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock has maintained a slim but steady lead over Walker. In a state where just 45% of voters approve of the President, he has voted for him more than 100% of the time.
Those numbers do not lie. Our Senate race should be a referendum on Warnock’s blind rubber-stamping of Biden’s agenda. In an evenly divided upper chamber, Warnock could have stopped every piece of flawed legislation that passed along party line votes, including the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act and the $750 billion Inflation Reduction Act, both often cited by conservatives as some of the culprits for inflation rates at four-decade highs.
If we want the American public to take us seriously, we need to take the first step by nominating candidates they should take seriously. The process goes deeper than celebrity or fame. It’s necessary that leaders can win elections with a conservative vision for governing.
Election skeptics who are their state’s Republican nominees for secretary of state have outraised their Democratic rivals in two races viewed as competitive by political handicappers – in the key presidential battleground of Arizona and in Indiana – according to a new analysis from a nonprofit watchdog group shared first with CNN.
Overall, Republican secretary of state nominees across the country who have denied the 2020 election results have raised more than $12 million in this election cycle – some with financial assistance from deep-pocketed GOP donors, according to research by the nonpartisan group Issue One.
The Issue One report made a point of focusing on who helped fund the candidates who challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Patrick Byrne is the former boss of Overstock.com, a company that is a funder of effort to challenge the 2020 election results.
iVote officials told CNN that they will invest a total of $5 million to support Adrian Fontes, the Democratic nominee. That spending has not been previously reported.
Among the races highlighted in the report: Arizona, where GOP state Rep. Mark Finchem has raised more than $1.2 million in his bid to become the top election official – far surpassing the nearly $700,000 collected by Fontes, the Democratic nominee, state campaign records show.
Finchem, who was endorsed by Trump in 2021, has called for the decertification of the 2020 election in three Arizona counties, although there is no evidence of widespread fraud and legal experts say there is no mechanism to set aside the results of that election. He also co-sponsored a bill that would have empowered state legislators to reject election results.
The winner of the seat in 2022. who has a proven history of rejecting results in a critical swing state, will determine whether or not there is a constitutional crisis in 2024.
Report of Campaigning by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DAS): Election Integrity, Donations, and Other Important Issues
In a text message exchange with CNN on Wednesday, Byrne said that he was committed to getting involved with election integrity this cycle, but he did not recall any donations directly to those candidates.
Individually, the Issue One report shows that Byrne has given to both Marchant and Karamo, and that Tina Peters lost the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state.
Peters was indicted by a county grand jury earlier this year. Last month, she pleaded not guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges.)
Usually these races cost less than $100,000. He said they were the boringest things on the ballot. Now they are the center of attention.
In other key contests examined by the group, the Republicans have far outraised the Democrats. Meanwhile, outside Democratic groups are collecting records sums, even as they urge donors to contribute more in the home stretch to Election Day.
The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State has a $25 million budget for this cycle, up from about $1.5 million in 2018, when the organization had no paid, full-time staff, said Kim Rogers, the group’s executive director.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/06/politics/secretary-of-state-candidates-fundraising-2022/index.html
The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State’s 2020 Campaign: Monitoring Elections in Michigan, Georgia and New Mexico, and Educating Voting Administrators
Rogers said that the organization would help with the ads with the state party in Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, Minnesota, and Arizona. She told us that the group is watching races in Colorado, Washington state and New Mexico.
“2020 was a huge seismic shift for democracy, and secretaries of state are on the front lines,” Rogers said. “Many donors are stepping up at levels that have not happened before,” she said. We need more because we are in this situation for the first time.
CLARIFICATION: There is a problem. The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State’s involvement in several states has been updated to account for it.
Voters in a number of states this midterm cycle are being presented with a stark choice: Do they want someone who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election to oversee voting in their state?
In a different political universe, hand-count audits of paper ballots and court challenges have shown that the 2020 election was among the most accurate in American history.
“The fate of democracy really hinges on whether or not losers accept defeat and whether they recognize losses as losses,” said Amel Ahmed, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The viability of democracy is at risk if you have a worldview where every loss is seen as cheating.
The false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen is used by election deniers to justify stripping back voting access measures like ballot drop boxes and other forms of early voting.
In addition to the practical voting changes an election-denying voting official could implement, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said she worries about the potential for a disruption in the election certification process in 2024 and the misinformation problems it could present if an election denier is in a position of authority and able to make lies about voting seem more credible.
“We’re very much in the midst of a national effort to discredit our elections,” Benson said at a press briefing Thursday. “There will be people who choose to be politicians first and election administrators second or not at all.”
The community college professor who made up a story about seeing election fraud in Detroit during the last presidential race is going to face off against the incumbent in her reelection campaign.
Michigan Republicans decided to keep their base voters in mind when selecting candidates for secretary of state and attorney general, despite the fact that the state went for Joe Biden in 2020.
Both Karamo and Matthew DePerno, the GOP attorney general nominee, have been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
DePerno is under investigation for an alleged plot to seize and tamper with voting machines, and Karamo has come under scrutiny for her connections to the QAnon movement and her past comments, including an opposition to teaching evolution in schools.
The Secretary of State, Attorney General Dana DePerno, and the Oath Keepers: Why the 2020 election is going to be stolen
Even though both candidates received the majority support at the convention of party loyalists, they were worried about their viability in a purple state general election.
The Republican candidate for the Secretary of State said in August that every television ad from now through November will say ” Qanon Karamo is too crazy for us”.
DePerno is facing current Attorney General Dana Nessel, who was first elected in 2018, and who has made headlines for refusing to enforce Michigan’s anti-abortion law. Nessel was the first LGBTQ person elected to statewide office in Michigan, and Republicans including DePerno have sought to attack her using culture war tropes. There should be a “drag queen for each school,” she said at a press conference over the summer.
Benson was also first elected in 2018, after losing her initial bid for the office in 2010. She was dean of the law school at Wayne State University and authors a book about the role of secretaries of state.
“SharpieGate,” a famous vote-counting conspiracy, came to prominence after the election in Arizona.
The former President spoke to the Democrats in the state on Wednesday night, warning them that democracy may not survive if Republicans sweep the offices.
The secretary of state race pits a former elections administrator, Adrian Fontes, against a far-right candidate, Mark Finchem, who is a self-proclaimed member of the far-right Oath Keepers and who was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 when rioters disrupted the certification of Biden’s win.
In an interview with NPR earlier this year, Finchem said he did not go inside the Capitol that day but also continued to claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/05/1133565326/secretary-of-state-election-denier-races-to-watch
The 2016 Governor’s Race: Where Do We Stand? How Do Rural County Election Workers Can Get Their Voting Fixations? How Kari Lake faces Katie Hobbs
In the governor’s race, election denier Kari Lake, who has already filed a dismissed lawsuit that was premised in voting misinformation, is facing the current secretary of state, Katie Hobbs.
The Silver State may be the most under-the-radar state when it comes to election denial, but a movement in rural counties toward ballot hand-counts shows that voting misinformation is taking hold here as well.
Polls also show the race for chief voting official to be neck and neck, despite a substantial fundraising lead for the non-election denying candidate, Democrat Cisco Aguilar.
Aguilar is an attorney who spent a number of years on the state’s Athletic Commission, and he says his first priority in office would be to lobby the legislature in Nevada to make it a felony to harass or intimidate election workers.
“We have something in common: President Trump and I lost an election in 2020 because of a rigged election,” Marchant said. “I’ve been working since Nov. 4, 2020, to expose what happened, and what I found out is horrifying.”
Marchant, Karamo, and Finchem all want to significantly curtail early voting, and Marchant has been a leading advocate for the local movement back towards hand-counting ballots, even though that method is less accurate and more resource-intensive.
The secretary of state contests are low-profile races that determine who helps administer elections in a state, and have drawn national attention and millions of dollars in political spending this year as several Republican nominees question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.
Georgia: The Georgia contest features one of the country’s best-known election chiefs – Republican Brad Raffensperger, who refused Trump’s request to “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss in the Peach State. (That campaign by Trump and his allies is the subject of a special grand jury investigation in Fulton County, Georgia.)