Trump
is no longer president, but the Trump cult continues to peddle his
Big Lie—that the 2020 election was stolen from the former
president. More than 100
Republican candidates for office—in
statewide, U.S. House and Senate races—are drinking the orange
Kool-Aid and promoting Trump’s bogus claims the 2020 election
was rigged and a fraud.
More
specifically, these GOP foot soldiers for Trump are running for
office, especially statewide-level offices such as secretary of state
and attorney general that control the state’s election
apparatus and the levers of power. These candidates hope to win so
they can rig elections and hand the White House back to Trump in
2024. And we can’t let that happen.
One
of the Republican candidates to watch is Doug Mastriano, a
Pennsylvania state senator and GOP nominee for governor who would
turn the state’s
electoral process
into
a hot mess if elected. A believer in rampant electoral fraud against
Trump in the 2020 election, Mastriano as governor would have the
power to appoint the secretary of state, the person who administers
state elections. Mastriano wants the power to decertify voting in
every county “with
the stroke of a pen”
make
it easier for poll watchers to challenge voters, force
all voters to reregister
and
eliminate mail-in ballots.
A
crucial player in the “Stop the Steal” efforts to send
Trump Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes to Congress from a
state that Biden won, Mastriano hired as his legal adviser Trump
lawyer Jenna
Ellis,
who worked on overturning the 2020 election. Plus, Mastriano
participated
in the
Jan.
6 insurrection at
the U.S. Capitol, which should tell you all you need to know about
his lack of integrity and moral character, if not his potential
criminal exposure.
In
Michigan, the presumptive Republican nominee for secretary of state
is
Kristina
Karamo,
a Black community college instructor and Trump favorite who is an
anti-vaxxer and anti-abortion advocate. The
QAnon-affiliated candidate
claims
she witnessed widespread fraud in absentee vote counting in Detroit
in the 2020 election. Karamo claimed
Trump won Michigan
in
2020 and called for the imprisonment of Secretary of State Jocelyn
Benson, a Democrat.
Trump
candidates for statewide office in Maryland were victorious this week
in their primary bids. Dan
Cox,
the GOP nominee for governor, is an election denier who said Biden’s
win should not have been certified and called former Vice
President Mike Pence a traitor.
Cox also organized busloads of protesters to attend the “Stop
the Steal” rally before the Capitol insurrection.
The
GOP nominee for Maryland attorney general, Michael Peroutka, faces
Rep. Anthony Brown in the general election. Peroutka is a
neo-Confederate
secessionist who
calls the separation of church and state the “great
lie,”
refuses
to recognize abortion and marriage equality as the law of Maryland
and says public education should be eliminated because it is part of
a Communist plot.
If
elected, dangerous individuals such as these would wield power over
their state election systems, rigging and stealing elections as they
please and determining the outcome they want. The Supreme Court could
even grant these GOP state officials the right
to rig federal elections
under
a bankrupt and corrupt legal theory called the independent
state legislature doctrine.
The court will hear a case in the fall that involves this doctrine.
However, if Republican-controlled states fail to overturn the 2024
presidential election, a GOP-controlled Congress could create a
constitutional crisis and overturn
the election as
a last resort.
Meanwhile,
Republican candidates for the U.S. House and Senate are an assortment
of sketch artists, hustlers and grifters, tinfoil hat-wearing
conspiracy theorists, crackpots, buffoons and useful idiots. And some
of them, as Trump would say, are good people. But more importantly,
they are loyal Trumpists, which means voters should be concerned if
they take control of Congress in the midterms.
For
example, former football star Herschel Walker is running against Sen.
Raphael Warnock for the U.S. Senate seat in Georgia. Being a Heisman
Trophy winner and appearing in a McDonald’s
commercial four
decades ago do not make Walker a qualified Senate candidate. This
Trump favorite, who
speaks
gibberish on
the campaign trail, is not ready for primetime, much less the Senate.
Yet Walker, who has faced allegations
of domestic violence,
making physical threats and stalking, and lying
to his own campaign staff about his secret children,
is the Republican Party’s choice for Senate. And if Walker is
elected, he would replace Tommy
Tuberville of
Alabama as the dumbest senator.
Dr.
Mehmet Oz, the Pennsylvania Senate candidate, is a TV celebrity who
ditched Oprah and won Trump’s endorsement by embracing the Big
Lie. Oz lives in New Jersey but claims to own
a home in the state and did attend the University of Pennsylvania.
Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic opponent, used
Snooki from Jersey
Shore to
drag Oz over his state residency. And when Oz visited the competing
Philly cheesesteak restaurants Pat’s and Geno’s,
Fetterman called his opponent’s photo op “a
rite of passage for any tourist."
Ultimately,
some of these Trump candidates may not win these key battleground
contests. That’s not the point. The bigger picture is the
Republicans, who have not offered any policies that appeal to
people—and offer little more than human rights violations and
state-sponsored violence—care about keeping power. Unwilling to
embrace democracy and fair elections, the GOP prefers to steal
elections by controlling the levers of power: the running of the
election apparatus. This is why you must vote out all Republicans in
the midterms.
Democrats
under Biden have had their failures along with successes—poor
messaging and missed opportunities, getting bogged down in policy
papers and an unwillingness to fight Republicans rather than
progressives and fully use the power the voters gave them in 2020.
Yet, even those who are unhappy with the Democratic Party’s
shortcomings must get out and vote in November.
Understand
that if you want reparations, control over your own body and the
right to marry who you love, voting rights, climate justice
legislation and so many other things, none of this will happen
without voting out the Republicans in the midterms. Most importantly,
if you want future elections, you won’t get anything if you
don’t vote and allow a Republican victory. And once you let the
GOP in, they will never leave and will stay forever like luggage. As
Charlie
Kirk said,
“we’re not going to give that power back.”
America
never was a true multiracial democracy, but if we don’t stop
these clowns and comic-book villains, we definitely won’t have
one.
This
commentary is also posted on The
Grio.
