ICYMI: GOP Senate candidates backed legal challenges to the 2020 election [Roll Call]

September 15, 2021 Press Releases

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Roll Call: GOP Senate candidates backed legal challenges to the 2020 election
By Bridget Bowman
September 15, 2021

Key Points:

• At least nine Republican Senate candidates have a political résumé with a contentious item: filing or actively supporting one of the failed lawsuits that furthered former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was rife with fraud.

• Democrats think focusing on the 2020 election could be a liability for Republicans in next year's midterms, especially with voters who have rejected Trump's divisive rhetoric or his unfounded concerns about the validity of the last election.

• Arizona Senate hopeful Jim Lamon, at a July rally with Trump, touted an unsuccessful lawsuit he and other Trump electors filed to challenge his state's election results as 'something that had to be done.'

• And a comment from former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, whom Trump has endorsed for Senate in part because of an unsuccessful lawsuit he championed that challenged that state's results last fall, suggested that more legal action will come in 2022.

• Laxalt…told a radio show last month that 2020 lawsuits 'just came too late.' 'With me on the top of the ticket, we're going to be able to get everybody at the table and come up with a full plan, do our best to try to secure this election, get as many observers as we can, and file lawsuits early, if there are lawsuits we can file to try to tighten up the election,' Laxalt told The Wayne Allyn Root Show on Aug. 24.

• As the Trump campaign's co-chair in Nevada, Laxalt announced at a news conference two weeks after the election that the campaign was filing a lawsuit that demanded that Trump be declared the winner of Nevada or that the election results be tossed out.

• In neighboring Arizona, Lamon and other Trump electors filed a lawsuit against Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs that sought to decertify the state's results.

• In Pennsylvania, Army veteran Sean Parnell, who lost a House race last fall and has Trump's endorsement in his bid for the state's open Senate seat, joined GOP Rep. Mike Kelly in a lawsuit that sought to toss out all of the Keystone State's mail ballots.

• Jazmin Vargas, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said the lawsuits and an emphasis on the 2020 election showed Republicans are 'out of touch with general election voters and the issues they care about.'

• 'The Big Lie is such a problem for Republican candidates in general elections because it's such a clear signal to people who believe in our democracy, many of whom are Republicans, that you side with Trump over the truth,' veteran Democratic consultant Martha McKenna said. 'It's as simple as that.'

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