Voters reject Trump-backed election deniers in several key states

Voters in a series of critical battleground states rejected Republican candidates for governor, attorney general and secretary of state who have spread doubts about the 2020 election, blocking an effort to install allies of former President Donald Trump in positions with sweeping authority over voting.

In Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Democrats prevailed Tuesday against Republican opponents who, to varying degrees, had campaigned on overhauling elections in ways that would benefit their party and called into question their commitment to democratic outcomes.

The results fell short of a nationwide backlash to Republican election deniers. Several such candidates for Senate were victorious, including J.D. Vance in Ohio and Rep. Ted Budd in North Carolina, and dozens more won races for less prominent offices. Democrats also remain locked in contests against far-right rivals for governor and secretary of state in Arizona and Nevada that were too close to call Wednesday.

But in several places where the question of how to run elections was directly on the ballot — particularly races for secretary of state — Trump-aligned Republicans did not do well. Setting aside Arizona and Nevada, where two leading proponents of 2020 election lies could still win, Democratic candidates for secretary of state beat far-right opponents in Michigan, New Mexico and Minnesota and were defeated by such a candidate only in deep-red Indiana.

Voters’ verdict in several states amounted to a repudiation — at least in part — of some of the most extreme positions on elections that Republicans have adopted since Trump’s 2020 defeat. In several closely watched races, Republicans who have staked out such ground fared worse Tuesday night than their GOP counterparts who recognized President Joe Biden’s legitimacy.

“I don’t feel like you can have a democracy where it’s like, ‘Either I win or you cheated,’” Logan Patmon, 30, of Detroit said at a weekend rally for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who won Tuesday. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but when people have that ‘Our winner was cheated,’ that’s like a developing, barely democratic country to me. I don’t like that.”

For more than two years, Democrats, voting rights groups, scholars and some moderate Republicans have warned about those who seek to undermine the democratic system. While voters have not made it their top priority, they have demonstrated an awareness of the dangers, with images of the 2021 Capitol riot still flashing on American screens, the House committee investigating the attack broadcasting its findings, and new controversies over armed poll watchers and threats to election officials making headlines.

But on Tuesday, in many ways, the resilience of the country’s democracy was on display. Turnout appeared high. Voting mostly went smoothly, apart from a few glitches that election officials resolved. Both parties put forward increasingly diverse fields of candidates. Meaningful numbers of voters, despite the nation’s polarization, split their tickets. And most candidates — though not all — conceded their losses.

Afterward, Democrats in important races hailed their victories as a blow against one of the starkest threats to U.S. government in generations.

“You showed up because you saw that democracy was on the brink of existence, and you decided to do a damn thing about it,” Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin told supporters early Wednesday after a concession of defeat by his Republican rival, Tim Michels, who had promised that Republicans would “never lose another election” in Wisconsin if he were elected.

To some degree, the results represented a shoring up of the election apparatus in key states before the 2024 presidential election, as Trump indicates strongly that he will run again. If his chosen candidates had won, their stated positions — including calls to eliminate voting by mail and election machines — would have preemptively raised questions about the fairness of the 2024 contest in their states and whether a Democratic victory would be certified.

The Democratic victories in competitive states like Wisconsin will also keep in place a check on Republican-led legislatures that have tried to enact restrictive voting laws and have even moved to give themselves more power over elections.

“Voters sent a very clear message: They believe in our elections; they believe in our freedom to vote,” said Joanna Lydgate, the CEO of States United Action, a nonpartisan election group. “The voters stepped up to defend democracy, and in most places, Americans decisively rejected election deniers who wanted power over their votes.”

In Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, the state’s Democratic attorney general, defeated Doug Mastriano, a Republican state senator who marched near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and has pushed for significant new voting restrictions.

In Michigan, Whitmer, the Democratic incumbent, beat Tudor Dixon, a Republican challenger who was backed by Trump and the wealthy DeVos family. At a rally Saturday in Detroit, Whitmer boasted that “my vetoes are protecting your voting rights, and I’m damn glad I have that veto pen.”

Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, also won, defeating Kristina Karamo, a Republican who ardently pushed Trump’s false 2020 claims. At the same rally in Detroit, speaking before Whitmer, Benson offered a stark assessment of the stakes of her race: “Every vote that is cast in this election will determine whether your votes are going to be counted in future elections,” she said.

And in Michigan’s race for attorney general, Dana Nessel, the Democratic incumbent, edged past Matthew DePerno, a Republican who was one of the architects of a conspiracy theory involving 2020 election machines in a rural county.

Tuesday’s victories for Democrats helped stymie plans set in motion immediately after the 2020 election as Republicans aimed to nominate Trump allies to top election posts in battleground states. By the spring, a slate of so-called America First candidates had recruited more than a dozen contenders for secretary of state and other top election positions. Six won their primaries, including in Arizona, Nevada and Michigan.

The presence on the ballot of multiple allies of Trump — all whom had falsely claimed that the 2020 election was in some way rigged or stolen — elevated the stakes of these once quiet, bureaucratic races. Democrats and outside groups poured millions into the contests, outspending Republicans 18-1 in Michigan, Nevada and Arizona, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm.

“In a midterm election in which the out-of-power party should by every measure of normal political dynamics have had a tremendous night, the single reason they didn’t is because they hitched their wagon to a fundamentally un-American, anti-democratic demagogue,” said Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group.

Democratic money also poured into races for state legislatures, which have gained prominence as they steer policy on issues such as abortion rights and voting access. Two Democratic super political action committees pledged to invest more than $80 million in six battleground states; there was no similar organized effort on the Republican side.

And in Michigan, Democrats appeared likely to flip both chambers of the Legislature, winning the state Senate for the first time since 1983 and potentially bringing the state under total Democratic control. That apparent success was the result of newly drawn districts by an independent commission that untangled decades of Republican gerrymandering.

Although issues in state legislative races can be driven by hyperlocal conflicts — over issues such as traffic, roads or garbage pickup — Republican candidates who supported false claims about the 2020 election fared poorly.

“The candidates obsessed with conspiracy theories and a national narrative were telling the voters in their district, ‘I’m not going to serve you,’” said Daniel Squadron, a former Democratic state senator from New York and a founder of the States Project, a Democratic super PAC focused on state legislatures. “Candidates focused on what voters were concerned about — and sometimes that was democracy — were communicating that they were going to spend their time trying to improve lives.”

Despite the Democratic victories, Republicans maintain control of both chambers of the Legislature in Wisconsin and may still hold the General Assembly in Pennsylvania, and dozens of legislators who have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election won reelection Tuesday.

Some of the losing Republican candidates have also indicated that they will challenge the results; despite losing by more than 13 percentage points, Mastriano has still not conceded.

The Republican defeats can be seen as a rejection of Trump, who has demanded that GOP candidates show fealty to his falsehoods about the 2020 election. In some cases, his support helped them win tough Republican primaries, leaving them indebted to him.

But a continued focus on the 2020 election at a time when Americans indicated that economic issues were their top concern clearly turned off some voters. And Democrats were quick to paint their opponents’ views on the 2020 election as part of a broader streak of extremism.

“It sure as hell isn’t freedom to say, ‘You can go vote, but he gets to pick the winner,’” Shapiro said at a rally last weekend, referring to Mastriano. “That’s not freedom.”

Julie Scheibner, a real estate agent in Wisconsin, said she was worried about the state of democracy. There was the Capitol riot, which a lot of people around the country seemed to dismiss as nothing, she said. Then there was the widespread false belief that the 2020 election had been stolen.

On Wednesday morning, she was bundled up against the cold in downtown Racine, a grin on her face.

“It’s still there,” she said. “Apparently, we still believe in democracy.”