Professional Democrats have many fears about the 2022 midterm elections that keep them up at night.
Chief among them: losing Congress and handing investigative powers and the ability to set Washington’s agenda to Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell. Giving Republicans full control of states where abortion remains contested. Seeing President Biden prematurely turned into a lame duck.
Somewhere near the top of that list is the concern that voters will choose Donald Trump’s preferred nominees for secretary of state, a job that in many states plays a critical role in preserving the right to vote while ensuring the smooth running and fairness of the election system .
To put it plainly, the widespread concern on the left is that Trump loyalists will guarantee his re-election in 2024 if they take over in 2022. That’s not something that either Trump or these candidates are trying particularly hard to disprove.
Secretary of State is not a glamorous gig, generally speaking; it is mostly administrative work and usually attracts little attention from the public and the press. That has changed significantly in the battleground states since the Trump-fueled 2020 election chaos, and now money and attention are pouring into the secretary of state races — not least because the former president has made it his mission to elect Republican candidates who support his conspiracy theories.
It’s easy to tell what Trump wants: total allegiance. It is often much more difficult to understand what voters want.
Enter a new poll of five states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada — that was shared with The New York Times ahead of publication. The poll, which surveyed 1,400 people likely to vote in November, was conducted by David Binder Research on behalf of iVote, a group that supports Democrats in the secretary of state races.
Interpreting the findings, which focus not on the candidates but on voters’ views of what they think is important for a secretary of state, is difficult work.
The survey found that 82 percent of likely voters rated “accurately counting election votes and certifying results” as a highly important responsibility. Additionally, 67 percent said they were much more likely to support a candidate “who will prioritize options for all voters and make sure every vote counts.”
But as is often the case with voters, they give us mixed signals. Fifty-nine percent said they were much more likely to support a candidate “who says the top priority is to ensure fair elections and make sure only eligible voters vote.” That sounds a lot more like what many Republican candidates are saying.
In one indication of how much influence Trump’s claims still have on the GOP base, 72 percent of voters who chose Trump in 2020 said the election was stolen from him. That’s about a third of all voters.
And when the survey split between those who said Biden won fairly and those who held the false view that the election was stolen by Trump, a remarkable symmetry emerged: supermajorities on both sides expressed concern that “elected officials will try to override the will of the people’, for example, but of course each group is worried about the other team undermining the real results – and each group differs as to what those are.
Ellen Kurtz, the founder and president of iVote, has focused on secretary of state races for nearly a decade, she said in an interview. In 2018, the group spent $7 million to help elect Democrats in Arizona and Michigan, who later became important players in the 2020 election.
This year, iVote has a budget of more than double that amount, $15 million, which it plans to spend on broadcast, cable and digital advertising to support its candidates.
Kurtz argued that Republicans have been trying to suppress the votes of people of color and other key Democratic blocs long before Trump came onto the national stage — but that his obsession with election fraud and allegations of stolen elections have fueled those efforts.
“I believed it was really bad before, but this is a different level,” she said. “This is next level danger.”
Republicans are also hyper-focused on the secretary of state races, led by a group of Trump allies called the America’s First Secretary of State Coalition, along with official groups like the Republican State Leadership Committee.
Let’s break down each of the polled swing states:
Arizona, August 2
Those primaries haven’t yet taken place, and Democrats and pro-democracy advocates say they’re especially important.
On the Republican side, the Trump-backed candidate is Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker who has gone all-in on the former president’s 2020 conspiracy theories.
Finchem is just one of four contenders, a group that also includes Shawna Bolick, another state lawmaker who also supported overturning the election results in Trump’s favor; Beau Lane, advertising executive supported by the business community; and Michelle Uggenti-Rita, a state legislator who promoted a number of restrictive voting laws in the Arizona Senate.
Incumbent Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, is running for governor. That left a vacuum on the Democratic side, with Adrian Fontes, a former Maricopa County recorder, the state’s largest county, running for the seat against Reginald Bolding, the House Minority Leader and a voting rights activist.
For all the national attention this primary has garnered, it has yet to generate much enthusiasm among actual Arizona voters. For example, a debate between Fontes and Bolding in May drew an audience of just 70 people, according to The Tucson Sentinel.
Georgia, May 24
Bee Nguyen, left, the Democratic nominee for Georgia Secretary of State, with Stacey Abrams in March. She is running against Brad Raffensperger, the Republican incumbent. Credit… Nicole Crane for The New York Times
Democrats nominated Bee Nguyen, a progressive nonprofit executive and state legislator, to run for secretary of state, a post that proved critical in 2020 when Trump tried to pressure Georgia officials to overturn the results in his favor .
But during the Republican primaries this year, pro-Democrat groups spent heavily to help Brad Raffensperger, the incumbent secretary who resisted Trump’s demands. In May, Raffensperger easily unseated Trump’s nominee, Jody Hayes.
One factor in this race was the surge in external spending. Sarah Longwell, a Republican anti-Trump operative who helped find resources to defend Raffensperger, said she noticed that when voters in focus groups were asked about Hees, they said they had never heard of “her “.
Hees is a man. His lack of name recognition struck Longwell as an opportunity, so Unite America and other groups she worked with poured money into the race over the past 10 days.
“Right at the end you could see there was a wide opening that Raffensperger could have gone through,” she said.
Michigan, August 2
Christina Karamo, the Republican candidate for Michigan secretary of state, was endorsed by Trump.Credit… Brittany Greeson for The New York Times
On Politics last wrote about the Michigan Secretary of State race in April, just after the GOP gave its official endorsement to Christina Karamo.
Karamo made inflammatory comments on his personal podcast, such as calling yoga a “satanic ritual” that was originally intended by its creators to “summon a demon.” She is almost certain to be the GOP’s official nominee in August, Michigan Republicans say.
Democrats are backing Jocelyn Benson, the incumbent secretary of state who oversaw the 2020 election. Benson has become a major villain for Republicans, who falsely accuse her of rigging the results in favor of Biden in Michigan, which he narrowly won.
Benson drew particular fire for sending a mail-in ballot to every registered voter in the state, a decision a Michigan appeals court later ruled legal.
Minnesota, August 9
The leading Republican candidate is Kim Crockett, who called the 2020 election “rigged” in a campaign email. At the Republican convention in Minnesota, where Crockett won the GOP endorsement, she played a video that featured George Soros, the liberal financier, above the words “Let’s screw up the election once and for all.”
Crockett also showed support for “2000 Mules,” a documentary by Dinesh D’Souza that promotes various conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
On the Democratic side, Steve Simon, the incumbent secretary of state, is running for re-election. He has a huge fundraising lead over Crockett, with more than $500,000 on hand as of May, while she reported having just $56,000 in her campaign account.
Nevada, June 14
Jim Marchant, who organized the coalition of America’s first secretary of state, easily won the Republican primary. Marchant said a “cabal” of people around the world were manipulating voting machines, a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked and is the subject of a defamation lawsuit against several Trump allies. As for Marchant’s claim that his own failed 2020 congressional bid was stolen, he told The Guardian that “a lot of judges have been bought as well.”
Marchant’s Democratic opponent is Cisco Aguilar, who is running unopposed. Aguilar, an attorney and former state athletic commissioner, has the support of most of the state’s prominent Democrats, as well as Andre Agassi, the retired tennis star.
What to read
-
Maryland saw a competitive gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, as well as several House races. Follow our live stream and watch the results come in (but note that if the races are tight, they may not be announced until later in the week).
-
With his legislative plan to tackle global warming in tatters, President Biden and his advisers are debating whether he should declare a national climate…
Add Comment