Peter Montgomery has studied America’s religious right for more than 20 years yet he’s never seen anything akin to how Trump-endorsed election denialists campaign for the upcoming midterm elections.
“Look at Laura Loomer, who lost by about 6,000 votes in Florida’s Republican primaries, a close race but a clear loss--and by a sizable number of votes,” said Montgomery, a People for the American Way senior fellow.
But Montgomery recalls that before Election Day, Loomer told voters she would never concede even if she lost. She falsely blamed her loss on election fraud, other Republicans and flawed voting machines for her loss, never offering a micro-scrap of evidence. And she vowed her far-right stance reflects the true will of the voters, not the votes.
“It’s a tactic,” Montgomery said. “A lot of Trump-endorsed candidates are using it.”
Let’s call the tactic “Loomering” for brevity’s sake. Loomering goes beyond denying the results of the 2020 presidential election. GOP candidates are Loomering all over America when they declare before election day that the only way they could lose is due to fraud. If recounted votes show that they lost, those votes don’t reflect the true will of the people and should be disregarded.
Montgomery worries about the highly controversial fringe legal theory that supporters of ex-president Donald Trump have embraced. The theory interprets the Constitution as allowing state legislators to ignore the majority of votes cast for a presidential candidate in a state. It sounds like fantasy. But the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear a case arguing that the theory is valid.
Now that the primaries are nearly done, Montgomery sees Pennsylvania and Arizona as key states Americans should watch in 2022 to assess how Trumpism will fare in 2024.
In Arizona, GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has repeated Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen. She falsely calls Pres. Joe Biden an “illegitimate President.”
Just like Loomer, Lake has told voters the only way she can lose is if the other side cheats. As Montgomery noted, this protects her ego and gives supporters an excuse to react violently because they may believe that’s the only way to stop a "steal." Arizona’s Republican Secretary of State candidate is also a 2020 election truther.
“Together, they could overturn a legitimate presidential election,” Montgomery added.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania chose GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano who was at the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. As a state senator, Mastriano organized hearings in which Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani gave false information concerning election fraud. If elected governor, Mastriano would get to appoint Pennsylvania’s top official overseeing elections.
“Mastriano is one of the most extremist of the election deniers,” Montgomery said.
Maryland’s Republican gubernatorial primary winner Dan Cox got substantial donations from the Democratic governors’ association, according to the Washington Post. Democrats figured an extreme Trumper would be easier to beat than a moderate Republican.
But given America’s peculiar mood and former president Donald Trump’s tenacious grip on the Republican Party, that strategy may be dangerous.
“That strategy is like playing with fire,” Montgomery said, noting how the growth of Christian Nationalist sentiments—opposition to LGBTQ rights, the scant separation between church and state, support for contraception restrictions, easy access to guns---has normalized extremist views for many voters. “Remember, Trump’s spiritual advisor Paula White preached that Trump’s opponents were in league with Satan. There are people who believe Trump was anointed by God…There are voters who aren’t persuaded by logic.”
