It was a race that will never get the attention of an Ohio abortion vote, a Democratic governor winning reelection in deep-red Kentucky, or Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s failed attempt to wrest control of his state legislature.
But for the sake of the Republican Party, it perhaps should.
While Gov. Andy Beshear (D) steered his way to a relatively easy victory Tuesday, Kentucky Republicans swept every other statewide race. And no candidate took more votes than Secretary of State Michael Adams (R).
Adams is merely the latest candidate to show his party how successful it can be when it doesn’t marginalize itself with such things as election denialism — and even fights back against it.
He went further than most any other prominent Republican nationwide to repudiate the idea that the 2020 election was stolen — a bit of a lower-profile Brad Raffensperger, if you will.
“The biggest threat is not fraud,” Adams said last year, “it’s people who are claiming election fraud, and it’s starting to get dangerous.”
Adams also repudiated claims about “machines being rigged to the internet and millions of votes being moved around, manipulated,” adding: “That’s totally, totally false.”
Adams, like Raffensperger, faced a primary challenge for his apostasy, but he turned it aside easily. He went on to run in the general election on his expansion of voting rights, while running an ad featuring Beshear praising his bipartisan record.
Adams wound up taking 61 percent and nearly 785,000 votes, according to the most recent results, compared with GOP gubernatorial nominee Daniel Cameron’s 47 percent and 627,000. Adams’s vote total also outpaced four other statewide GOP candidates.
It’s possible to oversell one race, but this is part of a demonstrated pattern dating to the 2022 election.
Election deniers cost the Republican Party dearly in that campaign, possibly up to and including control of the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, candidates who distanced themselves from Donald Trump’s stolen-election claims registered some of the best performances.
Here’s a look at the relative performances of statewide candidates, with an assist from The Washington Post’s 2022 review of election deniers’ performances. (The Post defined election deniers as those who questioned President Biden’s victory, opposed counting Biden’s electoral college votes, expressed support for partisan ballot reviews, signed on to election-overturning lawsuits, and/or legitimized the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally.)
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
There’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg question here. Was this really about their election denialism costing them, specifically, or was their election denialism more a symptom of candidates who were too focused on appealing to the hard right?
But the writing is on the wall for the GOP when it comes to the promise of candidates who don’t spend their time embracing such theories to win primaries and build their profile. And now we have more evidence.
But for the sake of the Republican Party, it perhaps should.
While Gov. Andy Beshear (D) steered his way to a relatively easy victory Tuesday, Kentucky Republicans swept every other statewide race. And no candidate took more votes than Secretary of State Michael Adams (R).
Adams is merely the latest candidate to show his party how successful it can be when it doesn’t marginalize itself with such things as election denialism — and even fights back against it.
He went further than most any other prominent Republican nationwide to repudiate the idea that the 2020 election was stolen — a bit of a lower-profile Brad Raffensperger, if you will.
“The biggest threat is not fraud,” Adams said last year, “it’s people who are claiming election fraud, and it’s starting to get dangerous.”
Adams also repudiated claims about “machines being rigged to the internet and millions of votes being moved around, manipulated,” adding: “That’s totally, totally false.”
Adams, like Raffensperger, faced a primary challenge for his apostasy, but he turned it aside easily. He went on to run in the general election on his expansion of voting rights, while running an ad featuring Beshear praising his bipartisan record.
Adams wound up taking 61 percent and nearly 785,000 votes, according to the most recent results, compared with GOP gubernatorial nominee Daniel Cameron’s 47 percent and 627,000. Adams’s vote total also outpaced four other statewide GOP candidates.
It’s possible to oversell one race, but this is part of a demonstrated pattern dating to the 2022 election.
Election deniers cost the Republican Party dearly in that campaign, possibly up to and including control of the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, candidates who distanced themselves from Donald Trump’s stolen-election claims registered some of the best performances.
Here’s a look at the relative performances of statewide candidates, with an assist from The Washington Post’s 2022 review of election deniers’ performances. (The Post defined election deniers as those who questioned President Biden’s victory, opposed counting Biden’s electoral college votes, expressed support for partisan ballot reviews, signed on to election-overturning lawsuits, and/or legitimized the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally.)
- In Arizona, the statewide ballot was rife with GOP election deniers such as Kari Lake and Blake Masters, who lost. Meanwhile, state Treasurer Kimberly Yee (R) ran a more traditional campaign and sailed to reelection by double digits — taking six percentage points more than any other Republican.
- In Nevada, the four worst-performing statewide GOP candidates were all election deniers who lost, even as now-Gov. Joe Lombardo and two other Republicans won.
- In Ohio, election-denying J.D. Vance won a Senate seat but performed worse than eight other statewide Republicans. While he took 53 percent, they all took between 56 percent and 62 percent.
- In Georgia, the two worst-performing statewide candidates were also the two election deniers: Senate candidate Herschel Walker and now-Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. Raffensperger, Gov. Brian Kemp and state Attorney General Chris Carr each asserted that Georgia’s results were legitimate, and each won by at least five points.
- In Kansas, the two worst performers were election-denying gubernatorial candidate Derek Schmidt and now-Attorney General Kris Kobach. They took 47 and 51 percent, respectively, while the GOP averaged 59 percent in other statewide races.
- In New Hampshire, election deniers running for both the Senate and the House way underperformed Gov. Chris Sununu (R). They averaged 45 percent of the vote, while Sununu took 57 percent.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
There’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg question here. Was this really about their election denialism costing them, specifically, or was their election denialism more a symptom of candidates who were too focused on appealing to the hard right?
But the writing is on the wall for the GOP when it comes to the promise of candidates who don’t spend their time embracing such theories to win primaries and build their profile. And now we have more evidence.
