Political violence hits home

Amid the extremely disturbing reports about the politically motivated attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, this morning, the findings of the Renew America Foundation’s “Rise of American Radicalism” initiative couldn’t be more timely. Released this week, the report documents the findings of a nearly year-long research project that tracked 256 candidates for office across the country who embrace or defend election lies, conspiracy theories like QAnon, hate speech, or most troubling of all, political violence—not unlike what happened in San Francisco today. Nearly half of all these candidates advanced to the general election, which means Election Day will tell us a lot about how much of a threat political extremism will continue to be. Six of the extremists identified in the study hail from Nevada, the state we’re highlighting in today’s issue of Topline. The Silver State stands out for another reason this year. Voters will decide whether to adopt ranked-choice voting for future elections. Do you live in Nevada? Share your thoughts on the midterm races for publication in our next issue. —Melissa Amour, Managing Editor

• Judge warns of ‘dark shadow of tyranny’ as Capitol rioter jailed for 90 months —The Guardian

• Justice Department asks Supreme Court to reject legal theory pushed by Trump supporters —CNN

• Russian President Vladimir Putin defends his mission to stop western “dominance” —CBS News

• Early voting updates: Counts continue to climb past usual midterm turnout —ABC News

• Motivated youth in play at the polls —U.S. News & World Report

House Speaker’s husband attacked

Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, was violently assaulted with a hammer at the couple’s San Francisco home this morning in what appears to be a politically motivated attack. San Francisco Police say David DePape entered the home around 2:30 a.m., and confronted Paul Pelosi, asking, “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” Nancy Pelosi was not at home during the attack. Paul Pelosi suffered blunt-force injuries to his head and body, and is undergoing emergency brain surgery.

• Suspect in custody. DePape, who was apprehended and has been charged with attempted homicide and a raft of other felonies, has a long history of sharing extreme ideas online, including several conspiracy theories popular among far-right conservatives.

• “Megalomaniac and so out of touch with reality.” On his blog, DePape has vented rage over COVID-19 precautions and espoused beliefs shared by the conspiracist QAnon movement. The page also includes dedicated sections for Holocaust denial, climate change denial, transphobia, racism, misogyny, voter fraud conspiracy theories, Second Amendment absolutism, and screeds against groomers and “pedos.” —Rolling Stone

• Are our leaders safe? A Friday morning statement from Speaker Pelosi's office said Paul Pelosi is "receiving excellent medical care and is expected to make a full recovery." Though the Speaker was not at home at the time, the break-in at her residence raises serious questions about the security of lawmakers. The U.S. Capitol Police are assisting the FBI and the San Francisco Police with a joint investigation into the break-in. —NPR

MORE: White House says Biden is ‘praying’ for Paul Pelosi and condemns ‘all violence’ after attack —The Independent

Zakaria: Our primary problem 

“The primary system American parties use to choose their candidates is extremely unusual; no other major democracy has one quite like it. Primaries ensure that the candidates chosen are selected by slivers of the parties—around 20% of all eligible voters. And this selection is not at all representative—these are the most intense, agitated activists, often far more extreme in their views than run-of-the-mill registered Republicans or Democrats. Add to this decades of sophisticated, computer-enabled gerrymandering, and you get extreme candidates who run in safe districts where the only threat to them is a primary candidate who is even more extreme.” —Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post

Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS.  

MORE: Election Day is Nov. 8, but legal challenges already begin —Associated Press

Focus on Nevada

A state-level secretary of state race doesn’t usually draw much attention, but the “Big Lie” about the 2020 presidential election has changed all of that. In Nevada, the race between Democrat Cisco Aguilar and Republican Jim Marchant has drawn national attention with millions of dollars in fundraising and spending. Why? Because Marchant, a former Nevada State Assemblyman, is one of Nevada’s most prominent election deniers. He claims, without evidence, that he was a “victim of election fraud” in his unsuccessful 2020 congressional race. And, according to his campaign website, his number one priority, if elected, will be to “overhaul the fraudulent election system in Nevada.” Whatever that means. —NBC News

• He’s got big plans. Marchant is currently leading a push for hand counts of votes in the state. He also has promised to “decertify” the 2020 Nevada result because he believes Donald Trump won. Even worse, Marchant could attempt to thwart certification of the popular vote in the 2024 presidential race—something he has said he would have done if he were in office in 2020. There’s a strong possibility Marchant will be elected, as the races in Nevada for governor, attorney general, U.S. Senate, and secretary of state are all neck and neck. —The Washington Post

• But the news isn’t all bad. An unprecedented hand-count of mail-in ballots in rural Nye County is on hold—possibly for good—after the Nevada Supreme Court declared the process illegal late yesterday. Current Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, who is in charge of elections and has been been one of the GOP’s most vocal critics of the voter-fraud conspiracy theories that fueled the hand-tallying of ballots, said the “hand-counting process must cease immediately.” —Associated Press

• And this could be even better. Nevada voters will get to weigh in on ranked-choice voting and open primaries when they cast their ballots next month. If question 3 is approved, all voters, including unaffiliated voters, would participate in an open primary, using RCV. Presently, Nevada voters can only vote for one candidate from within the party to which they are registered. Question 3 would need to pass in 2022 and 2024 before becoming law for the 2026 election. Stay tuned. —NBC News

MORE: Election deniers should be disqualified from holding public office —The Nevada Independent

It’s 10 days until the election. Do you know who’s on your ballot?

By Miles Taylor

In 2021, as candidates around the country announced their intention to run in the midterm elections, an alarming trend emerged that could not be ignored: hundreds of them were openly spreading destabilizing lies about our elections, peddling dangerous conspiracy theories, and engaging in hate speech or even violent rhetoric. 

By the end of last year, the Renew America Foundation (RAF) had begun tracking these individuals and their radical ideologies. While extremists certainly aren’t new, historically they tend to flame out in the primaries or get trounced by a more moderate electorate in the general. Would that happen again in 2022, with an unusually high number of such candidates seeking office? We wanted to know, and we chose to share our findings publicly to shine a light on the spread of extremism in post-Jan. 6 America.

What Did We Learn?

RAF tracked a total of 256 candidates running for federal, statewide, and local offices across the country. Nearly 49% of them won their primary election or were unopposed. The most successful of these candidates were election deniers, who claim that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from Donald Trump through widespread voter fraud. Of the candidates we tracked, 122 election deniers will appear on the general election ballot in their respective states next month. 

We also took a look at candidates who espouse conspiracy theories like QAnon, use hate speech, or promote the use of political violence. Of the candidates we tracked, 45% of the QAnon sympathizers and one-third of those who have engaged in or defended hate speech or violent rhetoric advanced to the general election. The strongest pockets of this activity were found in the Midwest, Southwest, and Southeast regions, but no part of the country was spared.

Election Denialism

Election denial is pervasive. Ninety-seven percent of the candidates RAF tracked, running for offices up and down the ballot, share 2020 election lies. Perhaps the most immediate threat are those running for statewide office, especially governor, secretary of state, and attorney general—positions that usually oversee the voting and certification processes. Recall how Donald Trump sought to influence Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,000 votes that would swing the state to Trump’s column in 2020. To his credit, Raffensperger refused. With an election denier in the same position, the outcome would have been far different, and that’s the disturbing possibility we could face again in 2024.

Even if election deniers never take action on their lies, they are still damaging our democracy. False claims about election fraud erode voters’ faith in our electoral system, depress voter participation, and diminish respect for elected officials. As we witnessed on Jan. 6, they can also lead to violence among citizens who believe, wrongly, that they have been cheated and have no other lawful recourse. Ultimately, they contribute to government dysfunction, as partisan hostilities hinder bipartisan cooperation. Most detrimental of all, election deniers may actively use their positions of authority to alter an election result they don’t like, thwarting the will of the people. It’s a dangerous precedent that could be exploited by future officials of any party.

RAF has tracked 19 candidates who made the November ballot and are seeking a statewide office that would give them direct influence on elections. Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, is a prime example. Mastriano used his power as a state legislator in 2020 to attempt to appoint alternate delegates to the Electoral College after Joe Biden’s win. Later, he showed up at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and participated in the protest that led to the insurrection.

Mastriano has made clear that, if elected governor, he would decertify all the state’s election machines at his own discretion. He also has promised to delegate to the secretary of state (an appointed, not elected, position in Pennsylvania) “the power to make the corrections to elections, the voting logs, and everything.” Bear in mind that Pennsylvania was decided by just 1.2 percentage points in 2020. As a swing state with 19 electoral votes in 2024, it could well determine the next President of the United States.

Conspiracy Theories, Political Violence, and Hate Speech

Candidates who traffic in conspiracy theories, political violence, and hate speech weren’t as numerous or as successful in the primaries as election deniers were, but given the nature of their extreme positions, any success must be seen as a potential threat. Of the 56 QAnon adherents we tracked, 25 candidates won their primary and will be on the general election ballot in November. We also tracked 83 candidates who have promoted hate or political violence through their public statements, actions, or affiliations. Twenty-seven of them advanced out of the primary and may appear on a ballot near you.

Who are these people? In addition to known entities seeking re-election like Reps. Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, they’re candidates like Dan Cox, who’s running for governor of Maryland. Cox organized buses to take protesters to the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, called former Vice President Mike Pence a “traitor,” and has been described by outgoing Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a fellow Republican, as a “QAnon whack job” who isn’t “mentally stable.” Running for attorney general in Maryland is Michael Peroutka, a neo-Confederate and Christian nationalist who served on the board of the League of the South, which believes the Southern states should secede from the U.S. He has described the separation of church and state as a “great lie,” and called public education “the 10th plank in the Communist Manifesto.” That’s just in one state.

Like Cox and Peroutka, the candidates who met our criteria for extremism are overwhelmingly Republican, but that doesn’t mean the Democrats’ hands are entirely clean. Democratic organizations threatened our democracy as well by funding far-right extremists to the tune of $53 million. According to Axios, they succeeded in boosting these candidates in six of the 13 Republican primaries in which they meddled. Their goal was for Democrats to face the worst possible Republican opponents, which is the kind of short-term thinking campaign consultants and political operatives routinely indulge in. But in so doing, they've put radicals one vote away from real power over our democracy. That's playing with fire.

Lies, conspiracies, and hate—especially when promulgated by public officials—can fuel real-world danger, not only to democracy but to people’s lives. The rise of these radical candidates demonstrates the injurious impact of hyperpartisanship, which significantly lowers our standards of candidate quality and discourages good candidates from running at all. Character matters; leaders who lack it have a corrosive influence on the whole of society. The relative success of these candidates in the primary elections speaks to the need for primary reform, so that candidates are rewarded for unifying ideas that appeal to a broad swath of the electorate, rather than for throwing red meat to an ideologically extreme base.

While it’s encouraging that 51% of the radical candidates we tracked were turned away by voters early on, extremism is still ascendant in America. Election Day 2022 will tell us just how much. As voters, we have an opportunity to halt the rise of American radicalism on Nov. 8, and it is vital that we view the election through that lens. We urge all Americans to review RAF’s findings in full for additional insight into the candidates on the ballot next month. Let’s resolve to elect leaders who respect us, our choices, and our system of self-government at the polls this year. And please, vote.

Miles Taylor is the executive director of the Renew America Foundation and formerly served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security.

No state has a more extreme MAGA lineup of candidates on the Republican slate for statewide offices, top to bottom. Kari Lake as the gubernatorial candidate, Abe Hamedah (Attorney General), Mark Finchem (Secretary of State), Blake Masters (U.S. Senate), and three Republican nominees for Congress—Paul Gosar, Debbie Lesko, and Andy Biggs— are all election deniers. 

Perhaps worst of all is the candidate for Secretary of State, who would manage the election process in 2024. He is a member of Proud Boys and has spouted every election conspiracy falsehood that has been advanced.  Arizona, the home of such Republican icons and leaders as Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes, and John McCain, will be a bellwether on Nov. 8 as to just how far the Republican Party has strayed into a world of fantasy and conspiracies. —Jim Kolbe, Former Republican Member of Congress, Arizona

I just turned in my Arizona ballot the other day, and I voted for the Democrat in the Governor, Secretary of State, and the Attorney General races because I know the Republicans in each of those races is an election denier. I can’t stomach voting for an election denier, and I don’t understand how so many people don’t think that’s a problem, or worse, think that it’s necessary.

I feel like so many people are focused on inflation, gas prices, and the economy. Those are legitimate things to be concerned about, and I’m concerned about them too. However, having politicians who support the Big Lie of someone who tried to illegally stay in power scares me even more. —Spencer J., Arizona

The Daily Courier in Prescott, Arizona, has endorsed three election deniers—Kari Lake, Blake Masters, and Mark Finchem. Until they did that, I thought they were moderate. This a conservative county, but they also endorsed two Democrats.

I am horrified. —Alice L., Arizona 

The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff or the Renew America Foundation.