Election deniers lose races for governor in key US swing states

After Democrats’ stunning blowout in the United States midterm elections, five Republican election deniers have come up short in their races to become governor in top battleground states.

Congressman Andy Biggs in Arizona, Congressman John James in Michigan, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity in Pennsylvania and Congressman Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin all lost their gubernatorial races on Tuesday.

So too did billionaire Rick Jackson of Georgia, a state that was central to President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential results.

All five candidates had either cast doubt on or voted to block Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.

Jackson, for instance, had called Biden’s win “totally ridiculous” and criticised Georgia state officials for not complying with Trump’s demands to “find” extra votes.

“Our people really let us down,” Jackson said when he was pressed on the 2020 election during a campaign event earlier this year.

In January 2021, Biggs and Tiffany voted to overturn the 2020 results as members of the US House of Representatives.

Both lawmakers also signed on to a lawsuit that sought to invalidate results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all states that Biden won in that year’s contentious presidential race.

James was not in Congress when it came time to certify the 2020 election results. He had unsuccessfully run for the US Senate during that election cycle. He later made a successful bid for the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms.

That year, he acknowledged Biden’s victory. But he reversed his position in June, when he told podcaster Benny Johnson that the 2020 election was “rigged and manipulated”.

Garrity, who was elected to her current position in 2020, was among the right-wing politicians to campaign with Trump to reverse his election defeat.

She appeared at a rally in Pennsylvania on January 5, 2021, to call on state lawmakers to decertify the 2020 results. A day later, Trump supporters would storm the US Capitol, echoing the Republican leader’s claims of voter fraud.

Tiffany, Garrity and Jackson have since released statements or clarified their previous actions regarding the 2020 election and acknowledged that Biden won. Biggs and James, however, have not.

Al Jazeera has reached out to both of their offices for comment but has not yet heard back.

Tuesday’s midterm results are likely to have significant implications for the next presidential race in 2028.

Trump is entering the final two years of his lame-duck second term, and under the US Constitution, he is ineligible for re-election. It is unclear who will succeed him as the Republican standard-bearer.

Battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all vacillated between presidential nominees of both parties in recent elections.

They will play critical roles in 2028, as the US looks to determine its next leader.

In some US states, governors play a major role in issues like voting access, election administration and efforts to redraw congressional maps.

Over the past year and a half, Trump has sought to rally state leaders to redesign congressional maps to help Republicans get elected.

Some Democratic-led states, notably California, under Governor Gavin Newsom, have responded with their own efforts at gerrymandering.

But it is unclear whether the push for redistricting will retain its momentum after Tuesday’s midterm results.

Already, Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican who was prevented by term limits from running in this midterm cycle, said on Wednesday that he would not call a special session of the state’s legislature to redraw the state’s congressional maps before his Democratic successor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, is sworn in.

Trump, after years of casting doubt on US elections, told The New York Times on Tuesday night that he was “absolutely willing” to accept the midterm results.

He also pledged to engage with the Democratic Party, which handily retook control of both chambers of the US Congress.

“We’ll, you know, look forward to working with them,” Trump said of the Democrats. “We’ll probably work something out.”