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 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.”