How Trump is shaping 2022 races in states he lost in 2020
Former President Donald Trump has been out of office for nearly 11 months. But he hasn't forgotten the states where he narrowly lost his bid for reelection and is using his outsized political influence in an effort to shape the 2022 midterm races in those states.
In battleground states that failed to deliver a second term for him, Trump has endorsed a serious primary challenge against a sitting Republican governor and is backing challengers against GOP members of Congress who have crossed him.
He's supporting candidates for state legislatures and the chief election officials in several states who questioned the outcome of the 2020 election, despite audits confirming the results and failed legal challenges that found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. He has pressured state lawmakers when he felt they weren't taking action to launch reviews into 2020 months after results were certified. Twenty-two of his 70 endorsements have come in five of the states that decided the 2020 election.
"Some might call 2022 the revenge tour, but more accurately, President Trump is building the Republican Party through the interests of every MAGA voter for years to come," said a Trump adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Many of Trump's endorsements in Georgia and other battleground states refer to the 2020 election or "election integrity."
"The president feels strongly that the outcome of the 2020 election was not honest and the elections weren't conducted in a way that upheld the process and the rule of law," the Trump adviser said.
The adviser added that "election integrity is the Obamacare of 2022," suggesting that the issue is galvanizing grassroots conservatives in the same way that the nation's health care law did during the Tea Party wave in 2010. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 court cases after the November election and Trump's own attorney general said there was no evidence of fraud at a level that "could have affected a different outcome in the election."
Georgia
On Monday, Trump endorsed former Georgia Senator David Perdue in his primary challenge against incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who was repeatedly the target of Trump's ire after the former president lost Georgia to President Joe Biden last year — the first time a Democrat had won the state since 1992.
"Brian Kemp has failed Georgia. He caved to Stacey Abrams before the 2020 Election," Trump said in his statement endorsing Perdue, referring to a consent decree that was signed between the state of Georgia and Democratic groups in March 2020. The agreement required the state to release guidance about signature matching requirements and how to alert voters if there was an issue with their signature.
Trump and other Republicans have blamed the consent decree for Republican losses in Georgia in 2020, casting doubt on the signature-matching process. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation review of signatures in Cobb County "found 'no fraudulent absentee ballots' with a 99% confidence threshold."
Perdue said in an interview with Axios that he would not have certified the results of the 2020 election if he had been governor.
The former president earlier this year endorsed Congressman Jody Hice in his primary challenge against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump called Raffensperger in January and urged Raffensperger to "find" enough votes to overturn the state's election. Hice was one of the 139 House Republicans who objected to the election results.
As he launched his campaign, Hice accused Raffensperger of creating "cracks in the integrity of our elections, which I wholeheartedly believe individuals took advantage of in 2020." Raffensperger snapped back, saying, "Few have done more to cynically undermine faith in our election system than Jody Hice."
Georgia counted its ballots three times after the 2020 election, and several courts rejected lawsuits aimed at overturning the results.
Michigan
In Michigan, a state that Mr. Biden won by about 154,000 votes, Trump has endorsed 11 candidates at various levels, more than in any other state, according to a CBS News analysis.
Trump has backed primary challenges against two Republican congressmen who voted to impeach him after the January 6 attack. He also endorsed candidates for attorney general and secretary of state who have each promoted claims of election fraud.
His interest also extends to the state legislature, where he's throwing his support behind five candidates for Michigan House and two running for state Senate. Several of those candidates have raised doubts about the 2020 election.
In his state-level endorsements, Trump frequently mentions 2020. "Jon cares about Election Integrity and knows there was systemic voter fraud in the 2020 Election, and is working to uncover it," Trump said of state House candidate Jon Rocha.
Mr. Biden's margin of victory in Michigan was almost 15 times Trump's margin over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
"He wants to ensure that Michigan has the right representatives and those that will fight for the people. That's why he's getting involved in Michigan more than anywhere else," Rocha told CBS News.
Rocha said he hasn't spoken to Trump, but he believes the former president is interested in his work around calling for a forensic audit of the 2020 election. Rocha told CBS News that he doesn't know if the election was "necessarily stolen," but he believes there are "more than enough anomalies and inconsistencies" to warrant an investigation.
More than 250 audits confirmed the results of the 2020 election in Michigan. Several lawsuits seeking to overturn the results were dismissed and lawyers in one case were sanctioned for bringing the case. There is an ongoing battle in Michigan over a directive issued by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson about signature matching that was invalidated by a judge for not correctly following the rule making process.
Arizona
The former president has urged state Republican officials to look again at 2020 for votes that must have been stolen from him, championing calls coming from the GOP grassroots.
Most notably, he applauded a state Senate GOP-mandated review of ballots in Arizona's largest county, though the inexperienced contractors hired for the job faced withering criticism from the county and election experts for their ignorance of ballot handling and for some of the conspiracy theories they investigated in their hunt for election fraud.
Ultimately, they found little difference in the total vote count (and in fact turned up a few more votes for Mr. Biden and a few less for Trump). The contractors claimed the county had mismanaged the election, but the county fiercely pushed back, defending its signature verification and curing process and countering accusations point by point about voters who had moved out of the county or people who may have voted in multiple counties.
Arizona's Republican Governor Doug Ducey is term-limited, but he, like Kemp, has drawn Trump's ire since last year's election. Trump is backing gubernatorial candidate and former local TV news anchor Kari Lake, who issued a statement the day that the Maricopa County review was released that simply said "DECERTIFY!" In his endorsement of Lake, Trump said she will "fight to restore Election Integrity (both past and future!)."
He's also supporting Mark Finchem for secretary of state, a candidate who has promoted claims of election fraud and called for decertification at a Trump rally in Iowa. The former president has not yet weighed in on the crowded Arizona Senate GOP primary, but has questioned why Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Senate candidate, is taking so long to investigate election fraud claims referred to him after the Maricopa County review.
An audit by Arizona officials after the 2020 election previously affirmed Mr. Biden's victory and two separate audits by federally certified firms confirmed that there were no issues with the state's election equipment.
Wisconsin
In Wisconsin, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced at the state GOP convention in June that he was appointing former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice to review the 2020 election. The announcement came after weeks of pressure from conservatives in Wisconsin and hours after Trump accused Vos and other Republicans of "working hard to cover up election corruption in Wisconsin."
Gableman, who has a budget of about $675,000 in taxpayer money, told a state committee last week that his review isn't aimed at overturning the 2020 results, but is trying to make improvements for future elections. He is probing private grants that went to municipalities for election administration and potential issues in nursing homes.
At least one of Gableman's investigators tried to discredit the election last year. Gableman revealed last week that a staffer was involved in lawsuits last year that sought to overturn the 2020 election results.
The Trump campaign requested a recount in the state's two largest counties that slightly increased Mr. Biden's margin of victory. A federal judge and the Wisconsin State Supreme Court were among the courts that rejected legal challenges in Wisconsin after the election. On Tuesday, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty released an election review that found there was no widespread fraud, but claimed election laws weren't closely followed.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Senate Republicans, too, have ordered a 2020 election review. In June, Trump issued a statement grousing at Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, a Republican who is now running for governor, and prodding him about why he was "fighting so hard that there not be a Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam?" In late August, Corman said that a "forensic investigation" into the election would begin.
Corman has said that the legislature doesn't have the authority to change election results, and his spokesman previously told CBS News that the investigation is "designed to restore faith in our elections and will be completed in a way that allows everyone to have confidence in the results." Senate Republicans recently agreed to pay an Iowa-based consulting firm $270,000 to conduct the review. The firm's leader said the inquiry's goal is to "provide recommendations based on analysis of facts for future elections and voting integrity legislation."
As with the other states, Pennsylvania's results were certified and several legal challenges filed after the 2020 election were rejected by courts. Pennsylvania counties also audited the results, affirming the accuracy of the 2020 election.