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Trump-Backed Denier Candidate Wins Maryland GOP Primary for Governor

2022-07-20T13:05:22.634Z


Dan Cox, a far-right state lawmaker backed by former President Donald Trump, will face the winner of the disputed Democratic primary in the November general election.


By Henry J. Gomez -

NBC News

Another Republican who has cast false doubt on the 2020 election is one step closer to the governor's mansion and the power to certify the results of the 2024 presidential race.

Maryland state delegate Dan Cox won his state's GOP primary on Tuesday, as projected by our sister network, NBC News, beating Kelly Schulz, a former state commerce secretary backed by the state party's power group.

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Cox — who was at the rally that preceded the deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, and won the endorsement of former President Donald Trump — likely owes his victory, at least in part, to national Democrats who aired TV ads. reinforcing their right-wing views.

Although the strategy could pay long-term dividends in a state where voters lean more to the center and left, efforts to elevate a presumably weaker opponent risk backfiring in the general election.

Dan Cox, on June 30, 2022 in Annapolis, Maryland. Brian Witte / AP

The Democratic Governors Association spent more than a million dollars on messaging focused primarily on Cox.

Cox himself spent a fraction of that amount: $21,000 as of Monday, according to the media monitoring company AdImpact.

Cox will face the winner of Tuesday's Democratic primary, a contest that centered around three main candidates: former US Labor Secretary Tom Perez, State Comptroller Peter Franchot and writer Wes Moore.

According to NBC News, it was too early to determine the outcome of the contest.

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Maryland isn't often a battleground in election years, but outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan's two terms -- a rarity for Republicans in the state -- set the stage for a competitive year.

The outgoing governor's staunch opposition to Trump and endorsement of Schulz, who served in his cabinet, emboldened the former president to support Cox.

In addition to attending and busing Trump supporters to the Jan. 6 rally, Cox also tweeted at the time that then-Vice President Mike Pence was a traitor for certifying Joe Biden's victory.

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"Cox worked with Trump trying to prove the last election was a fraud," says a narrator in a DGA ad that also spoke in support of Trump and Cox's hard-line positions on guns and abortion.

The Democratic meddling strategy has become a staple of other races this year, with the party engineering the outcomes it preferred in the Illinois and Pennsylvania gubernatorial races.

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Pennsylvania's effort was especially notable for efforts by Josh Shapiro, the state's attorney general and unopposed Democratic gubernatorial candidate, to highlight the conservative credentials of state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who ultimately won a well-attended Republican primary.

Mastriano, like Cox, has spoken out on the 2020 election and was in Washington DC on the day of the January 6 riots.

He also pushed for an alternative list of Trump electors, operating under the idea that Biden's Electoral College victory could be reversed in Trump's favor.

Republicans have expressed frustration with the tactics, and some Democrats have joined them in questioning whether there is hypocrisy at work when party leaders appear to be fueling the very election deniers they decry as threats to democracy.

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"They think that Republican voters in Maryland are jerks and louts who can be fooled," Schulz campaign senior adviser Doug Mayer said of Democrats last week in an interview with NBC News.

DGA Executive Director Noam Lee called Cox a "conspiracy theorist with an extreme record" in a statement that was also read as an attempt to justify the group's heavy involvement in the primaries.

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“We cannot let Dan Cox turn Maryland into MAGAland, which the DGA has held him accountable for weeks and will continue to ensure we defeat him and his dangerous agenda in November,” Lee said in the statement.

Meanwhile, Maryland's Democratic gubernatorial primary -- too early to determine late Tuesday, according to NBC News -- turned into a three-way battle.

Pérez and Franchot, state comptroller since 2007 and a longtime state legislator, offered themselves as steady hands for the party establishment.

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Moore drew on her nonprofit experience, in her books, and on television.

He has hosted shows on Oprah Winfrey's cable network, and the ubiquitous former talk show host endorsed his candidacy.

"This moment we're in calls for a different kind of leader," Winfrey said in an ad she narrated for Moore's campaign.

"For governor in Maryland, they have one in my friend, Wes Moore," he added.

As of Monday, Perez and an outside group backing him were the biggest spenders in the Democratic primary, closely followed by Moore.

Also in the running were former US Secretary of Education John King and former State Attorney General Doug Gansler.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2022-07-20

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