KFILE: “2020 election skeptics seek governor’s offices in battleground states”

KFILE: “2020 election skeptics seek governor’s offices in battleground states”

GOP candidates for governor have “records of denying, challenging, or casting doubt on Donald Trump’s loss of the 2020 election”

New reporting from CNN’s KFILE highlights how “Republicans with records of denying, challenging, or casting doubt on Donald Trump’s loss of the 2020 election” are running for governor in several battleground states where they would “play pivotal roles in the upcoming 2028 presidential election” if they win this November.

GOP candidates Andy Biggs (AZ), Tom Tiffany (WI), John James (MI), Stacy Garrity (PA) have extreme records that “range from falsely stating Trump won their state to actively trying to block Joe Biden’s victory.” Election denier Rick Jackson (GA) has “cast doubt during his campaign on the 2020 election results.”

“While Democratic governors and candidates are focused on lowering costs and protecting our democracy, extreme MAGA Republicans are still parroting dangerous and baseless lies about the 2020 election six years later,” said DGA Deputy Communications Director Johanna Warshaw. “The stakes for electing Democratic governors who will stand up for their states and ensure free and fair elections have never been higher.”

Read more from CNN below: 

• Republicans with records of denying, challenging or casting doubt on Donald Trump’s loss of the 2020 presidential election are now running for governor in five key battleground states where, if elected, they could play pivotal roles in the upcoming 2028 presidential election.

• Rep. Andy Biggs in Arizona, Rep. John James in Michigan, state treasurer Stacy Garrity in Pennsylvania, and Rep. Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin are four candidates whose records on 2020 range from falsely stating Trump won their state to actively trying to block Joe Biden’s victory.

• In a fifth battleground state in Georgia, political newcomer and businessman Rick Jackson has also cast doubt during his campaign on the 2020 election results in his state.

• If they win their gubernatorial races this November, they would be poised to play key roles in cooperating with federal election investigations, signing or vetoing election legislation, and certifying the winner of the 2028 presidential election. Under federal law, governors must finalize and submit who won the popular vote in the state and transmit the certificate to the federal government.

• Biggs and Tiffany, as members of Congress, voted to overturn the 2020 election that Joe Biden won.

• Biggs was a particularly high-profile election denier, involved in efforts to challenge Arizona’s and Pennsylvania’s election results. The Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives testified to Congress’ Jan. 6 committee that Biggs pressured him to support decertifying the election for Trump.

• In late 2020, Biggs claimed in a TV interview that then-Gov. Doug Ducey “wouldn’t take time to get to the bottom of these [election fraud] allegations” and that as governor, he “could have invalidated the election. He wasn’t interested in doing that,” with an audit of the results.

• In 2024, after Arizona’s 11 fake electors and seven other individuals were indicted by local law enforcement, Biggs called on the state attorney general to drop all charges and resign.

• As a Wisconsin congressman, Tiffany supported, along with Biggs, a Texas lawsuit to overturn the election results in Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Weeks later, on January 6, 2021, he voted to sustain objections to the electoral college count, claiming that roughly 200,000 Wisconsin ballots had been affected by illegal practices.

• Five years later, Tiffany said he supported the FBI’s probe into the 2020 election results. He refused to answer when asked by reporters if Biden won the 2020 election earlier this year.

• “The problem with the 2020 election was the improprieties that happened,” [Tiffany] told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

• Other candidates for governor appeared to use election denialism to curry favor with the president and earn his endorsement for their campaigns.

• In Michigan, James narrowly lost his 2020 Senate race. He then launched a campaign for the state’s 10th Congressional District in 2022, and he acknowledged that Biden was duly elected. However, after receiving Trump’s endorsement for his 2026 campaign for governor, James declared on a podcast that the 2020 election was “rigged and manipulated” against himself and Trump.

• James also falsely alleged that Trump, who lost Michigan to Biden in 2020, won the presidential election in Michigan three times.

• James did not respond to CNN’s questions on who he believed won the 2020 election or if he would commit to certifying the 2028 presidential election results should he be elected.

• And in Pennsylvania, Garrity, who won her first term as state treasurer in 2020, appeared at a rally on January 5, 2021 in Harrisburg to sway lawmakers to decertify the results of the election. She later said she attended to “state that the election process had been tarnished by unelected bureaucrats who ignored the election law as written.”

• In May 2022, she told Trump at a rally that “we know that he won” the 2020 presidential election. At the podium, Trump turned to Garrity to recount that she told him it was “not possible” he had lost her “area” because he was more popular than she was, even though she won her own race. Garrity, facing him onstage, smiled and nodded in agreement.

• Trump endorsed Garrity in early 2026 for her gubernatorial bid.

• In Georgia, Jackson is a billionaire healthcare executive and first-time politician who launched his gubernatorial campaign earlier this year by running an ad depicting his primary opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, as “Judas” for betraying Trump’s demands to overturn the 2020 election.

• He said he also supports the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the county’s election: “I have no problem with the FBI, because to me, we need to have confidence in our voting system,” he said, according to an audio recording from a third March event in Albany, Georgia, obtained by CNN.

• Trump endorsed Jackson for governor in July after Jackson beat Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in the primary’s run-off in June.

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