What Is Kelly Ayotte Promising the Conspiracy Theorists and Extremists Endorsing Her Campaign?

What Is Kelly Ayotte Promising the Conspiracy Theorists and Extremists Endorsing Her Campaign?  

Last week, former U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte continued to put politics first by courting the most extreme elements in New Hampshire politics with the announcement that State Representative Lisa Mazur endorsed her campaign for governor. Mazur is best known for “compar[ing] Nazi persecution of Jews to COVID measures at a high school prom,” testifying in a school board meeting that “in 1939 when [the Nazis] put those stars on those people—‘Oh, it’s just a star,’ that’s what they said at the time…In World War II, we said ‘never again,’ but here we are.”

Rep. Mazur is just the latest addition to Ayotte’s fringe coalition. Here’s a running list of some of the other extremists she’s been tied to since launching her campaign: 

• State Representative Ken Weyler, who spread dangerous and baseless conspiracy theories during the pandemic, including alleging that “the coronavirus vaccine contains a ‘living organism with tentacles,’” that it “darkens the eyes of newborns,” that “5G technology had somehow been inserted into the vaccine to control people’s thoughts,” and “called the pope and others ‘at the top’ of the Roman Catholic Church ‘satanists’ and ‘luciferians’ for backing public health measures.”

• State Senator Carrie Gendreau, who has a long history of attacking the LGBTQ+ community — including sparking a hateful controversy that compelled a New Hampshire Town Manager to resign — and recently introduced legislation to ban abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest after just 15 days.

• Extremists Rachel Goldsmith and Jeremy Kauffman. Goldsmith is the leader of the New Hampshire chapter of the extremist group Moms for Liberty, which threatened to put “bounties” on educators’ heads for teaching “divisive concepts.” Kauffman, Goldsmith’s husband, is the leader of the state’s notoriously far-right Libertarian Party and best known for his incendiary rhetoric.

• The New England White Network, a white supremacist hate group. The leader of the group, Ryan J. Murdough, cited Ayotte’s “anti-Massachusetts rhetoric” and her goal of keeping “invaders” out of New Hampshire as reasons he and his group are supporting her for governor. It took Ayotte more than a week to condemn this endorsement.

“As Kelly Ayotte bends over backwards to court the far-right wing of the Republican party, what is she promising in return for these endorsements?” said DGA States Press Secretary Emma O’Brien. “An ally to any one of these unhinged conspiracy theorists or extremists is not an ally to Granite Staters. New Hampshire voters want a governor who will spend their time finding solutions to some of the state’s toughest problems, not a governor who will use the corner office to attack their rights and spread dangerous lies.”

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