Democrats beat election-denying secretary of state candidates in Arizona and Nevada

On Friday night, two additional Democratic candidates for secretary of state defeated Republicans who endorsed former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” about the 2020 presidential contest, delivering another blow to far-right conspiracy theorists running for top elections posts.

In Arizona, Democrat Adrian Fontes beat his Republican opponent Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker with ties to the Oath Keepers who was at the U.S. Capitol during the deadly January 6 insurrection and who said he would not have certified Biden’s victory in the state.

In Nevada, Democrat Cisco Aguilar won his race against Republican election denier Jim Marchant, who organized a nationwide coalition of voter suppression advocates to campaign for top election oversight roles.

Fontes said that Finchem “represented a danger to democracy if he had won,” The Associated Press reported. “The secretary of state, working with the governor and attorney general, has broad authority to rewrite the state’s election rules and plays a role in the certification of results.”

“Finchem had emerged as one of the most prominent Republicans running for secretary of state positions around the country who falsely claimed that Biden’s win was not legitimate,” the AP noted. “He had argued for significant changes to Arizona’s elections after Biden won the state in 2020 and Trump had endorsed him.”

More than 210 GOP candidates who spread doubt and lies about Biden’s 2020 victory have won congressional seats and races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general so far, but the vast majority of them are headed to the U.S. House and Senate.

Election-denying candidates for the top three statewide positions have fared significantly worse across the nation, especially in swing states, where midterm voters have largely rejected the MAGA loyalists who supported overturning Trump’s 2020 loss.

In yet-to-be-decided Arizona races, far-right gubernatorial candidate Lake is currently losing to Democrat Katie Hobbs by more than 30,000 votes with 83% of ballots tallied. Arizona’s Republican candidate for AG, Abraham Hamadeh, is trailing Democrat Kris Mayes by nearly 20,000 votes with the same percentage of ballots in. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and is the state’s most populous, is not likely to finish counting until after the weekend.

Meanwhile, in Nevada, Democratic AG candidate Aaron Ford defeated Republican Sigal Chattah. However, in a departure from the state’s emerging pattern of rejecting Trump-backed candidates for top statewide positions, Republican Joe Lombardo, a Las Vegas-area sheriff, beat incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak.

Also on Friday night, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona took down GOP challenger Blake Masters, bringing the race for control of Congress’ upper chamber to a dead heat.

At the same time, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada pulled closer to Republican Adam Laxalt. With most of the uncounted mail-in ballots coming from the state’s Democratic-leaning metropolitan regions, Cortez Masto is within striking distance of winning the race. If that happens, her party would retain its razor-thing Senate majority.

Originally published at Commondreams.org.