ICYMI: McCarthy, Emmer Still Silent as QAnon Candidate Joins Far-Right Extremists in AZ-01 GOP Primary

QAnon leader Ron Watkins launched his campaign for Arizona’s first congressional district last week – and Kevin McCarthy and Tom Emmer still have yet to comment on the latest far-right candidate to join the AZ-01 GOP primary.

Vice News first reported Watkins’ intentions to run last week, highlighting his prominent ties with the far-right conspiracy group QAnon and the well-documented belief that Watkins has posted as ‘Q.’

The Arizona Republic confirmed Watkins’ candidacy on Friday in a bizarre new interview during which Watkins couldn’t recall when he lived in the state he’s hoping to represent.

See some of what Arizonans – and people across the country – are reading about the far-right conspiracy theorist’s bid for AZ-01:

Arizona Republic: Ron Watkins, running for Congress in Arizona, denies being Q, claims family ties to state

• Ron Watkins claimed generational ties to Arizona and again denied being the author of the Q writings that started the global QAnon phenomenon during an interview with The Arizona Republic on Friday about his announced run for Congress.

• Watkins, who earlier this year was living in Japan, said that he spent some of his childhood in Yuma, a southern Arizona city near the Mexico border, though he was fuzzy on what years those were.

• A documentary that aired on HBO in March, which included extensive interviews with Watkins that were filmed in Japan, all but concluded that Watkins was the author of the Q posts. But Watkins said he didn’t care about those perceptions.

• Watkins insisted on Friday that the election results were fraudulent. “We know that the election was stolen from President Trump,” he said. “People are upset about that.”

MSNBC: Hallie Jackson: QAnon figurehead announces run for Congress

Rolling Stone: QAnon Figure Ron Watkins Announces Plans to Run for Congress in Arizona

• Prominent QAnon figure Ron Watkins has announced his plans to run for Congress in Arizona via a dramatic video on Thursday. Earlier in the day he filed a “statement of interest” to run in Arizona’s first congressional district against Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran, an initial step to petition for signatures to appear on the ballot, as Vice reports.

• His apparent bid will make him the most prominent QAnon-related person to run for office in the United States, signifying how deep the far-right conspiracy-driven group has recently taken hold within the Republican party.

• Watkins was an administrator of the fringe message board 8kun where the anonymous leader Q posted, before he resigned on Election Day 2020. But after he stepped down, Watkins continued to actively promote voting fraud conspiracy theories on his Twitter account before he was banned from the platform following the January 6th insurrection. 

• Many believe Watkins himself was the anonymous poster known as Q, a theory pushed by a prominent HBO documentary series, Q: Into the Storm.

CBS News: QAnon promoter Ron Watkins is running for Congress in Arizona

• Ron Watkins, long-suspected of being “Q”, the mysterious figure behind the QAnon conspiracy theory and one of the leading purveyors of the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump, announced his candidacy for Congress in Arizona this week.

• While Watkins has repeatedly said on his channel that there “is no QAnon,” comments replying to his campaign announcement are flooding in with QAnon slogans and ideology. QAnon influencers use the phrase “There is no QAnon” to suggest that it’s a media construct, and that adherents disseminating “information” are nonviolent “patriots.”

• The National Republican Campaign Committee told CBS News that it does not get involved in primary elections.

Business Insider: Ron Watkins, the man widely rumored to have started the QAnon movement, said he is running for Congress

• Ron Watkins, the former 8chan administrator widely rumored to have seeded the QAnon conspiracy theory, has said that he intends to run for a congressional seat in Arizona. 

• In a video posted on his Telegram channel on Thursday, Watkins said that he had decided to “double down with God as my compass to take this fight to the swamp of Washington DC.”

• After quitting his role at 8chan last year, Watkins played a key role in stirring conspiracy theories of a vast plot to deprive Trump of victory in last year’s presidential election.

• He has more recently backed the partisan audit of votes in Arizona’s Maricopa County, that recently wound up concluding that Biden did win, in line with the official result in a verdict that disappointed many Trump supporters. 

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