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CalMatters: “The refusal to commit by most GOP congressional candidates comes as Trump and his allies are already casting doubt on the outcome of the November election, stoking fear among election officials of disruptions and violence.”
In 2021, the vast majority of California House Republicans backed Trump’s Big Lie and refused to certify the 2020 presidential election results.
This conspiratorial pattern of election denialism appears poised to continue among the state’s GOP delegation, with 2/3 refusing to pledge that they’d certify this election’s results, according to a new report from CalMatters.
Even the most vulnerable House Republicans in California refuse to risk angering their party bosses by honoring the constitution, with Kevin Kiley, David Valadao, Mike Garcia, Michelle Steel, and even CA-49 candidate Matt Gunderson all refusing to answer whether they’d certify the election this November.
Their silence marks them as complicit as Donald Trump continues casting doubt on the integrity of the upcoming election, “stoking fear among election officials of disruptions and violence.”
DCCC Spokesperson Dan Gottlieb:
“Vulnerable House Republicans in California may be relying on the silent treatment, but that doesn’t make them any less complicit in the GOP’s continued attempts to delegitimize our electoral process with conspiracies and extremist lies. Voters across the state are fed up with their continued attempts to deny the votes of Californians.”
CalMatters: Most California Republicans in Congress won’t commit to certifying the 2024 presidential election
Yue Stella Yu and Jenna Peterson | October 24, 2024
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In January 2021, seven of the 11 California Republicans in Congress refused to certify the 2020 presidential election results, boosting former President Donald Trump’s false claim that he lost in a rigged vote.
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Now, as Trump attempts a return to the White House, only a third of California’s Republican U.S. representatives have pledged to certify the results this November.
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Only four of the 12 GOP incumbents — who are all seeking another term — have promised to uphold the election results. Of the three GOP challengers in California’s most competitive districts, two — Scott Baugh in Orange County and Kevin Lincoln in the Central Valley — made the same pledge in response to a CalMatters inquiry. And in California’s U.S. Senate race, GOP candidate Steve Garvey made the commitment in February.
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The refusal to commit by most GOP congressional candidates comes as Trump and his allies are already casting doubt on the outcome of the November election, stoking fear among election officials of disruptions and violence. Trump has peddled unsubstantiated claims about widespread voting by non-citizens, argued that Vice President Kamala Harris will only win if the Democrats cheat and questioned the constitutionality of Democrats replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.
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The vote by Congress to count all electoral votes that are already certified by each state is the final step in electing a president. Usually a formality, it was anything but after Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden.
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On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Early the next morning, 147 Republican members of Congress voted to object to the counting of Electoral College votes from either Arizona or Pennsylvania, or both.
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All 44 California Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate at the time voted to certify the election.
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In 2022, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act, which made it more difficult for Congress to object to election results and clarified the vote counting process. All California Republican incumbents who were in office at the time voted against it.
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But even with that new guardrail, political experts say efforts to overturn the election are to be expected now. That’s a stark departure from a decade ago, said Kim Nalder, political science professor at California State University in Sacramento.
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“It’s really kind of horrifying that we’ve normalized this abnormal sort of situation,” she said. “We can’t survive with this level of distrust in our basic institutions, and I don’t know what will give to change that, but something has to.”
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Veteran lobbyist Chris Micheli said the presidential election results could be challenged again, partly because of how close polls say the race is in seven battleground states. Both Harris and Trump are preparing legal teams in the case of a challenge.
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“It’s definitely a dark period of American history, both what transpired on Jan. 6, but also earlier that prior December, when members of Congress voted against certifying the election of the clear victor in the presidential election,” Micheli said. “Those votes raised the ire of a lot of voters, particularly in California.”
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Reps. David Valadao and Michelle Steel missed the vote in 2021. Steel said she had tested positive for COVID-19, while Valadao had not been sworn in yet because he also tested positive. However, Valadao said on social media he would have voted to certify the election.
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The three incumbents who took office in 2023 will face that decision for the first time if they win re-election. But not everyone is answering the question: Rep. John Duarte — a Modesto farmer facing a fierce challenge from Democrat Adam Gray — is the only one to state his position publicly, telling The Sacramento Bee he would vote to certify the presidential election. (Duarte did not respond to a CalMatters inquiry.)
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Reps. Kevin Kiley [..] Mike Garcia, as well as […] Valadao, also did not respond to CalMatters inquiries. Matt Gunderson, a candidate for the toss-up 49th District in San Diego County, did not respond to CalMatters.
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Republicans are reluctant to speak publicly about the issue because they’re concerned about losing votes from Trump supporters, strategists say.
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For Republicans running in swing districts, the answer to whether they will uphold the election outcome depends on which voters they want to court, Nalder said.
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“Coming out strongly in support of certification would make sense if the goal was to recruit some moderate voters or some voters from the other party in these close races,” she said. “But if the strategy is more about turnouts amongst their base … it probably makes sense to equivocate.”
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For GOP members of Congress in safe Republican districts, however, the calculation is more about their “future in the party,” Nalder said.
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“Assuming Trump wins, they will need to have loyalty exhibited within the party, and so having committed beforehand to something that the party maybe goes against later would not be helpful for their political career,” she said.
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