Audrey Trujillo, the lone Republican hopeful from New Mexico running for secretary of state, is just one of the latest 2020 election-fraud conspiracists to win a GOP nomination.
The New York Times reports that during a March interview on Facebook, Trujillo posited that voting systems in the U.S. are “no better than any other communist country, like Venezuela, or any of these other states where our elections are being manipulated.” Trujillo believes that President Joe Biden’s win in 2020 was a “coup.”
Trujillo’s “Big Lie” rhetoric isn’t the only scary aspect of her overseeing elections in the state if elected; she’s also made racist and xenophobic comments about Jews and Mexicans on Twitter.
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In May, the candidate claimed to the Albuquerque Journal that the tweets were posted by Antifa activists who’d created fake accounts. But after the outlet confirmed the tweets belonged to her account, she pivoted to having been hacked and said she’d didn’t intend the tweets to be racist.
"If it was tweeted by me—which I said I don't recall these tweets—that's not something I would say, in terms of anything with [anti-]Jewish or racist intent at all," Trujillo said. She further explained that she’s of Latino and Jewish heritage, adding: “I’m not racist… Honestly, I hate that stuff.
After viewing her tweets, Scott Levin, the Mountain State’s regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Albuquerque Journal that sentiments and graphics like those Trujillo shared “sort of normalizes hate against Jews…. It's important for our leaders to all speak against these types of myths and conspiracies, not promote them.”
According to The Washington Post, Trujillo is among a throng of conspiracist candidates hawking theories about former President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘stolen’ election.
David Levine, an elections integrity fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, told the Post’s Joseph Marks, “If they’re continuing to maintain the 2020 election was stolen or rigged after everything we’ve seen from intelligence agencies and election officials, it’s fair to ask if they’d be willing to bend or break the rules when they’re overseeing elections.”
In Michigan, Kristina Karamo is the Republican nominee for secretary of state. She’s received the endorsement of Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s top GOP gubernatorial candidate and infamous election denier. Mastriano has said if elected, he’d demand all the state’s residents re-register to vote—a move elections experts say defies federal law.
Pennsylvania’s governor has the power to appoint the state’s secretary of state. That role serves as chief elections officer and must approve its results.
Clifford Levine, a Democratic election lawyer in Pennsylvania, told the Post that “the biggest risk is a secretary of state saying, ‘I’m not going to certify the election, despite what the court says and despite what the evidence shows, because I’m concerned about suspicions.’ … You would start to have a breakdown in the legal system and the whole process.”
In Wisconsin, Republican businessman Jay Schroeder, an extremist 2020 election denier, is running for secretary of state. He’s hoping to restore the power of overseeing elections to the position.
“From its founding in 1848 until the 1970s, the Secretary of State oversaw elections. I seek to return the duties and reclaim honest and fair elections. The days of rigging elections for fraud are over,” Schroeder wrote in a statement.