Conspiracy theorists won a major victory Tuesday as a Republican supporter of the convoluted pro-Donald Trump movement QAnon triumphed in her House primary runoff election in Georgia, all but ensuring that she will represent a deep-red district in Congress.
The ascension of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who embraces a conspiracy theory that the FBI has labeled a potential domestic terrorism threat, came as six states held primary and runoff elections Tuesday.
Those races included a well-funded Democratic primary challenge to Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who emerged victorious to secure a clean sweep of reelection fights for the group of first-term Democratic congresswomen of colour known as the Squad.
The voting unfolded as elections officials across the country continue to grapple with the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, using primaries as lower-turnout dry runs for the November general election.
The electoral contests Tuesday in Wisconsin and Georgia bore particular scrutiny after voting meltdowns in each state earlier this year. The balloting in both places appeared to be unfolding more smoothly this time, although there were worries about the number of absentee ballots still in the mail in Wisconsin.
In Georgia, Ms Greene defeated John Cowan, a neurosurgeon who is no less conservative or pro-Trump, according to The Associated Press, holding a lead of roughly 15 percentage points early Wednesday.
The result is likely to unsettle mainstream Republicans, who have sought to publicly distance themselves from QAnon supporters running for congressional office this cycle even as they quietly support some of them.
Now, with Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, one of the most Republican in the country, likely to vote red in November, Ms Greene is all but assured of getting the chance to put into action her talk of rooting out an imagined deep-state cabal of pedophile Satanists who are trying to take down President Donald Trump.
QAnon, a conspiracy theory that has attracted a fervent following since it emerged from the troll-infested fringes of the internet nearly three years ago, has already inspired real-world violence, including the killing of a mob boss.
Its supporters are slowly becoming a political force that some Republicans feel they cannot afford to alienate, even as the party struggles to distance itself from racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
More than a dozen candidates who have expressed some degree of support for QAnon are running for Congress as Republicans, their path cleared by Mr Trump’s own espousal of conspiracy theories.
Most are going to lose. But a few, Ms Greene foremost among them, have managed to win.
Declaring victory Tuesday night, she said she was “just as fed up with what I’ve seen from spineless Republicans” as she was with Democrats.
“The Republican establishment was against me,” Ms Greene said. “The DC swamp is against me. And the lying fake news media hates my guts. It’s a badge of honour. It’s not about me winning. This is a referendum on every single one of us, on our beliefs.”
During his campaign, Mr Cowan had adopted a slogan that summed up the predicament that Ms Greene posed for Republicans: “All of the conservative, none of the embarrassment.”
US President Donald Trump smiles at Mount Rushmore National Memorial on 3 July, 2020. Source: AP
“She is not conservative — she’s crazy,” Mr Cowan told Politico before the runoff. “She deserves a YouTube channel, not a seat in Congress. She’s a circus act.”
Mr Cowan was not alone in his assessment of Ms Greene, who runs a construction company with her husband. She earned a rebuke from Republican congressional leaders this year after Facebook videos showed her making offensive remarks about Black people, Jews and Muslims.
Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House minority whip, publicly campaigned for Mr Cowan and helped him raise money.
The Republican Party, though, was hardly uniform in its opposition to Ms Greene’s candidacy.
The leadership officially remained neutral, and Mr Trump’s only comment on the race came in the form of a congratulatory tweet after her strong showing in the first-round primary in June, when she nearly doubled Mr Cowan’s vote total.
Ms Greene raised thousands of dollars from Jim Jordan of Ohio, a high-profile Republican lawmaker and a favourite of the president, and a political action committee with which he is associated, the House Freedom Fund.
She also secured modest four-figure donations from political action committees associated with Mark Meadows, a former North Carolina representative who is now Mr Trump’s chief of staff, and Koch Industries, a financial mainstay of the Republican Party.
The Koch PAC said that it had requested a refund of its donation in June, although it was not clear whether the money was returned.
In Minnesota, Democrats had rallied to Ms Omar’s aid in recent weeks, making bedfellows of progressives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and establishment leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Leading up to the primary, Ms Omar’s unabashed embrace of left-wing politics had won her loyal followers in Minnesota and across the country. She had, however, also become a lightning rod for conservatives and has faced criticism from some Democrats, particularly after several episodes in 2019 in which she was accused of making anti-Semitic remarks.
But in the end voters rewarded her representation of the district and her calls for far-reaching progressive change.
“In Minnesota, we know that organised people will always beat organised money,” Ms Omar wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night. “Tonight, our movement didn’t just win. We earned a mandate for change. Despite outside efforts to defeat us, we once again broke turnout records. Despite the attacks, our support has only grown.”
At a Tuesday evening campaign event in Dinkytown, a Minneapolis neighbourhood where Ms Omar likes to spend election nights talking to voters, young supporters gathered as people in cars drove past yelling “Ilhan!” and “We love you!”.
In Wisconsin, where worries have persisted over the ability to hold successful virus-era elections since a voting fiasco in April, there were no hourslong, mask-dotted lines wrapping around Milwaukee city blocks.
The city opened more than 150 polling locations, compared with just six in April, and other municipalities were able to open nearly all of their normal poll sites. National Guard troops dressed in plainclothes filled in for poll workers who didn’t show up to work.
But one looming concern was the large number of absentee ballots in the mail.
While the April primary eventually settled on a “postmarked by” deadline for absentee ballots, meaning any ballot put in the mail by Election Day would count, no such relief was provided for Tuesday’s election; ballots had to be in clerk’s offices by the time polls closed.
