Jim Marchant, one of the organisers of a Trump-inspired slate of candidates called “America First” who continue to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election, won the Republican nomination for secretary of state in Nevada, a key political battleground, with relative ease. Marchant is one of the candidates on the “America First” slate.
Mr. Marchant, who was also a member of Nevada’s alternate slate of pro-Trump electors seeking to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the state in 2020, has stated that had he been in office, he would have refused to certify that year’s election. This is despite the fact that Mr. Marchant was also a member of Nevada’s alternate slate.
In his campaign to become the top election official in Nevada, he has proposed decertifying Dominion voting machines and pushing for the hand counting of paper ballots. This is something that experts say would bring significant delays and chaos to the voting process. In his campaign, he is trying to become the top election official in Nevada.
In the general election, he will face Democratic lawyer Cisco Aguilar, who formerly worked for former Senator Harry Reid. This contest will be keenly followed and the result may depend on how Senator Catherine Cortez Masto does in her effort to retain her seat. The outcomes of lower-profile elections, such as those for the post of secretary of state, have often, though not always, been highly correlated with those in higher-profile contests.
Mr. Marchant, who had previously served in the state legislature, made an unsuccessful bid for Congress in the year 2020. But rather than concede a race that he lost by more than 16,000 votes, which is approximately 5 percentage points, he blamed fraud for his loss and filed a lawsuit that echoed many debunked claims about the 2020 election that Republicans put forward elsewhere. Specifically, he claimed that Democrats were planning to steal the election from Republicans.
Even though the lawsuit and the attempt to have a new election in Clark County, which encompasses Las Vegas, were ultimately unsuccessful, Mr. Marchant continued to be an outspoken critic of the results of the 2020 election.
His efforts quickly generated material for a campaign for the position of secretary of state. Mr. Marchant said that he had been contacted by associates of former President Donald J. Trump who pushed him to compete for secretary of state in an interview he gave to The New York Times earlier this year. The interview took place in 2018.
Mr. Marchant was instrumental in the formation of the “America First” slate of candidates for secretary of state and other posts not long after he made the announcement that he would be running for government.
Mark Finchem, a candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, has led efforts to decertify the 2020 election. Kristina Karamo, a likely Republican nominee for secretary of state in Michigan, has pushed the fiction that voting machines are “flipping” votes for Mr. Biden, among other falsehoods. Initially, the roster included both of these individuals.
The group, which has since grown to include more than a dozen candidates, was buoyed by the financial support of prominent Republican donors who have aligned themselves with the movement to discredit the 2020 election. These prominent Republican donors include Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow, and Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com, amongst others. In addition, the group was buoyed by the support of prominent Democratic donors who have aligned themselves with the movement to discredit the 2020 election.
The “America First” slate has recently hosted meetings and events at which notable believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory have been featured, and the candidates have often gone to other states to speak at rallies centred on the 2020 election.
