On Sunday, control of the US House of Representatives was still up for grabs, with Republicans expected to retain a slim majority in the chamber but with many races undecided. But the results showed the state’s voters overwhelmingly rejected candidates seeking state office who denied the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory – a blow to Donald Trump, who had endorsed them and is expected to announce the his 2024 presidential bid next week. Recommended On Sunday Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, accused Trump of costing his party control of Congress. “It should have been a huge red [Republican] wave. . . Over 70 percent of people believed the country was headed in the wrong direction. And yet we still haven’t played,” Hogan, a Trump critic, told CNN’s State of the Union. “People who tried to redo the 2020 election and focused on conspiracy theories and talked about things voters didn’t care about were almost universally rejected. And I think it’s basically the third election in a row that Donald Trump has cost us the race,” Hogan said. Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, echoed Hogan’s concern. “There’s a sense of extremism that a lot of Republicans have been painted with — rightly or wrongly,” Sununu told ABC. “This was a rejection of that extremism.” Of the eight candidates running for secretary of state who denied the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, only two won their races: Chuck Gray in Wyoming, who ran unopposed, and Diego Morales in Idaho, who he backtracked on some of his pre-election positions of denial. of voting. All but one member of the US First Secretary of State coalition — a group of Republican candidates linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory who have denied the outcome of the 2020 election — lost to their Democratic rivals. Election naysayers are still hoping to secure the governor’s mansion in Arizona, where Trump ally Kari Lake is in a tight race with Democrat Katie Hobbs. But two other Trump allies – US Senate candidate Blake Masters and Jan. 6 rioter Mark Finchem, Republican secretary of state nominee and co-founder of the group America First – were defeated. On Saturday, Trump sought to cast doubt on the accuracy of polling in Arizona and Nevada, claiming without evidence on Truth Social, his social networking platform, that Democrats were “getting all kinds of votes” in the two states. The former president called for “immediate” new elections in Arizona. Finchem has refused to concede his race, while Lake has also not committed to conceding if she loses hers. Before the vote, Lake had said the only way she would lose the vote was if it was “rigged”. Not all Republicans reject Trump outright or blame him for the GOP’s worse-than-expected performance. But even some of Trump’s onetime allies have made subtle jabs at the former president, a sign that some Republican rivals may try to take on Trump in the primaries if he decides to run as expected. On Sunday, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, a Trump ally seen as a possible GOP presidential nominee, said the party does not have a “single leader” when asked if Trump should be considered its leader. Cotton said that while the midterm voting wasn’t “a total disappointment,” Republicans needed to do a better job sticking to the policy issues voters care about. “We need to focus on serious substantive achievements and issues,” Cotton said.
