ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. — When thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Washington on Jan. 6 for the Stop the Steal rally that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol, one of them was a pastor and substitute teacher from Elizabethtown, Pa., named Stephen Lindemuth.Mr. Lindemuth had traveled with a religious group from Elizabethtown to join in protesting the certification of Joseph R. Biden’s victory. In a Facebook post three days later, he complained that “Media coverage has focused solely on the negative aspect of the day’s events,” and said he had been in Washington simply “standing for the truth to be heard.”Shortly after, he declared his candidacy for judge of elections, a local Pennsylvania office that administers polling on Election Day, in the local jurisdiction of Mount Joy Township.Mr. Lindemuth’s victory in November in this conservative rural community is a milestone of sorts in American politics: the arrival of the first class of political activists who, galvanized by Donald J. Trump’s false claim of a stolen election in 2020, have begun seeking offices supervising the election systems that they believe robbed Mr. Trump of a second term. According to a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, more than 60 percent of Republicans now believe the 2020 election was stolen.This belief has informed a wave of mobilization at both grass-roots and elite levels in the party with an eye to future elections. In races for state and county-level offices with direct oversight of elections, Republican candidates coming out of the Stop the Steal movement are running competitive campaigns, in which they enjoy a first-mover advantage in electoral contests that few partisans from either party thought much about before last November.And legislation that state lawmakers have passed or tried to pass this year in a number of states would assert more control over election systems and results by partisan offices that Republicans already decisively control.“This is a five-alarm fire,” said Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, who presided over her state’s Trump-contested election in 2020 and may face a Trump-backed challenger next year. “If people in general, leaders and citizens, aren’t taking this as the most important issue of our time and acting accordingly, then we may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in ’24.”In some areas, new political battlefields are opening up where none existed before.Until this year, races for administrative positions like judge of elections were noncompetitive to the point of being more or less volunteer opportunities. Candidates ran unopposed, or sometimes not at all: The seat that Mr. Lindemuth ran for had been technically unoccupied before his election, filled by appointment by the County Board of Elections.“There’s a lot of apathy here,” said Lisa Sargen Heilner, a former Republican committeewoman in Mount Joy Township, who resigned her post shortly after local Republicans endorsed Mr. Lindemuth and his wife, Danielle, in a concurrent school board election in which they both won seats. “I just kind of wanted to disassociate myself from them,” Mrs. Heilner said.After Mr. Lindemuth won the G.O.P. primary for judge of elections in the spring, local Democrats struggled to find a candidate until Mike Corradino, an academic dean at a local community college, volunteered. “Like a lot of people, it troubles me what happened on Jan. 6,” Mr. Corradino said. He lost with 268 votes to Mr. Lindemuth’s 415.ImageMr. Lindemuth’s victory is one of the first among a class of political activists who have begun seeking offices supervising the election systems that they believe robbed Mr. Trump of a second term.Credit...Tim Stuhldreher/ One United LancasterKristy Moore, the local Democratic committeewoman and a seventh-grade English teacher who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. Lindemuth in the school board race, said she had tried to attract the attention of county and state Democrats, but to no avail.“I’m not sure what the Democratic Party was worried about, but it didn’t feel like they were worried about school board and judge of elections races — all of these little positions,” she said.Mr. Lindemuth, whose phone was answered by a woman who refused to identify herself but declined to comment on his behalf, told The Atlantic in November that he saw the job as a public service. “It really has little to do with election results,” he said. “It’s more about filling in the gaps for the community.”But Mrs. Heilner said that Mr. Lindemuth was unknown in local Republican circles before he announced his candidacy, and Mr. Corradino expressed concern about his Jan. 6 involvement. “I hope that once he sees the responsibilities and the training, that would be a moderating influence,” Mr. Corradino said.“I’mBy: Charles Homans
Title: In Bid for Control of Elections, Trump Loyalists Face Few Obstacles
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2021/12/11/us/politics/trust-in-elections-trump-democracy.html
Published Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2021 10:00:11 +0000
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