Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon Supporter, Wins House Primary in Georgia / QAnon supporter denounced for racism wins Georgia Republican primary

 

Marjorie Taylor Greene, center, with supporters at an event in Rome, Ga., on Tuesday night. She beat a Republican who is no less conservative or pro-Trump, but does not support QAnon.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon Supporter, Wins House Primary in Georgia

 

Ms. Greene’s victory came as six states were holding elections on Tuesday, with Ilhan Omar holding off a well-funded primary challenge in Minnesota.

“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.”

 

Matthew RosenbergAstead W. HerndonNick Corasaniti

By Matthew Rosenberg, Astead W. Herndon and Nick Corasaniti

Published Aug. 11, 2020

Updated Aug. 12, 2020, 12:37 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/us/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-qanon-georgia-primary.html

 

Conspiracy theorists won a major victory on Tuesday as a Republican supporter of the convoluted pro-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 F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorism threat, came as six states held primary and runoff elections on Tuesday.

 

Those races included a well-funded Democratic primary challenge to Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who emerged victorious to secure a clean sweep of re-election fights for the group of first-term Democratic congresswomen of color 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 on 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, though 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 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 on 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 D.C. swamp is against me. And the lying fake news media hates my guts. It’s a badge of honor. 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.”

 

“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. Representative 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 Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a high-profile Republican lawmaker and a favorite 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, though 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 Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and establishment leaders like 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 organized people will always beat organized 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 neighborhood 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!”

 

Britt D’Arezzo, 22, said national perceptions of Ms. Omar didn’t account for her retail politics and her visibility at home.

 

“They don’t know her local activism,” Ms. D’Arezzo said. “They don’t see her walking around and just hanging out on corners. They don’t see the way she connects with us.”

 

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.

 

In Georgia, the scale of the elections was much smaller than during the chaotic June primary, with roughly 90 of the state’s 159 counties holding elections on Tuesday.

 

There were no grueling lines as in June, but election security activists worried that the low turnout had masked some glitches, largely with the state’s electronic poll books and check-in system.

 

“The severity of those problems that we saw, while they were not huge in quantity because of the low level of people voting,” said Marilyn Marks, the executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, an elections watchdog group in Georgia, “they clearly are going to create serious problems in November.”

QAnon supporter denounced for racism wins Georgia Republican primary

 

Videos have shown congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene voicing racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic views

 

Guardian staff and agencies

Wed 12 Aug 2020 03.43 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/11/georgia-republican-primary-marjorie-taylor-greene

 

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a businesswoman who has expressed racist views and support for the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon, has won the Republican nomination for Georgia’s 14th congressional district.

 

Greene beat the neurosurgeon John Cowan in a primary runoff for the open seat on Tuesday in the deep-red district in north-west Georgia, despite several Republican officials denouncing her campaign after videos surfaced in which she expressed racist, antisemitic and anti-Muslim views.

 

She has amassed tens of thousands of followers on social media, where she often posts videos of herself speaking directly to the camera. Those videos have helped propel her popularity with her base, while also drawing strong condemnation from some future would-be colleagues in Congress.

 

In a series of videos unearthed just after Greene placed first in the initial 9 June Republican primary, she complains of an “Islamic invasion” into government offices, claims Black and Hispanic men are held back by “gangs and dealing drugs”, and pushes an antisemitic conspiracy theory that the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who is Jewish, collaborated with the Nazis.

 

Several high-profile Republicans then spoke out against her. The House minority whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, quickly threw his support behind Cowan, while Representative Jody Hice of Georgia rescinded an endorsement of Greene.

 

Greene addressed criticism of her comments on Twitter. “The Fake News Media, the DC Swamp, and their radical leftist allies see me as a very serious threat. I will not let them whip me into submission,” she said, without distancing herself from her earlier remarks.

 

Greene also is part of a growing list of candidates who have expressed support for QAnon, the far-right US conspiracy theory popular among some supporters of Donald Trump. She is regarded as one of the QAnon supporters with the best chance of winning in November.

 

She has positioned herself as a staunch Trump supporter and emphasizes a strongly pro-gun, pro-border wall and anti-abortion message. She has also connected with voters through an intensive effort to travel the district and meet people on the ground.

 

Larry Silker, a 72-year-old retiree, cast a ballot for Greene last week at an early voting location in Dallas, Georgia.

 

“She seems to be a go-getter, you know. She’s out seeing everybody that she can, and I think that’s nice,” Silker said.

 

Asked whether he had seen criticism of Greene’s remarks, Silker said: “Well yeah, you know, you see it. But do you put faith in it? You just have to weigh it out.”

 

The district stretches from the outskirts of metro Atlanta to the largely rural north-west corner of the state. Greene will face the Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal in November. The Republican representative Tom Graves, who did not seek re-election, last won the seat with over 76% of the vote in 2018.

 

The Associated Press contributed to this report