MADISON, Wisconsin. First, the Wisconsin Republicans. ordered an audit of the 2020 elections. Then they passed a number of new restrictions on the vote. And in June they authorized the only special investigation in the country in 2020.
Now, more than 15 months after former President Donald Trump lost the state by 20,682 votesAn increasingly active part of the Republican Party is backing a new scheme: reversing the confirmation of the 2020 presidential election results in the hope of restoring Trump to the White House.
Wisconsin is closer to the next federal election than it was to the last, but Republican efforts to reverse the election here are gaining momentum, not fading—and spiraling further from reality. The latest twist, fueled by Mr. Trump, bogus legal theories and a new gubernatorial candidate, is creating havoc in the Republican Party and threatening to undermine its drive to win this year’s gubernatorial and Senate elections.
The situation in Wisconsin may be the clearest example of Republican leaders struggling to rally their party, with many of its most vocal voters simply unable to come to terms with the reality of losing Mr. Trump.
In Wisconsin, Robin Vos, the Speaker of the Assembly, who allowed vague theories about fraud to circulate unhindered, now struggles to curb them. Even Mr. Vos’s cautious attempts have sharply turned opponents of the election against him.
“It’s a real problem,” said Timothy Ramtun, the Republican state representative who has turned his bid to cancel the election into a nascent campaign for governor. Mr. Ramthun argued that if the Wisconsin Legislature revokes the approval of the results and annuls 10 state electoral votes — an action that has no basis in state or federal law — it could spark a movement that would remove President Biden from office.
“We don’t wear tinfoil hats,” he said. “We are not marginalized.”
While support for the decertification campaign is hard to measure, it won’t take long to make an impact in a state where elections are routinely narrowly decided. Mr. Ramtun is drawing crowds, and his campaign has already sparked controversy among Republicans over false allegations of fraud in 2020. October Marquette University School of Law Poll in Milwaukee.
“That’s just not what the Republican Party needs right now,” Rob Swearingen said. Republican state representative from conservative Northwood. “We shouldn’t quarrel among ourselves over what happened, you know, a year and a half ago.”
Wisconsin has the most active dessertification effort in the country. In Arizona Republican state legislator running for Secretary of Statealong with congressional candidates called for the state’s electoral votes to be withdrawn. In September, Mr Trump wrote a letter to the Georgian authorities asking them to cancel Mr. Biden’s victory there, but there was no organized effort.
In Wisconsin, the move to decertify has turned Republican politics on its head. After more than a decade of Republican leaders keeping pace with their base, the party is plagued by infighting and it is the Democrats who are backing Gov. Tony Evers, who is running for a second term in November.
“Now the Republicans are arguing about whether we want democracy or not,” Mr. Evers said in an interview Friday.
Mr. Ramthun, a 64-year-old MP who lives in a village of 2,000 an hour northwest of Milwaukee, has suddenly become a folk hero in Trump’s wing in his drive to renounce certification. Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, invited Mr. Ramtan to his podcast. At parties he flaunts 72 page presentation in which he falsely claims that legislators have the power to declare Wisconsin’s election results invalid and withdraw the state’s electoral votes.
Mr. Ramtun received more applause at local Republican caucus than leading gubernatorial candidates, and last weekend he joined the race himselfannouncing his candidacy at the start of the campaign, where he was introduced by Mike Lindell, chief executive of MyPillow, which funded numerous attempts to undermine and overthrow elections 2020.
Mr. Trump delivered public words of support.
“Who in Wisconsin is leading the fight to decertify these fraudulent elections?” the former president said in a statement.
Soon, the state’s leading Republicans reacted to Mr. Ramtun’s campaign plots. A few days later, both of his Republican rivals for governor unveiled new plans to strengthen guerrilla control elections in Wisconsin.
During a radio appearance Thursday, former Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Clifish, party establishment preferred candidate, refused to acknowledge that Mr. Biden won the 2020 election – what she had already conceded last September. Ms. Klefish declined to be interviewed.
However, Mr. Ramthun maintains that the energy of the grassroots is on his side. On Tuesday, he gathered about 250 people for a two-hour rally in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol.
Terry Brand, chairman of the Republican Party in rural Langlade County, chartered a bus for two dozen people for a three-hour trip. Mr. Brand oversaw the county’s first GOP conviction of Mr. Vos in January, calling for the leader’s resignation for blocking an effort to revoke the certificate. At the rally, Mr. Brand stood with a sign “Quit Vos.”
“People foaming at the mouth over this issue,” he said, listening intently as the speakers offered both conspiracy theories and assurances from the audience that they were of sound mind.
“You’re not crazy,” Yanel Brandtjen, chairman of the Assembly’s electoral committee, told the crowd.
One speaker connected Mr. Vos through college roommate and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to false claims circulating in right-wing media that the Hillary Clinton campaign was spying on Mr. Trump. The other was introduced under a pseudonym and then immediately declared herself candidate for lieutenant governor.
The rally ended with the words of Harry Waite, organizer of a conservative group in Racine County called HOT governmentan abbreviation for honest, open and transparent.
“I want to remind everyone,” said Mr. Waite, “that yesterday’s conspiracies can be today’s reality.”
Mr. Ramtun says he has questioned the outcome of every presidential election in Wisconsin. since 1996. (He makes no exception for the only Republican victory in that period: Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016.) He promised to consider ending the use of voting machines and “independent full forensic physical cyber-auditthe 2020 elections as well as the 2022 elections, no matter how they turn out.
Mr. Ramthun adopted the biblical slogan “Let there be light,” a reference to his claim that Mr. Vos is hiding the truth from voters. If Wisconsin withdraws its electoral votes, Mr. Ramthun said, other states may follow suit.
(American presidents can only be removed from office by impeachment or cabinet vote.)
It has all become too much for Mr. Vos, who until the Trump era was a die-hard Republican grunt focused on taxes, spending and labor laws.
Mr. Vos often appeased his party’s campaign conspirators, expressing their own doubts about who really won in Wisconsin calling for felony indictment against Wisconsin’s top election organizers and the authorization of the 2020 election investigation, which is still ongoing.
Now, even as he draws the line for refusing certification, Mr. Vos tries to calm his base and beg for patience. This week, he announced that the Assembly plans to vote on a new package of bills. (Mr Evers said in an interview Friday that he would veto any new restrictions.)
“It’s just a matter of misdirected anger,” he said of the criticism he faced. “They have already assumed that the Democrats are hopeless, and now they are focused on those of us who are trying to get to the bottom of the truth, hoping that we will do more.”
Other Republicans in the state are also walking the political tightrope – refusing to acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory while avoiding taking a stand on Mr. Ramtun’s efforts to revoke the certificate.
“There may be evidence, other people are working on it,” said Ron Tasler, a member of the Assembly’s selection committee. “It’s too early to be sure, but maybe we’ll try it later.”
State Senator Kathy Bernier is the only one of Wisconsin’s 82 Republican lawmakers to release a statement that Mr. Trump lost the state fairly, without widespread fraud.
Ms. Bernier, chair of the State Senate Elections Committee, asked lawyers in the Wisconsin Legislature in November to weigh the legality of the cancellation of the election results, which they said was impossible. In December, she called for the end to the Assembly Inquiry in 2020. Three weeks later she announced she will not seek re-election this year.
“I have no explanation why lawmakers want to develop voter fraud conspiracy theories that have not been proven,” Ms Bernier said in an interview. “They shouldn’t be doing this. This is dangerous for our democratic republic. They need to take a step back and only talk about what they know, understand and can do. And besides that, they have to zip it up.”
Kitty Bennett contributed to the study.