Conservative figures who have echoed former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election and endorsed recent voting restrictions are expressing discontent with President Joe Biden’s renewed advocacy for federal voting rights legislation.
Following Biden’s call for altering filibuster rules to counter Republican opposition to voting rights bills, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee reached out to religious-right supporters via email, urging them to commit to My Faith Votes, a Christian-right voter mobilization group where he is the honorary chairman.
Huckabee described the push to eliminate the filibuster and federalize elections as “a blatant attempt to abuse power.” He emphasized the importance of rallying “an army of Christian voters for 2022” and leveraging grassroots efforts to prevent the Senate from committing what he termed “a very dangerous mistake.” My Faith Votes has previously supported Republican voter suppression initiatives under the guise of “election integrity.”
Post-2020 election, Huckabee propagated Trump’s baseless fraud allegations. On November 5, 2020, he posted a blog entry titled “The Art of the Steal,” promoting several conspiracy theories. As My Faith Votes prepared for Georgia’s Senate runoff races, Huckabee asserted there were unresolved questions about the November 3 election results in Georgia and continued to question Biden’s victory.
Similarly, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, who supported Trump’s false victory claims, criticized Biden and Senate leaders’ efforts as a “federal takeover of elections,” suggesting it could lead to a one-party system. Post-2020 election, Perkins had urged legislators in states won by Biden to appoint pro-Trump electors.
Gary Bauer, a former Reagan administration official and religious-right activist, who had also claimed Trump was the “lawful winner,” termed the notion of minority disenfranchisement as a “hoax” in his daily newsletter.
FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon, in a Wednesday email, accused Democrats of wanting to “cheat” and “RIG our entire election system in their favor.” FreedomWorks had assisted in organizing right-wing protests during the 2020 vote count.
