Vice President Harris called it a “very scary situation” that so many GOP candidates running to oversee state and local elections in their states have questioned or pushed baseless claims about the 2020 election.
“There are 11 candidates in 11 states running for secretary of state, which is a position that means you’re running elections, who are election deniers. It’s a very scary situation in that regard,” Harris said in an interview on “The Morning News with Vineeta Sawkar,” that aired on Thursday.
“But I’m going to tell you, and I believe this firmly, our democracy will be as strong as our willingness to fight for it. And that means the people being engaged, it means voting, it means saying not on my watch are we going to deteriorate but instead we are going to fight for freedom and integrity.”
A number of Republican candidates running for statewide offices, including the governors’ mansion and secretary of state, have cast doubt or falsely claimed that the 2020 election was fraudulent or rigged, despite the fact that audits and investigations in battleground states have indicated there was no major fraud.
Some of those GOP candidates have included gubernatorial nominees Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Arizona. They’ve also included secretary of state candidates such as Jim Marchant in Nevada, Mark Finchem in Arizona and Kristina Karamo in Michigan.
While some surveys have shown these candidates trailing their Democratic counterparts, other candidates including Marchant and Lake have polled more competitively or even been leading in their respective races.
“People around the world are watching us because, you know, when you’re a role model, people watch what you do to see if it matches up to what you say,” Harris said during her interview. “And so it’s incumbent on us, the American people, to fulfill our promise as established by our founding fathers and mothers to hold this together. It is as fragile or as strong as our willingness to fight for it.”
