President Donald Trump’s call to “nationalize” elections and continued false claims of fraud are defining races this year for offices that oversee the voting process in key battleground states.
Democratic candidates for secretary of state in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada have put Trump’s comments and recent actions by his administration — including lawsuits over state voter rolls and the recent FBI raid of an Atlanta-area election hub — front and center as part of a broader messaging effort focused on protecting elections.
And the Republicans vying to be these states’ top election officials have largely lined up behind Trump’s aggressive approach and unfounded assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Four years ago, with Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden still fresh, these normally low-profile secretary of state races garnered national attention, with Democrats arguing that Republicans would be in a position to interfere with the 2024 presidential election if they won.
Now, Democrats are updating their 2022 playbook and warning the stakes are even higher in these contests with Trump back in power.
“The bad guys are on the inside now,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who is up for re-election this November. “You’ve got various folks who are just flat-out lying about elections, including the president. Now, that hasn’t changed, but now they have high levels of power and high levels of visibility.”
Fontes’ sole Republican challenger is state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, who was on the alternative slate of presidential electors backing Trump in 2020, when Biden won Arizona. Kolodin was also part of efforts to file numerous lawsuits that sought to overturn the 2020 results in Arizona. He has not officially been endorsed by Trump, but on his campaign website he includes a quote from the president calling him “one hell of an attorney.”
Kolodin didn’t respond to questions from NBC News for this story.
In Georgia, Trump’s election obsession is at the forefront of the secretary of state race following the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at an election hub in Fulton County in search of records related to the 2020 election.
The race to succeed Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who rejected Trump’s plea to “find” more votes in Georgia after the 2020 election and is now running for governor — features lively primaries on both sides.
The Democratic race features Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett, who’s been an outspoken critic of Trump and his allies. Barrett made waves last year after refusing to approve two Republican nominees to the county board whom other Democrats had alleged were election deniers. Also running are Penny Brown Reynolds, a former TV judge who also served in the Biden administration, and Adrian Consonery, a voting rights activist.
The Republican primary is a four-way race, led by Gabriel Sterling — the chief operating officer in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, who emerged as a public face of the harassment and threats that election officials faced following Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — and Vernon Jones, a Trump ally who has consistently backed the president’s false voting claims.
In a brief interview with NBC News, Sterling said his views on protecting elections from Trump, or from anyone else at the federal level, could be summarized in a series of recent posts on X.
“There should never be a Federal takeover of our elections. I will never allow this, regardless of the party of the Administration in power,” he wrote. “If you want a Secretary of State that will follow the law, uphold the Constitution, defend the right of citizens to vote, and oppose a federal takeover, regardless of party, I’m your candidate.”
In an interview with NBC News, Jones repeatedly declined to answer whether he agreed with Trump’s comments about wanting to “nationalize” elections. The Constitution gives states the authority to administer and conduct elections.
“My concern is Georgia’s voters. To make sure Georgia voters receive a free, fair and transparent election,” Jones said.
Asked how he viewed the raid in Fulton County, Jones replied, “If your house is clean, why would you be concerned about somebody coming inside of it, if it’s clean?”
“There are too many questions, and there’s an effort by many to hide or to cover up what the facts are,” added Jones, a former Democratic state legislator who switched parties in 2021. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022 as a Republican, calling himself “the Black Donald Trump” during the campaign. He’d previously launched a run for governor that year, basing most of his campaign message on the Georgia election being stolen, before quitting to run for Congress.
