A number of representatives who voted against certifying President Biden’s 2020 electoral victory still serve in the U.S. House and are running for reelection in 2024. One potential Republican challenger to a Senate seat held by Democrats has also made public comments casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.
- Eric Hovde | Senate
Eric Hovde easily won the August GOP primary and is now challenging incumbent Senator Tammy Baldwin (D). Since the 2020 election, he has spread the same baseless and discredited allegations as the right-wing film 2,000 Mules, claiming ballot drop boxes will have to be watched 24-hours a day this election to keep people from “jamming fake ballots.” Hovde has also alleged that the state’s nursing homes engaged in voting fraud. Speaking on Fox News in April 2024, he said that during the 2020 presidential election Wisconsin “had nursing homes where the sheriff of Racine investigated, where you had 100 percent voting.” Appearing on the Guy Benson Show a couple of weeks later, he elaborated: “If you’re in a nursing home, you only have a five-, six-month life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in [sic] a point to vote.” The candidate explained that his comments were based on reports of family members in Wisconsin who questioned how their incapacitated relatives in nursing homes could have voted in the 2020 election. In attempting to further clarify his remarks, Hovde said “a large percentage” of nursing home residents “are not in [sic] the mental capacity to (vote),” according to AP reporting. - Bryan Steil | House (WI–1)
Two days before the insurrection, Trump-endorsed Representative Bryan Steil joined Wisconsin’s other congressional Republicans in claiming that “Wisconsinites have lost trust in our election system,” implying that “non-residents and deceased individuals” had voted or that “double-voting” was a widespread problem, that “ballot harvesting” and “midnight ballot dumps” gave Biden an unfair advantage, and that “nearly a quarter of a million voters [had been allowed] to vote without showing an ID.” Now, as chairman of the House Administration Committee, he has shaped two new pieces of “election integrity” legislation, including the SAVE Act (in part “to prevent noncitizen voting”) and the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act, which he says will make it “hard to cheat” and is “the most conservative election integrity legislation to be considered in the House in a generation.” - Derrick Van Orden | House (WI–3)
Representative Derrick Van Orden attended the March to Save America rally in Washington on January 6 and joined the march to the Capitol, but claims he didn’t participate in the violence. He has said that he “went there to stand with them, to stand up for electoral integrity.” After being endorsed by Trump in 2022, he finally won the congressional district seat long held by Democrats, which he narrowly lost in 2020. - Scott Fitzgerald | House (WI–5)
Just days after being sworn in to his first term in Congress, Representative Scott Fitzgerald joined 146 other congressional Republicans in voting against certifying President Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. According to an investigation by two Wisconsin state legislators, Fitzgerald, who was state Senate majority leader at the time, reserved the room in the Wisconsin Capitol building in which the state’s 10 fake electors met to attempt to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election. He also claimed that election officials in Dane and Milwaukee counties allowed “hundreds of thousands of illegal votes to be cast and counted.” Fitzgerald won in 2020 and 2022 with Trump’s endorsement and expects it to help him again in 2024. - Tom Tiffany | House (WI–7)
Just hours after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Representative Tom Tiffany joined 146 other congressional Republicans in voting against certifying President Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. He also helped spread the Big Lie on social media and through other actions in late 2020, including signing an amicus brief for the Texas lawsuit urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the presidential election in Wisconsin and three other swing states. Tiffany is an “enthusiastic” Trump supporter who won reelection in 2020 and 2022 with the former president’s endorsement. - Tony Wied | House (WI–8)
Political newcomer Tony Wied ran as an “America First businessman” in the three-way GOP primary and won with Trump’s endorsement. During a July 19 debate, he refused to answer the moderator’s question about whether the 2020 election had been stolen, even though one of his primary opponents said no and the other responded “hell yes.” Given that District 8 is solidly Republican, Wied is expected to win the general election in November and go on to assume the House seat in January.