So it’s no surprise that Democrats won November’s state legislature elections by a wide margin. Miguel Garcia, who has represented No. 14 for more than a decade, won about 74 percent of the vote, handily beating his Republican challenger. That’s it.
At least, in a perfect world.
In this world, however, Garcia’s opponents refused to budge, no matter how inconsequential such a demonstration might have been to the outcome. When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination a week later, his opponent, Republican Solomon Peña, quickly endorsed the former president. After all, as Pernia pointed out on Twitter, both he and Trump refuse to accept that their losses are justified. Aside from Peña’s pro-Trump crown, he shares the ex-president’s disinterest in recognizing democratic election results because they weren’t what people wanted.
Trump’s political career has both shaped and exacerbated distrust of American institutions. He took on the establishment in 2016, successfully casting a vaguely defined group of “elites” as the true opponents of the American people. He attacked the Deep State in a rather abstract fashion in the first few years of his presidency, and in the last year of his presidency directly aimed at government experts. He sees health officials as dodgy or toxic because of their tendency to pursue a robust effort to fight the coronavirus. He dismissed election officials as corrupt or dishonest when they first pointed out that voter fraud was rare, and then, after the election, that very little fraud occurred.
The message Trump is sending — and, again, adopting and adapting his own party’s existing rhetoric — is that the system simply won’t work. If the system is not working, then the natural flow of logic suggests that you must either work around the system or fight it.
On Monday, Peña was arrested by police in New Mexico on suspicion of plotting to shoot at the homes of several Democratic officials in the state: county executives, state legislators. In an interview, Albuquerque’s police chief pointed to Pernia’s theory of election fraud as a motive for the alleged conspiracy.
“The people we charged believed in the conspiracy,” Chief Harold Medina said. “He does believe his election was unfair, and he does escalate and resort to violence as a means to seek justice.”
I disagree. The New Mexico election was absolutely rigged. We will pursue justice.
— Solomon Pena, NM (@SolomonPena2022) December 11, 2022
Since the 2020 election — and especially since the riots at the Capitol in January 2021 — federal authorities have repeatedly warned that conspiracy theories of election fraud could spark violence.
For example, in mid-August 2021, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an advisory warning that Trump’s false allegations of fraud would raise a terrorist threat, particularly with regard to Trump, such as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Trump’s allies have promoted the idea that Trump may somehow recover.
“Some conspiracy theories related to the reinstatement of former President Trump include calls for violence if desired outcomes are not achieved,” it wrote.
Less than a week later, Floyd Ray Rothberry was arrested on Capitol Hill for threatening to detonate a bomb that would destroy multiple blocks in Washington. In a video posted to Facebook, Rothberry repeated false claims about the 2020 election and claimed Trump would resume the presidency after Labor Day.
As the midterm elections approach, DHS continues to focus on fraud-related conspiracies. In February 2022, an announcement stated that conspiracy theories related to fraud were still circulating online, and similar theories led to violence. After the midterm elections, another pointed to the continued risk of violence from those raising baseless objections to the election results.
“[S]Some social media users sought to justify the use of violence in response to perceptions of fraud in the midterm elections,” it wrote, “citing technical difficulties and certification delays at polling locations. “
About a week later, there was an alleged assault on a lawmaker in New Mexico.
In the days since his defeat, Peña has repeatedly claimed that the election was against him.he more than once shared A ridiculous article from conspiracy theory site Gateway Pundit claims the results were tainted by fraud — based on a report (presented in Comic Sans) by a group linked to notorious election fraud conspiracy theory promoter David Clements. He also shared a photo of himself in Washington on January 6, 2021.
This is the last photo from my trip on January 6th. I lost that phone at a Trump rally in Phoenix in July 2021. Make America Great Again! pic.twitter.com/EJToLrD8md
— Solomon Pena, NM (@SolomonPena2022) November 14, 2022
Until he is found or pleads guilty, Pernia should be presumed innocent for leading the violence against Democratic Party officials in New Mexico. But if he was involved in the work, it fits a pattern observed by law enforcement.
Peña doesn’t trust the outcome of the 2020 election or his own two years later. As a result, Albuquerque police say, he “did escalate and resort to violence as a means to seek justice.” Or, in the words of the Department of Homeland Security, he may have allegedly “attempted to justify the use of violence in response to perceived The perception of fraud in the midterm elections.”
The poisonous fruit of opportunistically belittling effective systems.
