Republican voters in Maryland made their state last Tuesday to elevate a governor candidate who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election, electing Dan Cox, a first state legislator who wrote on social media during the Capitol riots that Vice President Mike Pence was “a traitor.”
Cox handily defeated Kelly Schulz, a political protégé of Governor Larry Hogan, a leader of the party’s anti-Trump wing, in a match determined by Mr. Cox’s endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump and Democratic television advertising intended to help Mr. Cox’s candidacy.
The Associated Press called the race late Tuesday. The Democratic primary was too close to mention, although Wes Moore, a bestselling author and former nonprofit executive, was ahead of Tom Perez, a former Democratic National Committee chairman.
Like their brethren in Illinois and Pennsylvania, Maryland Republicans chose a Trump-backed candidate from the far right rather than opponents supported by the political establishment, which warned in every state that Mr. Trump’s choices would be toxic in the general election.
Maryland’s contest may have broader implications for 2024 presidential politics. Mr. Hogan has sought to present himself as a potential alternative to Mr. Trump, who has considered an early 2024 announcement, but the governor’s failure to helping his carefully chosen successor win the nomination in his home state will raise questions about his political clout.
The list of Mr. Cox’s false claims about elections is long. In December, he said that Mr. Trump was “the only president I recognize at this point” and argued that Mr. Biden was “installed” in the White House. He had previously falsely claimed widespread voter fraud had taken place in Frederick County, where he lives, and called on Mr Trump to “seize federal voting machines in states where fraud was overwhelmingly rampant” after the 2020 election.
Mr. Cox also chartered three buses from his native country to the pro-Trump rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
Cox, whose campaign yielded little money, received more than $1.16 million in television advertising from the Democratic Governors Association, which sought to aid his primary campaign in the hopes that he would be easier to beat in the general election. Democrats across the country have used similar strategies this year to help far-right candidates in the GOP primaries, despite the risk that it could backfire.
If elected, Mr. Cox pledged to conduct “a forensic audit” of the 2020 election, push for a ban on all abortions in Maryland, and end “sexual indoctrination” in the state’s public schools.
“We see that freedom matters,” said Mr. Cox at his victory party in Emmitsburg, Maryland. “It’s important to all parties in Maryland, we’re excited to carry that banner.”
mr. Cox now faces a steep general election challenge in a state that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by more than 30 percentage points. Republicans like Mr. Hogan did well in Maryland by appealing to independents and moderate Democratic voters who were concerned about the Democratic dominance of the General Assembly; Mr Cox has based his campaign on allegiance to Mr Trump and his far-right base.
Democrats have a supermajority in both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly.
In comments to supporters in Annapolis before the race was called Tuesday night, Ms. Schulz expressed regret at Republican voters’ loyalty to Mr. Trump and lamented that the GOP had strayed from its historic roots.
“My Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and John McCain,” she said. “And that is exactly the party I will continue to fight for.”
Ms. Schulz had predicted that Mr. Cox would lose the general election by 30 percentage points to one of the Democrats running.
“The Maryland Republican Party came together and committed ritual mass suicide,” said Doug Mayer, a senior aide to Ms. Schulz. “All that was missing was Jim Jones and a cup of Kool-Aid.”
Democrats chose from a field of nine candidates, including Mr. Moore, who campaigned as a political newcomer; mr. Perez, a former labor secretary; and Peter Franchot, the state comptroller, who has been in Maryland politics since 1987.
On Wednesday early Wednesday, Mr. Moore was ahead of Mr. Perez, with Mr. Franchot well behind, although a significant number of Democratic votes were yet to be counted.
Mr. Moore built his advantage through his strength in Baltimore City and Prince George’s County, home to the state’s largest concentrations of black voters. He won about half the vote in Prince George’s County, a densely populated Washington suburb, a margin that may be hard for Mr. Perez to make up for.
Because Maryland law prohibits the processing and counting of ballots returned by mail and in drop boxes until Thursday, the results of the Democratic primary for governor and other close-knit races may not be known for days.
As Democrats try to retake the office of a governor held by a Republican, Mr. Hogan, since 2015, their primary struggle has been defined by stylistic differences rather than ideological ones. Mr. Perez and Mr. Franchot emphasized their long experience in government, while Mr. Moore argued that the party needed new blood.
“You know what you’re going to get with Tom Perez,” said Mr. Perez in an interview last week outside an early vote site in Silver Spring. “It’s a workhorse, not a show horse. It’s someone with a proven track record of getting things done.”
In an interview on Tuesday on MSNBC, Mr. Moore dismissed criticism that he had given misleading impressions about his personal history and achievements, saying the real risk would be to elevate an incumbent candidate.
“People are not looking for the same ideas from the same people,” he said.
At least 169,000 Democratic absentee ballots and more than 38,000 Republican ballots had been returned on Monday, according to the State Board of Elections. Another 204,000 Democratic and 58,000 Republican absentee ballots were sent to voters and remain open. Ballots stamped on Tuesday will count if received before July 29.
An additional 116,000 Democrats and 51,000 Republicans voted during the eight days of the early personal vote in the state, which ended last week.
Turnout was expected to exceed that of Maryland’s competitive primaries. Four years ago, in another hotly contested Democratic primary for governor, 552,000 people voted. Officials involved in the Democratic campaigns expected between 600,000 and 700,000 votes in the primary for governor this year.
The picture of the Republican rise was darker. There has been no meaningful statewide GOP primaries in an interim year since 2014, when Mr. Hogan first ran. That year 215,000 Republicans voted.
In the state’s open contest for attorney general, Republicans chose Michael Anthony Peroutka, who has spoken on several occasions with the League of the South, a group calling on the states of the former Confederacy to secede again from the United States, and Jim Shalleck, a district attorney who has served as president of the Montgomery County Board of Elections.
Anthony Brown, who served as lieutenant governor under Gov. Martin O’Malley served against Mr. O’Malley’s wife, Katie Curran O’Malley, who was a Baltimore judge for 20 years.
Republicans have not won an election for Maryland’s attorney general since 1918.
In other Maryland races, former Representative Donna Edwards, a Democrat, was defeated in her bid to reclaim the seat of the Prince George’s County-based house that she gave up to run for the Senate in 2016.
Glenn Ivey, a prosecutor, defeated her in a race that grew into a proxy war over Israel’s policies.
The United Democracy Project, a political action committee affiliated with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, has spent $5.9 million to help Ivey. Mrs. Edwards, for her part, was supported by J Street, a liberal Jewish organization.
And in a House district stretching from the suburbs of Washington across Western Maryland to the West Virginia border, Mr. Trump and Mr. Hogan — frequent critics of each other — supported the same candidate, only to see him down. to go.
That candidate, a 25-year-old conservative journalist, Matthew Foldi, lost to Neil Parrott, a Republican state legislator. Parrott will face Representative David Trone, a wealthy Democrat, in a rematch of their 2020 match.