2 May 2023
Jim Marchant, a former Republican state assemblyman and one of the state’s most prominent election deniers, is planning to run for Nevada’s U.S. Senate seat in 2024.
Marchant was set to make a “special announcement” Tuesday at a “Make America Great Again” rally at Fervent Church in Las Vegas, where advertised guests included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and commentator Wayne Allyn Root. Signs at the venue, and donation materials on his website, bore a logo saying “Jim Marchant U.S. Senate Nevada.”
Marchant suggested in a 2022 debate that Nevadans’ votes have not counted for years, and alleged in a January interview with The Guardian that a global “cabal” has been manipulating voting machines for years.
He also played a key role in pushing several rural Nevada counties to drop electronic voting machines ahead of the 2022 election, citing unsupported conspiracy theories about the machines’ lack of reliability.
Marchant is the biggest Republican name so far to enter the race challenging Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), who is up for re-election in 2024. Rosen holds a crucial seat in the Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority.
Last cycle, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) narrowly defeated Republican former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt by less than 1 percent or fewer than 8,000 votes, making the Nevada Senate seat a tantalizing prospect for Republicans this time around.
No other prominent Republicans have announced a bid for the seat. If Marchant comes out victorious, Democrats would lose a seat in a Senate that Democrats control 51-49.
Marchant, born in Gainesville, Florida, won the crowded Republican secretary of state primary in 2022 with 37.6 percent of the vote with a campaign that promoted replacing electronic voting machines and implementing hand counting and bolstered false claims that President Joe Biden did not win Nevada during the 2020 presidential election.
He lost the bid to political newcomer and Democrat Cisco Aguilar by 2 percentage points or nearly 22,000 votes.
He also unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2020 but was defeated by incumbent Steven Horsford by nearly 5 percent, or more than 16,000 votes. He has described himself as “a victim of election fraud” in his 2020 race, but a judge dismissed a lawsuit in which he made claims of voter fraud and seeking a re-do of the election.
Marchant said his motivation to later run for secretary of state came from QAnon leader Wayne Willott, who suggested he go out for the job in 2022.
Policies he promised to push forward included banning the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), an electronic system that helps member states share voter registration information with each other and with the federal government, and allows states to identify duplicate registrations in order to keep their respective voter rolls updated.
Marchant also scrutinized mail-in voting, calling it fraud, and said he would ban mail-ballot drop boxes. He said he would also implement voter ID laws, which would require state identification to vote.
He has also expressed “pro-life” or anti-abortion statements, called for the opening of the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Humboldt County and a ban on “underage transgender treatment.”
Michelle Rindels and Riley Snyder contributed to this story.
The post Former Nevada assemblyman, election denier Jim Marchant plans US Senate run appeared first on The Nevada Independent.