Tuesday was a good day for Republicans, but it wasn't a clean sweep for Republican candidates who participated in the Jan. 6 "Stop the Steal" rally for former President Donald Trump. None of them were arrested after the ensuing riot, though at least one said he was visited by the FBI.
Most of the 13 candidates identified by BuzzFeed News said they did not breach the U.S. Capitol in the violent siege that followed the rally, but most of them appear to have at least marched to the Capitol. And at least seven of those Jan. 6 rally goers won their elections for state or local office on Tuesday, The Washington Post reports. HuffPost counts eight.
Three of the six GOP Jan. 6 rallygoers won their races for seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. Two of them, Dave LaRock and John McGuire, while Marie March won an open seat. March, HuffPost reports, ran an ad bragging about her attendance at the rally and, in a now-deleted Facebook post, said she was willing to "fight and die" in a "coming Civil War." "We're in a very conservative district, and a lot of people do like Donald Trump," March told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "He was the sitting president of the United States of America at the time. We went to see him speak."
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The other Jan. 6 participants won seats on city councils in Nampa, Idaho; Watchung, New Jersey; and Mansfield, Connecticut; and on local school boards in Braintree, Massachusetts, and Hunterdon County, New Jersey. Dozens of other people who attended the Jan. 6 rally, premised on the false believe that the election was stolen from Trump, are running for higher office in 2022, when more states and national races are on the ballot.
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