Kim Crockett, who called the 2020 presidential election a “train wreck” and cast doubt on the counting of the votes during the pandemic, won the Republican nomination for secretary of state in Minnesota Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.
She will face Steve Simon, the Democratic incumbent, in the November general election that will determine who will be the state’s top election official.
Crockett, a former vice president and general counsel of a conservative Minnesota think tank, campaigned on common conservative election proposals, including enacting stricter voter identification laws and banning outside funding of elections. Crockett has also been skeptical of voting machines, pushing the idea that “citizens and election judges should be empowered to confirm that vote tabulating equipment is not connected to the internet.”
Election-denying activists have promoted a debunked conspiracy theory about voting machines being online and hacked by foreign governments in the 2020 election.
Crockett once supported increased restrictions for mail voting, posting a policy on her website in February titled “reverse mail-ballot trend.” But she updated her position after talking to local clerks, saying that mail voting can be a good option — although she still raises concerns about the process.
Crockett was suspended from the think tank, the Center of the American Experiment, after she made racist remarks in a 2019 interview with the Times about refugee resettlement.
“I think of America, the great assimilator, as a rubber band, but with this — we’re at the breaking point,” she said in the interview. “These aren’t people coming from Norway, let’s put it that way. These people are very visible.”
As a candidate, Crockett was accused of making an antisemitic video that her campaign aired at the Minnesota Republican convention in May. The video depicted George Soros, a billionaire liberal donor, acting like a puppet master over Simon and Marc Elias, a Democratic election lawyer. Soros, Simon and Elias are Jewish.
The chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota, David Hann, apologized after the video was shown. Hann said he had spoken to Crockett and that “the depiction of Mr. Soros was not intended as antisemitic.”