Georgia race is latest test for GOP over Jan. 6 candidates

A primary runoff in Georgia this week will be the latest test of voters’ willingness to back a candidate involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In the Peach State’s 2nd Congressional District, Chuck Hand — who was convicted of a misdemeanor for illegally demonstrating inside the Capitol that day — is up against Wayne Johnson in the Republican primary for Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop Jr.’s seat. 

Hand is one of several names linked to Jan. 6 who have set their sights on getting voted into Capitol Hill more than three years after it was stormed by rioters. In West Virginia, Derrick Evans, who went to jail for participating in the insurrection, lost his long-shot bid for a House seat last month — as did Ryan Zink, who filmed himself on restricted Capitol grounds, over in Texas. 

The Georgia race will serve as another check of how willing Republicans are to welcome those involved with Jan. 6 into the fold as former President Trump praises “J6 warriors” along the campaign trail. 

“Being convicted of a crime, being a part of the Jan. 6 riot … that would have been a no-go 20 years ago for a candidate,” said Ben Taylor, a professor of political science at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. 

But today, stark political polarization, a fraught media landscape and an unprecedented presidential race at the top of the ticket mean baggage that might have been “campaign-enders” just a few cycles ago “become benefits to candidates who would otherwise have been dead in the water,” Taylor said. 

“When you get in that ecosystem, then you get situations where you can have people who were part of Jan. 6 potentially get elected to Congress.” 

Hand pleaded guilty in 2022 to illegally demonstrating inside the Capitol when rioters surged onto the grounds amid the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to documents with the Justice Department. He was sentenced to 20 days incarceration. 

Hand, who serves as vice chair of Taylor County’s Republican Party, emerged from last month’s Republican primary in Georgia with 32 percent of the vote. 

His rival, Johnson, notched 45 percent, just short of the majority mark needed to avoid a top-two runoff. The third-place candidate, Michael Nixon, scored about 19 percent, and he exited the ring with a scathing statement calling into question Hand’s claims that he was protesting peacefully on Jan. 6. 

Johnson, a former Trump administration official, heads into next week with the edge over Hand, and the GOP winner will have an uphill battle to unseat longtime incumbent Bishop in the historically blue district this November — but Hand’s primary support still stands out as a signal that some in the party aren’t put off by a Jan. 6 conviction.

“That 2nd District candidate — on some level, I would guess, for some of those voters, having been involved in Jan. 6 is probably a feature, not a bug for them,” Taylor said.

Republican strategist Ford O’Connell, who worked as a Trump White House and 2020 campaign surrogate, said “a good deal” of the Republican base has lingering concerns about the 2020 race, and some candidates may be “using that as momentum to try to launch their political careers.”

A majority of Americans in a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll earlier this year said the riots were an “attack on democracy that should never be forgotten,” but 43 percent said “too much is being made” of the riot and that it is “time to move on.”

That poll also found the share of Republicans who think Trump bears responsibility for the incident has gone down, from 27 percent in 2021 to 14 percent this year.  

CBS News polling has also found Republican approval of rioters’ actions on the rise, up from 21 percent at the time to 30 percent this year. 

Trump is “the most essential, central aspect of all of this,” said Chapman University professor Pete Simi, who studies political violence and extremism, about efforts to “reframe” Jan. 6 as a “more conventional political protest” than an attack that left 140 police officers assaulted and five people dead in the days after the attack. 

“[Trump’s] candidacy in 2024 is very much the embodiment of this effort. Because if it’s not an immediate disqualifier for running for president, then obviously it wouldn’t be a disqualifier for running for other, lower levels of public office,” Simi said. 

The former president, who faces federal criminal charges himself related to his actions around Jan. 6, is praising his supporters who participated in the riots as he campaigns to get back to the White House.

“Those J6 warriors — they were warriors — but they were really, more than anything else, they’re victims of what happened,” Trump said at a rally in Nevada last week. 

“All they were doing is protesting a rigged election. That’s what they were doing,” the former president said, touting his debunked claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. 

Trump, who was convicted last month on charges of falsifying business records in New York, has long dismissed his legal troubles as politically motivated, and that may be fueling his supporters to think little of the Jan. 6 charges, experts suggested. 

“The convictions are just more evidence about what the conspiracy theories tell us, right?” Simi said of some voters’ thinking. “The conspiracy theories tell us there’s this deep state that’s out to get real Americans … and so what better evidence of this deep state can there be than Trump getting convicted in New York or the Jan. 6ers getting convicted?”

One Republican strategist said Trump’s convicted felon status could make unsavory charges on other candidates’ records look like “parking tickets.” 

Still, although Jan. 6-linked candidates may be faring better than expected, they haven’t yet seen major wins in 2024. 

In West Virginia, Evans, who pleaded guilty to a felony charge of civil disorder, notched an endorsement from Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) and pulled in 37 percent of the GOP primary vote last month, but he failed to oust Rep. Carol Miller (R) in the 1st Congressional District. 

In Texas, Zink, who was found guilty of three felonies and two misdemeanor offenses in connection with Jan. 6, came in with single-digits in the primary for Rep. Jodey Arrington’s (R) 19th Congressional District seat. 

“I think this cuts two ways. One is: It’s shocking, in many respects, that they’re even getting the support that they get,” Simi said. 

“But the fact that they’re not ultimately having that much success, and that the support is relatively limited, that’s the good news.” 

In New York, Philip Sean Grillo was found guilty of felony obstruction of an official proceeding and other charges as he ran for former Rep. George Santos’s (R) seat.

Jason Riddle, who pleaded guilty to Jan. 6 charges, ran unsuccessfully for Rep. Annie Kuster’s (D) seat in New Hampshire in 2022 and has filed to try again this year. 

“There are a number of people across the country and in Georgia who felt like it was not an insurrection, even though I think it clearly, really was. … There’s a lot of anger,” said Fred Hicks, a Georgia-based Democratic strategist. 

Next week, Hand’s runoff race in Georgia will be about Jan. 6, but will also be “a test of loyalty to Donald Trump and how much that carries you in Georgia,” Hicks said. “And the jury’s out on that.”