Joe Kent, the Republican who delivered a safe GOP House seat to the Democrats in the 2022 elections, finally admitted defeat on Wednesday, December 21, 2022 (see story here).
“While I’m disappointed that we did not prevail, our campaign and our supporters have a lot to be proud of,” he said.
Not really.
Kent beat Rep. Jaime Herrera-Buetler, a principled Republican, in the primary. Her offense? Voting to impeach Trump for inciting the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.
The many House Republicans who defended that lawless renegade disgraced their country, their constituents, and their party. Herrera-Buetler wasn’t one of them.
Although Kent has a very respectable military career behind him, he’s an election denier and rightwing extremist who defended Capitol rioters as people who “questioned things” (see story here). That’s crackpot talk.
What the rioters “questioned” was the right of the 81 million Americans who voted for Biden to have equal say about who runs this country, and they did so by assaulting police and threatening to kill members of Congress. Kent says they’re entitled to due process; agreed, and they’re getting it. In a lot of other countries, they’d be summarily shot.
He also wasted $48,589.05 of his supporters’ money on a quixotic recount. Seattle TV station KING 5 News says,
“In a November tweet, after county election officials finalized their tallied results and submitted them to the state for certification, Kent announced that his campaign would move ahead with their own recount. Kent cited the ‘small margin’ of votes between himself and Gluesenkamp Perez as the reason his campaign applied for the recount.”
It wasn’t a small margin, it was 2,629 votes, and that’s huge, even in a statewide election. The recount changed the results by a number of votes you can count on your fingers — in his opponent’s favor. Any election expert could’ve told him it was hopeless. It only served to stoke Republican voters’ distrust of elections, which may have been his intent.
There’s simply nothing admirable about Joe Kent’s failed quest for Congress: Not his primary challenge of one of the few reputable GOP House members, nor his motives for going after her, or his extremist platform, or his refusal to accept reality after losing. His own party, I’m sure, didn’t appreciate his meddling.
About his only saving grace is he wasn’t the worst of 2022’s crop of GOP candidates, not even close.