in deep red indiana, was successful, while candidates in michigan, arizona and new mexico were defeated. mr. marchant not only repeatedly claimed that trump had won the 2020 election but he pledged that if he were elected trump would again be president in 2024. you have been on this beat since the i talked about the embers. they were still flames of the 2020 election. and i just want your perspective on that sort of two-year stretch of echoing these claims from a defeated president who hadn t yet left office through the deadly insurrection and then carrying these messages of decertifying the 2020 election through their prime general election campaigns and then losing. yeah. i think what we saw as secretary benson mentioned was that voters really rejected the idea of a backward-looking, we re still obsessed with you know, the 2020 campaign, that s not paying attention to the issues at the forefront of american politics right now.
defenders of democracy everywhere finchem was defeated by democratic candidate adrian fontes. and it was not just finchem s extremism that voters rejected. all of the election-denying secretary of state candidates lost their races in presidential battleground states. that is good news. in addition to finchem there was kristen karamo in michigan. she lost to democratic incumbent secretary of state jocelyn benson who will join our program in just one moment. kim crockett in minnesota was beaten by democratic incumbent secretary of state steven simon. and in a race called just this saturday jim marchant was defeated by democratic candidate cisco aguilar in nevada. all four of those republican candidates for secretary of state were endorsed by the twice-impeached ex-plnt. and they ran their entire campaigns on his big lie. washington post reports this. some pledged to decertify the 2020 result, although election law experts said that is not possible. others promised to decommission elec
and i ve said for a long time my hope in this moment is that we emerge in the next few years with a healthier and stronger, more robust democracy than ever before, than we had back in 2016 and 2014. and that truly is the direction we re headed in with this election. that we ve got a chance to ensure continually that people recognize the power of their voices, the power of their votes, which is the best antidote to really the strategy on the other side to diminish democracy and make people feel their voices don t matter. here in this election voters said no, our voices do matter and let us show you how. nick, your story, i think it broke or was alerted on my phone saturday night, and i was in the street, and i stopped and i read the whole thing. i want to read some more from what you wrote. jim marchant, the republican nominee in nevada, had helped organize a national right-wing slate of candidates under the name america first. with marchant s loss to mr. aguilar all but one of thos
but when you go back and you look at this effort, and to organize this slate of america first secretary of state candidates, started by jim marchant, who in an interview with the times said that he was approached by allies of former president trump to run for secretary of state and to kind of recruit this group and that by doing that and taking over these positions, you know, they could ensure, quote unquote, election integrity, which obviously is a kind of code word among these people for a different type of oversight of american elections. so when that started, i was even wondering if voters would know what a secretary of state does. you know, there were so many times i d be out on the trail or i even was out during the georgia primaries with jodi heiss, who was another one of these america first secretary of state candidates who lost to brad raffensperger in the primary. no one was certain what this was all about. but i think when you saw nearly $50 million of television