The Charlotte Observer: Ted Budd’s refusal to answer a basic question shows he really is an election denier
Editorial Board
09/20/22
Key Points:
- The New York Times recently reported that Trump’s preferred candidates in key swing states won’t promise to accept the 2022 election results. Among them is Trump-endorsed Ted Budd who is running in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race.
- A campaign spokesperson declined to tell The New York Times whether Budd would uphold the state’s results, and apparently made the unsubstantiated claim that Budd’s opponent, Cheri Beasley, might try to disenfranchise voters.
- A similar story published by The Washington Post listed Budd as one of 12 Republican nominees who either refused to commit to accepting the outcome of their elections or declined to respond altogether. The News & Observer didn’t get a straight answer, either.
- “For people ahead of time to set up the myth that there’s going to be fraud, that the election is going to be stolen, even before voting has started, is totally irresponsible,” Jennifer Roberts, a former Charlotte mayor, told the Editorial Board Monday.
- Roberts and former state Supreme Court justice Bob Orr are leading the Carter Center’s bipartisan effort to restore public trust in the elections process. The Carter Center is asking candidates to pledge their commitment to the peaceful transfer of power and other core democratic principles. Roberts said the group plans to ask Budd to sign the pledge in the near future.
- “I think it is disappointing that we have to ask the question in the first place,” Roberts said. “This is something that, until 2020, I think most Americans took for granted as a basic tenet of democracy.”
- As a congressman, Budd objected to the certification of the Electoral College results and spent months echoing Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. Budd did finally admit last year that Joe Biden is, in fact, the legitimate president, but later claimed those comments had been “taken out of context.” He has since reiterated his “tremendous constitutional concerns about how the election of 2020 happened.”
- Budd’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Editorial Board.
- Donald Trump and his acolytes seem to believe that ascendance to public office is something they are owed, and the only acceptable outcome of an election is the one in which they win. That, coupled with their outright refusal to commit to the peaceful transfer of power, should be disqualifying to any voter who believes that democracy matters.
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