Joe Kent, a decorated retired Green Beret and House candidate in Washington State, is discovering just how far the modern far right will go.
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This article is part of our Midterms 2022 Daily Briefing
Joe Kent, who is now a House candidate in Washington State, at a rally in the nation’s capital in September in support of those arrested in the Jan. 6 riot.
Joe Kent, a square-jawed Trump devotee running for a House seat in Washington State, is in a bit of a pickle.
Kent has campaigned as a “Stop the Steal”-style candidate on Donald Trump’s “America First” platform, positions that apparently caught the eye of the former president, who has endorsed him.
Kent insists the 2020 election was rigged, and has rationalized the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, by claiming that an otherwise peaceful crowd was infiltrated by Deep State agents provocateurs. In September, he spoke at a rally in Washington, D.C., in support of people accused of storming the Capitol, urging the release of what he called “political prisoners.”
But in recent weeks, far-right figures led by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who has spoken admiringly of Adolf Hitler, have started an online drumbeat claiming that Kent, a retired Green Beret and C.I.A. paramilitary officer who has a fistful of Bronze Stars, is actually a deep-state denizen himself.
Kent’s wife, Shannon, was a targeting specialist for the National Security Agency who was killed by a suicide bomber in northeast Syria in 2019 while fighting the Islamic State.
Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So Far
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The state of the midterms. We are now over halfway through this year’s midterm primary season, and some key ideas and questions have begun to emerge from the results. Here’s a look at what we’ve learned so far:
A surprisingly tight race. Despite President Biden’s low approval ratings, Democrats are roughly tied with Republicans among voters ahead of the midterm elections. According to a New York Times/Siena College poll, 41 percent of registered voters said they preferred Democrats to control Congress compared with 40 percent who preferred Republicans.
Trump’s waning influence? While former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsements have helped propel some candidates to primary victories, he’s also had notable defeats. The losses have emboldened Mr. Trump’s rivals, who see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024, and a recent poll found that half of G.O.P. voters are ready to leave Mr. Trump behind.
Democrats’ risky bet. As Democratic leaders warn loudly of right-wing threats to democracy, their campaign arms have been attempting to influence Republicans primaries in hopes of elevating far-right candidates that they believe will be easier to beat in the fall. The governor’s race in Illinois is the most expensive example yet of this high-risk strategy.
Election deniers rise. Republican voters have nominated several candidates who have spread falsehoods about the 2020 election and sowed distrust in American democracy, and who are now vying for offices that will hold significant sway over the 2024 presidential election. But in places like Colorado, election denialism has its limits.
After her death, he wrote about how his experiences in the Special Forces had made him more skeptical of “pointless or unwinnable wars.” On his arm is a tattoo inscribed with the date of her killing, along with an image of the World Trade Center aflame after the Sept. 11 attacks.
None of that has earned Kent a reprieve from fringe critics seeking to turn his military service into a campaign liability.
There’s even a website, joekentiscia.com, which opens with the following accusation in all capital letters: “JOE KENT IS AN AGENT OF THE DEEP STATE, A CARPETBAGGER, A LIFELONG MARXIST DEMOCRAT RINO AND A CORRUPT OPPORTUNIST.”
The note on the site says it was built by something called the Republicans Against RINOs PAC, a group that — if it even exists — is not registered with the Federal Election Commission.
Kent’s farther-right critics have also attacked him for being supported by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who has bankrolled the Senate campaigns of Blake Masters in Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio, among others.
Fuentes has repeatedly criticized Kent on Telegram, a social media network popular among far-right types because of its lax moderation policies — accusing him of opposing “Christian Nationalism.”
Fuentes, who attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, spoke with Kent in spring 2021, the candidate has acknowledged. The two men have told irreconcilable stories about their encounter, though Kent’s top campaign consultant, Matt Braynard, also set up a booth at a gathering held by Fuentes on the margins of the Conservative Political Action Conference that was widely denounced by Republicans.
ImageRepresentative Jaime Herrera Beutler, left, with Representative Adam Kinzinger, a fellow Republican, after they voted to impeach Donald Trump in January 2021.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
Kent’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment, and Fuentes could not be reached.
Michael Edison Hayden, who studies far-right extremism for the Southern Poverty Law Center and submitted expert testimony on Fuentes to the House Jan. 6 committee, said that Fuentes might have turned on Kent after feeling aggrieved that the candidate had rejected his help.
Kent is running to unseat Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican, in Washington’s solidly red Third Congressional District. A relative moderate, she voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — a decision that put her on the former president’s list of House Republicans he is targeting for removal.
But Washington holds nonpartisan primaries, in which the top two vote-winners advance to the general election. The system gives Herrera Beutler a structural advantage against whichever Republican emerges to oppose her in the fall — assuming she reaches the general — because Democrats are likely to side with the less conservative candidate.
Mark Stephan, a political scientist at Washington State University, said he could envision a showdown in the fall between Herrera Beutler and Kent, but allowed that Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the leading Democrat, might squeak through to the general election if enough Republicans split their votes.
Other Republicans in the field include Heidi St. John, a Christian author and home-schooling activist; and Vicki Kraft, a state lawmaker. St. John has gotten an infusion of $724,000 in recent weeks from a newly formed super PAC called Conservatives for a Stronger America.
The primary will be held on Aug. 2.
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— Blake
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Source: nytimes.com
