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.
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.
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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Conservative activists fixated on the idea that Donald Trump won the 2020 election are working to recruit county sheriffs to investigate elections, Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti report.
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The Federal Reserve is preparing another significant increase in interest rates this week, Jeanna Smialek reports — with potential consequences for the midterm elections. More analysis here from the DealBook crew.
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In Opinion, Peter Coy argues that the politics of litigation may be changing. “It used to be a Democratic thing, then it became a Republican thing, and now it’s a Democratic thing again,” he writes.
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For those following the race to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister of Britain and Northern Ireland, here’s a smart update from Mark Landler and Stephen Castle.
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If you missed it, David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick wrote in The Morning about the new abortion battleground: medication abortion.
— Blake
Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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