Matt Mowers, the leading Republican candidate in the primary that wants to overthrow the Democratic MP Chris Pappas, voted absent in the presidential primary in New Hampshire in 2016, according to the voting records. At the time, Mowers served as director of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign in the key state of early elections. Four months after Christie’s bid failed, Mowers voted again in the New Jersey Republican primary, using his parents’ address to re-register in his home state, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press requesting public records. Legal experts say Mowers’ actions could violate a federal law banning “voting more than once” in “any general, special or qualifying election.” This includes voting in separate jurisdictions “for elections to the same candidacy or office”. It also puts Mowers, a senior adviser to the Donald Trump administration and later the State Department, in a difficult position as much of his party embraced the former president’s lies about the stolen 2020 election and pushed for restrictive young people. electoral laws. The issue could be particularly troubling in New Hampshire, where Republicans have long advocated for tougher voting rules to prevent short-term residents, or students, from running in the country’s first presidential primary. “What he did is vote in two different states for the presidency, which at first glance seems to have violated federal law,” said David Schultz, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School specializing in electoral law. “You take a bite at the apple of the ballot.” Mowers’s campaign refused to make him available for interview. In a brief statement that did not address the double vote, campaign spokesman John Corbett referred to Mowers’s work on Trump’s 2016 campaign. “Matt was proud to be working for President Trump as the GOP establishment was working to undermine his candidacy,” Corbett said. “Matt moved for work and was able to run in the by-elections in support of President Trump and serve as a spokesman at a critical time for the Republican Party and the country.” Mowers is unlikely to face criminal prosecution. The statute of limitations has expired and there is no record of being prosecuted under this particular section of federal election law, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which is monitoring the issue. Mowers is merely the last former Trump administration official to investigate possible election violations. Mark Meadows, a former North Carolina lawmaker who served as Trump’s chief of staff, was registered in two states and listed a caravan he did not have – and may never have visited – as his legal residence weeks before voting in the 2020 election. . North Carolina state officials are conducting an investigation. Not everyone agrees that Mowers’s situation is a clear case of voter fraud. For a start, it is an underdeveloped area of law. Any court would have to deal with complex issues, such as whether a by-election could be considered a general election or an event organized by a state-run private body. “With the right set of facts, it could be interpreted as a violation, but it’s not at all obvious to me that it is,” said Steven Huefner, a law professor at Ohio State University who specializes in electoral law. “It’s a pretty vague question.” Charlie Spies, a Republican election lawyer who contacted the AP at the request of the Mowers campaign, called the issue “stupid.” He said the double vote was “at worst a gray area” of the law and “not a matter of time.” That may not matter in the congressional primary, which drew half a dozen Republican candidates, some of whom criticized the Mowers on Tuesday. Karoline Leavitt, a former aide to Trump’s White House spokeswoman, said Mowers owed voters “an honest answer.” He said he “may have violated the election law and his initial reaction is to hide behind his lawyer”. Gale Huff Brown said Republicans “can not nominate someone who has been involved in voter fraud and expect them to take the matter seriously.” She is married to Scott Brown, a former Massachusetts senator who served as Trump’s ambassador to New Zealand. State spokesman Tim Baxter told the Jersey Mowers that the double vote was “the exact problem of electoral fraud that has plagued voters across America.” The Mowers campaign website has a section on “electoral integrity” stating that new laws are needed to “give every American citizen the assurance that his vote counts.” He also echoed long-standing Republican criticism of out-of-state voters, backing the state legislature’s efforts to ensure that “only legal residents of New Hampshire have the right to vote.” This is not the first time Mowers, who is in his early 30s, has run for office, which is the top goal of the Republicans in the mid-term elections of 2022. In 2020, he won the support of Trump and won the candidacy of the Republicans before losing to Pappas by 5 percentage points. This time, however, it may be different. Biden’s downgrade has made Republicans look up. And thanks to a redesign of congressional districts once a decade, Republicans now controlling the legislature and the governor’s office are poised to pass more advantageous maps. Mowers promotes his time in New Hampshire with his wife and young child. But he is not a native of the state, spending much of his life in New Jersey. A graduate of Rutgers, he emerged from New Jersey politics, working for Christie’s administration and for Christie’s re-election campaign. This led to an appearance at the 2016 Bridgegate trial, where Mowers testified about his failed attempts to motivate a Democratic mayor to support Christie, which led to punitive acts and eventually two convictions of Christie’s close allies. Mowers was not charged with any offenses in the case. He moved to New Hampshire in 2013 to take on the role of executive director of the state Republican Party. He continued to work for Christie in 2015 to lay the groundwork for a presidential campaign. After Christie’s White House campaign, Mowers returned to New Jersey to work for the Mercury lobby company. He joined the Trump campaign in July 2016 and eventually moved to Washington after gaining a position in the administration.
Slodysko reported from Washington.
