As Donald Trump attempts to retake the White House, Democrats say his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol should be on voters’ minds. (Spencer Platt | Getty Images)
Rep. Mikie Sherrill believes her Republican challenger, Joe Belnome, is unfit to run for office.
That’s because Belnome was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, for Donald Trump’s “stop the steal” rally and marched with his supporters to the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.
Belnome’s support of the conspiracy that Trump, not Biden, won that race is “totally disqualifying,” said Sherrill (D-11), who is seeking a fourth term in November. She said she fears that a candidate who supports Trump would rather take an oath to the former president than to the Constitution.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (Photo by Chance Yeh/Getty Images for Power 100 Lunch)
“If you aren’t going to believe in democracy, if you aren’t going to accede to the will of the people if they determine that you’ve lost an election, then you’re not qualified to run for office in this country,” said Sherrill. “I don’t think you can really take an oath to the Constitution if that is not something you believe in — a peaceful transfer of power after a democratic election.”
It’s been nearly four years since throngs of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. In the riot’s immediate aftermath, even die-hard Trump allies criticized the former president for spending weeks convincing his supporters that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. But as Trump is again seeking the White House, he and his allies have downplayed the events of that day, accused Democrats of overreacting to them, and alleged federal prosecutors have weaponized the U.S. Department of Justice to attack Trump (special counsel Jack Smith has charged that Trump broke the law by seeking to disrupt the 2020 election).
State Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-Morris), who co-chaired Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, suggested many people at the Capitol on Jan. 6 were “peacefully protesting.” Stopping those who were there from running for office would prevent people from expressing their First Amendment rights, he said.
“I think we’ve got a very slippery slope if we start to paint everybody the same that goes to a protest where just a handful of people may be arrested for doing bad things,” Pennacchio said. “That’s not the way this country was founded.”
More than 1,200 people have been charged in connection to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
As voters prepare to decide whether to return Trump to the White House, there’s a disconnect between how Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters view the role Jan. 6 plays, according to Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
The vast majority of messaging on Jan. 6 has come from Democrats who want to punish Trump for his role in stirring up his supporters that day, while Republicans would rather not talk about it, he said.
But it’s clearly still reverberating among even some Republican voters, he said. Rasmussen noted that at a Univision town hall Wednesday, Trump was asked by an audience member to explain his inaction on Jan. 6. Trump referred to it as a “day of love.”
If candidates in New Jersey faced more questioning and competitive challenges, they might be held more accountable for their involvement in an insurrection, he said. In Sherrill’s case, he said, it’s easy to hold her opponent to account. Her team has called Belnome “Jan. 6 Joe.”
“The juxtaposition of her view of what patriotism is and her opponent’s view of what patriotism is is one that sets up this sort of natural contrast,” Rasmussen said.
Belnome did not respond to requests for comment. Belnome previously told the New Jersey Monitor he was cleared of wrongdoing over the events of Jan. 6 and was not charged in relation to the attack.
Four years after Jan. 6
Roughly 3 in 4 Americans believe the upcoming presidential election is important for the future of democracy, but which candidate they think is more threatening to democracy depends on their political leanings, according to Associated Press polling.
Pennacchio said he thinks most of that poll’s respondents aren’t talking about Jan. 6. They think the country could be headed in the wrong direction over the economy, he said.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-05) said Jan. 6 remains a “very real issue.” Gottheimer, who is seeking a fifth term in Congress next month, is leading a push for House members to sign a bipartisan pledge to uphold the results of the upcoming election and attend the next presidential inauguration no matter who wins, calling it a “unity commitment.” About 35 lawmakers have signed on so far.
He said he’s often asked by voters on both sides of the aisle about whether another Jan. 6-type event is on the horizon. Law enforcement is preparing for threats of political violence in the weeks following Election Day.
Gottheimer said he’s astonished that, four years after the riot at the Capitol, so many shrug their shoulders about it.
“I would have thought that America would come together and say, ‘Send all these people to jail who attacked our Capitol, who marched down and beat police officers,’” he said.
Pennacchio called that argument “politically selective.” He noted that Trump relinquished power two weeks after Jan. 6 and left D.C. with no incidents.
No matter the results this year, Pennacchio has faith in the American people that the tradition of peaceful transitions of power will continue, he said.
Sherrill has been vocal about not wanting to let the events of Jan. 6 fall down the memory hole. She appeared in Madison in June to discuss them and express fear that there is little Congress can do to prevent a repeat.
During a recent phone interview, she detailed scenes she witnessed on Jan. 6 — members of Congress with gas masks and people running around looking for places to hide. But she also noted that fast-moving news cycles lead to information overload for voters.
“I guess it’s easy to bury some of the key issues because they seem like just part of the constant stream of crises that are ongoing, so it’s hard to pick and choose which one is front of mind, and it’s tough,” she said.
For apathetic voters, she urged them to think back to that day and understand how constrained people’s lives are in countries without a democratic government.
“Once democracies fall, they’re really hard to get back,” she said.
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