Delaware Republicans are trying to send a QAnon fanatic to the Senate

Republican primary voters in Delaware selected QAnon conspiracy theorist Lauren Witzke as the party’s Senate nominee on Tuesday, adding to the ranks of Republican congressional nominees who support the baseless and dangerous conspiracy theory that the FBI has said poses a domestic terror threat.

Witzke defeated fellow Republican James DeMartino by a margin of 57% to 43%, according to the New York Times.

Witzke has been photographed wearing a QAnon shirt and has used the QAnon hashtag #wwg1wga — short for “where we go one, we go all” — a slogan people who support the debunked conspiracy theory often use.

QAnon conspiracy theorists believe that a group of high-profile Democrats and “deep state” actors are working to undermine Donald Trump and are running a secret international child sex-trafficking ring. According to the Times, these “Satan-worshiping pedophiles” also engage in cannibalism “in order to extract a life-extending chemical from their [victims’] blood.”

There is absolutely zero truth to the conspiracy, which has repeatedly proven itself false. The FBI designated QAnon as a domestic terror threat in a previously unpublicized intelligence memo from February 2019, which was obtained by Yahoo News in August last year, estimating that violence by “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists” would likely increase in the future.

Despite the absurd nature of QAnon’s claims, Trump and a number of Republican officials have not only refused to condemn it, but have embraced its followers — a number of whom have won GOP primaries for Congress.

Witzke joins Marjorie Taylor Greene and and Lauren Boebert as QAnon supporters who were recently victorious in their Republican congressional primary bids. Trump has backed Greene in her Georgia House race, while House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy hosted a fundraiser for Boebert’s Colorado House seat campaign.

Unlike Greene, who is effectively guaranteed a victory in her deep-red home district, and Boebert, who could still win over voters in Colorado’s purple 3rd District, Witzke has virtually no chance of making it to the Senate.

She faces Democratic Sen. Chris Coons this November, who won the seat in 2014 over a GOP opponent by a margin of 56% to 42% — even in a Republican wave election.

Delaware also voted for Hillary Clinton by a nearly 12-point margin in 2016, making it a Democratic stronghold. And Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden — who served as a senator from Delaware for decades before becoming vice president in 2008 — could help grow that margin. A poll from the end of August showed Biden leading Trump in the state, 58% to 37%.

Delaware Republicans, for their part, have a history of nominating colorful candidates for Senate.

A decade ago, in 2010, Christine O’Donnell won a GOP primary for Senate, where she became infamous for her “I’m not a witch” ad. O’Donnell was forced to denounce witchcraft because she had gone on comedian Bill Maher’s show and said that she “dabbled” in witchcraft, though she said she “never joined a coven.”

“One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it,” O’Donnell said on the show. “I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.