Maryland governor candidate tries, fails to soften election denier views

For years, Dan Cox pushed false claims about the 2020 election. But in a recent radio interview, the former Maryland state lawmaker who is now the GOP nominee for governor, tried to soften his views. 

Cox’s comments show how some GOP candidates running for state office in November are trying to distance themselves from MAGA’s obsession with the 2020 election — even if many of those candidates previously echoed President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. 

“I am not an expert on elections, and I’ve gotten pegged with saying I’m a denier,” Cox said in an interview with WBAL radio last week. “I’m actually a supporter of the data. And you’ll notice that I conceded. In my race, I conceded. And you’ll notice that in the 2020 election, even though I got attacked because I questioned Georgia, I called the president. You can look this up in the press. I called the president — President Biden. Why? Because he was the president.”

But Cox has a well-documented history of spreading false claims about the 2020 election. He refused to accept Biden’s victory and called for a “forensic audit” of the state’s vote that year — which Biden won by 30 points. Cox also called former Vice President Mike Pence a “traitor” for certifying Biden’s victory, and he helped arrange for buses of MAGA supporters to go to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

When Cox was campaigning for governor in 2022 — an election he lost to Maryland’s current Gov. Wes Moore (D) — he wasn’t shy in his support of Trump or the president’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen. 

“Trump is right,” Cox said at the time. “There were serious problems. We’re still seeing it happen today. And we need to get to the bottom of that.”

But Cox is now trying to distance himself from Trump and his MAGA base. Asked about his ties to Trump and whether he subscribes to 2020 election conspiracies — like the debunked claims the president pushed in his evening speech last week — Cox denied believing in the same election conspiracies as the president. 

“And here’s the thing: If I was tied to President Trump I’d probably be in the administration,” he added. “I’m not.”

But Cox wouldn’t fully disavow false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.  When asked if he thinks Joe Biden won the election, Cox hedged.

“I think he probably did… he was certified to be the winner,” he said. “But again, I don’t know what the DOJ is saying. And I’m not going to get into that.”