Another Right-Wing Extremist, Confederate Nationalist Michael Peroutka, Advances In Attorney General Race

A right-wing strategy that has emerged since Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential loss, and his subsequent failure to convince election officials to change their states’ outcomes for him, is an effort for a mass takeover of Secretary of State, Attorney General, and other positions with power of election oversight, across the country. MAGA extremists, election deniers, and the farthest-right candidates are aiming for these positions, which would potentially give them the power to have an effect on the outcome of future elections — and one more extremist just advanced toward that goal.

Michael Peroutka, who just won his Republican primary for Maryland Attorney General, is one of the more extreme examples. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as ” an avid Southern secessionist and radical Christian Reconstructionist,” who has claimed that what he calls the “gay deathstyle” is “recruiting” children. He’s also a former board member of League of the South — which characterizes itself as a “Southern nationalist organization” advocating for protecting the “Southron people” from “an unholy crusade of leftist agitators and foreign religions.”

According to Vice, he further declares that laws protecting marriage equality and abortion are unenforceable since they (in his view) violate “God’s law,” and considers public education a “communist plot.”

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Sure enough, NBC has reported that Peroutka won his primary with 58% of the vote, or 115,257 primary votes, and will be the Republican nominee in November. However, he is facing off against Democrat Anthony Brown, who received 59% of his party’s votes in his primary — 218,967 total. Primary turnout, of course,may not reflect turnout in the general election.