Ross: Red Wave turns out to be just a red ripple

First — I want to remind all of us including me that the current counts in Washington State are based on 46% of ballots. More than half of the votes in King, Pierce, and Snohomish remain uncounted, and 33,683 ballots have been challenged.

But nationwide, I think we have enough returns to see whether Trumpism is still a big draw.

More from Dave Ross: The perception of election theft can change if we only release the final results

The New York Times reports that more than 210 Republicans who questioned the 2020 election won Congressional seats based on results so far, and 100 of them are still questioning the 2020 election within the past year.

30 of those winners insisted Biden was not legally elected president.

So while there was no Red Wave, there was also no mass repudiation of Trumpism.

But how Trumpy are these winners?

The Times gave two examples of pro-Trump newcomers who said the 2020 election was stolen or rigged: Anna Paulina Luna who won a house seat in Florida, and Russell Fry who won a seat in South Carolina.

So I checked out their pre-election interviews, basically to see if they’re crazy.

Here’s Anna Paulina Luna — it turns out her big issue wasn’t stealing elections, it was amnesty for soldiers who were separated for not getting vaccinated.

“I will sponsor a bill to either get those people reinstated honorably back into the service or give them the option of getting a stipend from the federal government because of the fact that they were wrongfully discriminated against and discharged,” Luna said.

That didn’t strike me as radical, and overall she sounded reasonable. Turns out she was a former Obama supporter, in fact. Got a little grief for that in her campaign.

As for Russel Fry in South Carolina– here’s his answer on the 2020 election.

“I mean he is the current president in the White House, yes,” Fry said.

And on January 6?

“The vast majority of people that assembled on January 6 were exercising their First Amendment right. That is true. Those who broke the law should be held to accountable, on our side or the other side,” Fry said.

So he’s a January 6 apologist. But he doesn’t come across as a bomb thrower, and considering he’s in South Carolina — he sounds relatively moderate.

Bottom line — no Red Wave. More like a Red Tide which raised a few boats and scared the swimmers.

So the nation has survived the election. Now we’ll see if it survives the upcoming recession.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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