CHARLESTON, W.Va. For Derrick Evans, being part of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol wasn’t enough. The former West Virginia lawmaker wants to make his path to the halls of Congress permanent.
On the other side of the metal barricades that day, Officer Harry Dunn couldn’t stand what he saw as he defended the Capitol and its inhabitants from rioters on January 6, 2021. Ultimately, the Maryland resident noted the lawmakers he had protected to vote. acquit former President Donald Trump and deny the violence and trauma that led to the deaths of some of his fellow officers.
On Tuesday, Evans and Dunn will make bids for U.S. House seats in their respective state primaries. They come into the election with dramatically different interpretations of what happened that day, and their performance in Tuesday’s primaries in West Virginia and Maryland could suggest whether voters’ views on the attack and its meaning have changed over time. .
When terrorizing the Capitol for an entire afternoon, rioters used pipes, bats and bear spray. They used flag poles as weapons, brutally beat police officers, shouted that they wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence, broke glass and broke down doors as lawmakers frantically evacuated. A Georgia man bragged about “feeding” the crowd to a police officer. More than 100 police officers were injured, many beaten and bloodied. At least nine people who were there died during and after the riots, including a rioter who was shot and killed by police.
More than 1,350 people have been charged with federal crimes in connection with the Capitol riot. More than 850 of them were convicted – around two-thirds received prison sentences ranging from a few days to 22 years.
The two candidacies “symbolize a shift on the part of the two major parties in their commitment to law and order,” said Timothy Naftali, a senior researcher at Columbia University’s School of Public and International Affairs.
It’s remarkable, Naftali said, that on the same day a former police officer can become a Democratic candidate, while Republicans can “select an unrepentant criminal” in Evans, who “proudly displays the fact that he broke the law on January 6 ”.
“This is a split screen we couldn’t imagine 15 years ago,” he said.
Although Evans is seen as a longshot to unseat an established incumbent and does not have the fundraising advantage that Dunn enjoys in Maryland, their candidacies at least raise the possibility that they could serve together while holding starkly different views on the violence and destruction of January. 6. But even if Dunn wins and Evans loses, he will serve alongside dozens of Republicans who have come to view the defendants as “hostages.”
Dunn, a 40-year-old Democrat, resigned last December from the Capitol Police after more than 15 years of service. There were four years left before pension eligibility.
“I am running for Congress because the forces that spurred that January 6th violent attack are still at work in our country today, and as a patriotic American, I believe it is my duty to step up and defend our democracy,” Dunn said. .
Dunn leads all candidates in fundraising by a wide margin in Maryland’s 3rd District race, with $4.6 million raised and $714,000 in cash on hand, according to his latest campaign finance report with the Commission Federal Election.
Evans, a 39-year-old Republican and avid Trump supporter, calls himself the only elected official who “had the courage” to support efforts to temporarily halt the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Facebook cheering for what it described as a “revolution.”
Evans was arrested two days after the riot and resigned from his position in the West Virginia House of Delegates a month before the 2021 legislative session. He pleaded guilty to a civil disorder charge and served three months in prison. At the sentencing hearing, Evans apologized for his actions but made a U-turn upon leaving prison. He began to portray himself as the victim of a politically motivated prosecution.
Evans once called himself a Democrat, finishing sixth out of seven candidates in the state House primary in 2016. He then switched to the Libertarian Party in the general election and finished last out of five candidates.
Evans is facing West Virginia’s 1st Congressional District Representative Carol Miller, also a strong Trump supporter. In 2022, Miller received 66% of the vote in a five-candidate Republican primary en route to winning his third term in Congress.
Miller is focused on her own accomplishments and endorsements, not any criticism of Evans or his status as a Jan. 6 defendant.
“I don’t think about him at all,” she said.
Dunn is among nearly two dozen Democrats running in Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District, where incumbent Democrat John Sarbanes is not seeking re-election. The heavily Democratic jurisdiction stretches between Baltimore and the nation’s capital.
Trump and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik referred to the Jan. 6 defendants who went to prison as “hostages,” reflecting a shift in tone among some conservatives toward the violent attempt to overturn the election result. Evans wrote a 2023 book titled “Political Prisoner: The Untold Story of January 6th.”
“I think this fits into the general theme of what is seen as accepted political behavior among some Republicans in the 2020s, which probably wouldn’t have been the case 10 or 20 years ago,” said Scott Crichlow, associate professor of political science at West VirginiaUniversity. “Specifically, I think it falls within Derrick Evans’ general sphere of behavior. But also that seems to fit more and more, at least among some Republicans, with what you want to see candidates doing and saying today.”
Later this month, another defendant convicted on January 6, construction superintendent Chuck Hand, is running in the US Republican primary in southwest Georgia’s 2nd District. Hand faces three other Republicans on May 21 for the right to face the longtime Democratic bishop of Sanford. Hand and his wife, Mandy Robinson-Hand, were convicted of misdemeanor parading and picketing at the Capitol. Both were sentenced to 20 days in federal prison.
Both Hand and Evans echo the false claims still made by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen.
Dunn is repulsed by such rhetoric.
“I will not stand by while Donald Trump and his MAGA allies in Congress try to tear our country apart,” he said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
It is not yet known how much legitimacy there is in the protesters’ candidacies. None of those seeking public office have gained much traction with voters so far.
In New Hampshire, Capitol riot defendant Jason Riddle plans to run in a crowded Republican primary for the state’s 2nd District U.S. House seat. The candidate filing period for the September 10 primary is in early June. Incumbent Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster announced in March that she will not seek a seventh term. Riddle was sentenced to 90 days in jail for pouring himself some wine from a lawmaker’s liquor cabinet and for stealing a Senate procedure book that he later sold.
In Arizona, Jacob Chansley, the spear-wielding rioter whose horned fur hat, bare chest and face paint made him one of the riot’s most recognizable figures, served about 27 months of a 41-month sentence. He had hoped to run as a Libertarian in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District seat, but was unable to meet the deadline to turn in the petition signatures required to place his name on the ballot.
Tuesday’s primaries in Maryland and West Virginia will offer a more tangible test.
“On the one hand, Evans sees this as something to be proud of. Dunn sees this as something that should never happen again,” Crichlow said. “And in that way, these two campaigns really capture fundamentally different perspectives on the last few years in politics and what politics will look like going forward.”
