In Biden’s Home State, Republican Centrism Gives Way to the Fringe – The New York Times

WILMINGTON, Del. — Lauren Witzke, a dabbler in QAnon, a self-proclaimed “flat earther” and the Republican Party’s nominee in Delaware for the Senate, was exhorting her supporters last month to “Go get ’em — America First,” as they squared off against a handful of Black Lives Matter protesters.

Gathered with her in the parking lot of the Republican Party headquarters here was a self-appointed security guard with a gun on his hip, a political adviser whose losing clients include candidates accused of racism and anti-Semitism, and a smattering of Proud Boys, the far-right brawlers whom President Trump told to “stand back and stand by.”

Across the street, Keandra McDole, sister of a wheelchair-bound Black man who was killed in 2015 by the Delaware police, chanted “Lauren Witzke’s got to go,” above the din of revving car engines and calls of “Trump, Trump, Trump” and “K.K.K.” The “security” man pointed his handgun toward the protesters.

“This is ridiculous,” Tori Parker, a Republican Party consultant, said as she scanned the scene from the Black Lives Matter side. “It’s sad that voters feel like they only have a choice between democratic socialism and white supremacy.”

Ms. Witzke’s ascent in Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s home state may be the nadir of the Delaware Republican Party’s rapid swerve from patrician moderation to the far-right fringe. And its plunge from power to irrelevance is an object lesson for other states like Colorado, Oregon and California, where Republicans running statewide are facing a choice: Appeal to the vocal extreme or find some way to assemble a more centrist coalition that could actually elect them.

Ten years ago, Michael Castle, a former Republican governor, sitting House member and pro-business moderate, was supposed to be a shoo-in for the Senate seat that Mr. Biden gave up to become vice president. Then he was blindsided in the Republican primary by Christine O’Donnell, a Tea Party candidate with a sideline in witchcraft who was crushed in the general election by Chris Coons, a relatively unknown Democratic county executive, by a vote of 57 percent to 40 percent.

It’s been downhill since.

“This should be laid right at the feet of the Republican Party,” said Charlie Copeland, a former Delaware Republican Party chairman and a member of the du Pont family, the chemical industry titans who once dominated the state’s center-right Republican Party.

Anthony Delcollo, a Republican state senator from northern Delaware, insisted, “You see some polarization happening, of course, and people are passionate, but I think there’s also a case to be made for folks that are moderate.”

That was an easy case to make not long ago in tiny Delaware, population 974,000, where “the Delaware way” was a model of centrist political accommodation. But over the past decade, Wilmington has become more diverse, its suburbs have moved toward the Democrats the way many other suburbs have, and its rural voters have drifted toward the conspiracy-minded fringes.

Now Mr. Coons finds himself running for re-election against Ms. Witzke, 32, a pro-Trump populist who makes Ms. O’Donnell seem mainstream.

Though Ms. Witzke has been photographed wearing a QAnon T-shirt and has used the movement’s hashtags on social media, she recently distanced herself from QAnon, the baseless conspiracy movement that falsely believes that Mr. Trump is secretly confronting a Satan-worshipping cabal of Democrats who run a global pedophile ring and drink the blood of children. The F.B.I. has warned that QAnon poses a potential domestic terrorism threat.

Ms. Witzke acknowledged in an interview that she was a heavy drug user until 2017, graduating from painkillers to heroin and methamphetamines. To support her addiction, she trafficked in drugs and stolen identification and was charged in 2017 with possession of heroin and methamphetamines, as well as resisting arrest, driving under the influence and introducing illegal drugs into a penal facility, according to a profile of her on delawareonline.com. She says all charges were dropped. She entered a faith-based inpatient treatment facility, emerging, she said, with deepened Christian beliefs and a devotion to Mr. Trump.

Despite all of that, or perhaps because of it, Ms. Witzke beat James DeMartino, 62, a Marine Corps veteran and corporate lawyer, in the Republican primary by double digits. She called him “a RINO loser,” meaning Republican in Name Only.

“People are so tired of George Bush-era politics. Nationalist populism is the future,” Ms. Witzke said. “America First is the future. And that is what I am.”

None of this will help her beat Mr. Coons in November. Democrats now hold every statewide office here, from governor to auditor.