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By Josh Israel
Don Bolduc's backers also include state representatives who attempted to eliminate the entire New Hampshire government.
Several state legislators who backed efforts to secede from the United States or dissolve the state government have endorsed Don Bolduc, a Republican Senate candidate in New Hampshire.
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On July 26, Bolduc — a retired Army brigadier general and failed 2020 Senate candidate — released a list of 41 Republican state representatives endorsing his candidacy. This amounts to about one-fifth of the 206 current members of the New Hampshire House Republican Caucus.
In a press release, he praised the lawmakers as "true patriots" committed to the nation:
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Six of Bolduc's endorsers — Reps. Max Abramson, Dustin Dodge, Dennis Green, Raymond Howard, Diane Kelley, and Paul Terry — backed a proposed state constitutional amendment to provide "that the state peaceably declares independence from the United States and proceeds as a sovereign nation."
Those six were among just 13 "no" votes as 323 of their colleagues successfully moved to kill the amendment by deeming it "inexpedient to legislate."
Dodge, Green, and Howard also signed on as co-sponsors of the secession legislation.
In December 2020, Howard and three others on Bolduc's endorsement list — Reps. José Cambrils, Dave Testerman, and Scott Wallace — reportedly co-authored a letter calling for "termination of the state" of New Hampshire's government based on "fraud" in the 2020 election and declaring it "is, and Right ought to be a Free and Independent State as defined by Part I, Bill of Rights, Article VII."
Their "Declaration of Independence" was signed by six state representatives in total and 31 other activists.
A Bolduc spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story.
Some of the other state legislators backing Bolduc have come under bipartisan criticism in the past for sharing bigoted messages online.
Rep. Dawn Johnson faced criticism and calls to step down in December 2020 after she shared an antisemitic story and cartoon from the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website accusing Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp of conspiring with Jews to rig the election. She later apologized but refused to resign.
In October 2021, Rep. Ken Weyler stepped down from his committee assignments, but not his state House seat, after sending colleagues a 52-page anti-vaccine manifesto that included anti-Catholic conspiracy theories. Among these were a baseless claim of a secret Pope and an accusation that church leaders are Satanists.
In September 2018, an image shared on Rep. Harry Bean's Facebook page reportedly showed Hillary Clinton and her campaign vice chair Huma Abedin with nooses, suggesting that the two should be hanged. Bean claimed to be unaware of the image a year later and told a local news outlet that his account had been hacked.