# Jim Marchant Nevada Republican and election denier, the party's **2022** nominee for Secretary of State (defeated) and — after winning a contested primary on **June 9, 2026** — its **2026 nominee for the same office**, facing the incumbent who beat him, [[Cisco Aguilar]], on **November 3, 2026**. He is the founder of the **[[America First]] Secretary of State Coalition**, a national slate of denier candidates who ran to control the election machinery of multiple swing states simultaneously. The coalition's near-uniform defeat in 2022 was treated as the turning point against the movement to seize election administration. ## The 2026 primary The Republican primary was a four-way contest that was not called until **June 15, 2026**. Marchant finished first, ahead of Shirley Folkins-Roberts — who carried the endorsement of Republican Governor [[Joe Lombardo]] — and former state assemblywoman Sharron Angle, the party's 2010 U.S. Senate nominee. "None of These Candidates," a Nevada ballot option, also drew votes. > [!quote] Jim Marchant, on winning the June 2026 primary > "Despite being massively outspent in this election, I'm proud to again be chosen by Nevada conservatives to be their champion in the race for Secretary of State." He also called the result "a victory for voter ID." His platform is the one he ran on in 2022: eliminate electronic voting machines, end universal mail voting, and require hand-counted paper ballots. He has said he and [[Donald Trump]] were "victims of election fraud" in 2020, for which no evidence has been produced, and has opposed mail ballots while voting by mail himself as a Florida voter. > [!note] Why the renomination is the finding > The standard reading of 2022 was that the election-denial slate hit its ceiling with voters. The 2026 primary tests a different question — whether it hit its ceiling *inside the party* — and answers it the other way: the same nominee, returned four years later, over the sitting Republican governor's own preferred candidate. Losing a general election removed the officeholder-in-waiting; it did not remove the constituency that nominates him. See [[Election Denialism]]. ## 2022 Marchant lost the 2022 general election to [[Cisco Aguilar]], **473,467 votes (46.7%) to 496,569 (48.9%)** — a margin of about two points in an open-seat race, the closest of the coalition's losses in a marquee state. ## See Also - [[Cisco Aguilar]] — the incumbent who beat him in 2022 and faces him again in 2026 - [[America First]] · [[Election Denialism]] · [[Stop the Steal]] - [[2026 Key State Races Hub]] · [[Battleground Election Officials Hub]] - [[Donald Trump]] · [[Joe Lombardo]]