‘Kick ass’ or move on from 2020 election: Spotlight shines on Mo Brooks and 2022 Senate

One year ago today, Huntsville congressman Mo Brooks stood on a stage at the Ellipse in Washington D.C. and fired up thousands of seemingly like-minded Donald Trump supporters with a speech that included the now oft-scrutinized phrase “kicking ass and taking names.”

Many of those in the crowd would walk the short distance to the Capitol and participate in a riot as lawmakers inside began to certify the 2020 presidential election. Hundreds were charged criminally as rioters forced their way inside the Capitol that fateful day on Jan. 6, 2021.

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Brooks said he was referring to elections in 2022 and 2024 with that “kicking ass” phrase, and not as an encouragement for enraged Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building itself.

But the Huntsville Republican remains the subject of an ongoing lawsuit over his role that day, and the case is expected to linger throughout the 2022 election cycle as Brooks seeks election to fill the slot of retiring Alabama Senator Richard Shelby.

“His behavior that day helped him more than hurt him,” said Jess Brown, a retired political science professor at Athens State University and a longtime observer of Alabama politics. “It welded him at the hip of Donald J. Trump in a way that no other Alabama politician is.”

Also at issue: Is Brooks going to have to appear before the U.S. House Select Committee investigating last year’s Capitol attack before the May 24 primary?

Brooks, unlike other close Trump allies such as Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, welcomes an opportunity for a public hearing before the group.

“If I am asked to testify, my hope is it’s done publicly,” said Brooks, who calls the committee a “witch hunt” coordinated by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “I would hope whatever testimony is taken from here on out is public so the public will see the witnesses giving their testimony and the public can decide for themselves what the true facts are.”

Recent polling shows that 56% of Republicans believe the riot at the nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was about “defending freedom.” Another 47% claim it was about “patriotism.”

Other polls show that most Republicans believe President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected to the White House, despite the audits and dozens of court rulings that debunked former President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud.

Only 33% of Republicans say they will trust the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, as opposed to over 80% of Democrats. In ruby red Alabama where Donald Trump received 62% of the vote last November, those numbers and more loom large as the one-year anniversary of the Capitol arrives.

The polling also begs the question: Could Brooks receive a political boost at a time when his Senate campaign needs one?

“Not sure how this plays out for Brooks, but no candidate is going to turn down free publicity,” said Brent Buchanan, a GOP pollster based in Montgomery.

‘Seen and heard’

Indeed, political insiders say the timing of the anniversary could boost Brooks standing among conservative voters in Alabama who will decide their nominee in less than five months.

Some of those same conservatives booed Brooks in August for suggesting they should move on from the 2020 election, and some analysts say the congressman has mixed messaging about the 2020 elections.

The anniversary’s timing arrives less than one month after a McLaughlin & Associates poll showed the Senate contest essentially tied between Brooks and former Business Council of Alabama head Katie Britt. Eroded is Brooks’ seemingly insurmountable lead he enjoyed earlier in 2021.

“This is a time to be seen and heard,” said Jonathan Gray, a Republican political strategist based in Mobile. “I think he’s given Katie Britt a tremendous amount of opportunity that may well be regretted by May 24.”

Also making gains is Michael Durant, a Huntsville businessman and veteran who famously flew the helicopter that was shot down in Somalia in 1993, an event depicted in a book and a 2001 movie, “Black Hawk Down.”

Brooks, 67, told AL.com during a stop in Mobile on Monday that he is proud of “our fight on the House floor and the Senate floor” a year ago.

No one else in the GOP Senate field can claim as close connections to the day as Brooks, and he is noting that during the campaign.

Britt and Durant, during interviews in recent days, place the blame on the lawbreakers at the Capitol for the riot, but have not criticized Brooks or others who gave speeches.

Brooks blames the media for focusing coverage on the riot rather than the efforts by GOP lawmakers that day to challenge the election results. Six Republicans in the Senate and 121 in the House backed objections to certifying Arizona’s electoral outcome. Seven Senate Republicans and 138 House Republicans supported objections to certifying Pennsylvania’s electoral outcome.

The riot led to 675 arrests in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the Capitol, including over 210 charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. Nearly a dozen Alabama residents were charged for their alleged roles in the unrest outside the building, and three of them have pleaded guilty to federal crimes. Kevin Greeson, 55, of Athens, was one of the five people who died during the rioting.

“I very much wished the people who unlawfully entered the Capitol had not done so because it very much distracted form the voter fraud and election theft evidence 140-plus congressmen and senators were prepared to present and did, in fact, present,” Brooks said.

‘Watershed moment’

Brooks was the first Congressman to announce his challenge to certifying the 2020 election results and backed Trump by calling mail-in voting unconstitutional. He continues to embrace discussions about what he says is “voter fraud and election theft,” saying irregularities have been around “for centuries.” No evidence exists showing voter fraud could have led to widespread overturning of past elections.

Brooks, like other Republicans, points to a 2005 report by the Commission on Federal Election Reform – a private, bipartisan organization led by former President Jimmy Carter and James Baker, who served as secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush — as evidence that election reform is needed.

The panel’s report, conducted in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, listed 87 recommendations and included a call for a nonpartisan professional and state oversight over elections. The report also frowned upon mail-in voting at the time, but Carter – in remarks last spring – said Republicans were selectively picking points to utilize for their own purposes.

Carter also said that mail-in voting had “progressed significantly” in the 16 years since the report’s release.

Brooks encourages his detractors to read the 2005 report, which he calls a “big watershed moment” that exposes “weaknesses in our election system that need to be fixed.”

Other important takeaways from the report included:

• Craft a universal and up-to-date registration list accessible to the public. The states, not local jurisdictions, would be charged with maintaining it.
• Draft a universal voter ID system that increases, not impedes, voter participation.
• Maintain a voter-verifiable paper trail and improve security of voting systems.
• State election bodies be reconstituted as nonpartisan.

But the posturing around the 2020 election, while initially benefitting Brooks, came with some recent political stumbles.

He was booed in August during a Trump rally in Cullman after suggesting the crowd should put the 2020 election results behind them.

Brooks somewhat revised his position this week.

“We need to be mindful of what happened in 2020 with the voter fraud and election theft,” he said. “But the solution is what we do going forward. We need to fix the systemic weaknesses of our election system identified by the Commission of Federal Election Reforms and we need to win the elections of 2022 and 2024 so we have the power in state legislatures and the Congress to make our election system more accurate and more honest rather than more susceptible to voter fraud and election theft.”

Trump endorsement

National media reports suggested Brooks irked Trump with his remarks in Cullman. The president’s endorsement remains Brooks’ biggest advantage, political observers note, ahead of the GOP…