Back in January, three Republicans vying for their party’s nomination in a highly competitive Colorado congressional district north of Denver were asked for a yes-or-no answer about whether the 2020 election was “stolen from President Donald Trump.”
One hemmed and hawed before finally answering yes. The second offered a quick and decisive no. The third candidate — and the one who would emerge as the nominee for a seat that Republicans hope to flip next month in their drive to keep control of the House — equivocated.
“No-ish,” replied Gabe Evans, the 38-year-old state representative who is running to unseat Representative Yadira Caraveo, a first-term Democrat and the state’s first Latina member of Congress.
Mr. Evans is working to appeal to voters in this tossup district as a pragmatic Republican, calling himself a “common-sense” politician and in one ad proclaiming that “Yadira Caraveo is the real extremist.” But if he makes it to Congress next year, Mr. Evans will be part of a new class of Republicans who reflect the shift to the right that has been taking place within the party, even among those who represent purple districts.
House Republicans who have denied the 2020 election results or refused to commit to accepting the 2024 outcome, and who hold more extreme views on social issues, are running in critical congressional races throughout the country. They are poised to replace the mainstream conservatives who once formed the spine of the G.O.P. in Congress, and who have either left or been purged by a party that regards them as insufficiently hard-line or insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump.
Should they win their races and help Republicans maintain the majority in the House, these candidates will have a role to play in the certification of the 2024 presidential election — and in shaping the ideological agenda of the new Congress.
Mr. Evans, for instance, has said he supports a national abortion ban and that, “if the circumstances wouldn’t warrant killing a born person, the unborn also should not be killed.” At a debate last week, Mr. Evans, who voted against a ban on corporal punishment in Colorado public schools, was asked three times to say when he believed it was appropriate for children to be hit in school. The moderator moved on when it became clear that Mr. Evans did not intend to answer the question.
Mr. Evans has also continued to punt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, saying, “These aren’t yes-no questions.” And he has played down the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, comparing it to the racial justice protests that proliferated across the country after the 2020 murder of George Floyd. At last week’s debate, asked again about election denialism, he said, “We have to make sure every legal vote is counted, but yeah, I always accept the result of elections.”
After the last presidential election, 147 Republicans in Congress voted to overturn the results. Many of those who voted to certify the outcome have since left Capitol Hill. Congress enacted a law in 2022 aimed at averting a repeat of the Jan. 6 crisis and raising the threshold for objecting to a state’s electoral votes.
Still, some Republicans have lamented the election denialism in their party. Former Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, cited it this year as one of his main reasons for departing before his term was done.
A few Republicans in competitive races this year have distanced themselves from the trend. Six G.O.P. lawmakers in tough campaigns to hang on to their seats have signed a bipartisan pledge to certify the results of the 2024 election in January. But a vast majority have not.
Democrats, who are seeking to win back control of the House in November, are hoping the far-right positions that helped many Republican congressional candidates emerge from competitive primaries and get endorsements from Mr. Trump will make them vulnerable in the general election, by turning off independent and moderate voters.
“National Republicans have elevated anti-abortion zealots, election deniers and fringe conspiracy theorists,” said Justin Chermol, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “These unserious recruits are no different from the so-called moderate House Republicans who have enabled unchecked extremism.”
Republicans have tried to moderate or gloss over the hard-right positions they have taken, instead focusing on local issues — including crime, immigration and inflation — that they hope will help them prevail in tight races.
Sarah Chamberlain, the president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group that supports more centrist House Republicans, said she viewed the current recruits as less extreme than those in previous cycles and more focused on delivering results.
“I’m actually noticing a shift away from the exotics into more Main Street conservatives,” she said, pointing to Troy Downing, a candidate for the Montana seat held by a retiring hard-right Republican, Representative Matt Rosendale, and John McGuire’s victory over Representative Bob Good, the former chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, in a red Virginia district.
Those departing lawmakers may have represented the most extreme flank of the party, and this year’s crop of Republican House recruits appears to include fewer truly fringe candidates than the party ran in 2022, when the group included three people who had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6. But what is considered “mainstream” for Republicans has shifted considerably to the right.
Mr. McGuire is an election denier who has pledged fealty to Mr. Trump and promised to bring a “biblical worldview” to Congress.
Ryan Mackenzie, the state representative who is seeking to defeat Representative Susan Wild in Pennsylvania’s battleground Seventh Congressional District in the Lehigh Valley, signed on to a letter in 2020 that asked Congress to reject the Electoral College votes from his state. He also signed onto an amicus brief supporting the Texas lawsuit to overturn Pennsylvania’s electoral results. The Republican who held the seat before Ms. Wild was Charlie Dent, a moderate who was a frequent critic of Mr. Trump.
On Wednesday, former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, endorsed Ms. Wild, saying in a statement that, “we must look beyond partisanship to ensure we defeat election deniers.”
Mr. Mackenzie, who has been endorsed by Mr. Trump, is running on a message of “common-sense solutions” that he says will help lower inflation and cut government spending, and has made his support for hard-line immigration policies central to his campaign. And he has tried to reframe his election denialism as an effort dedicated to “restoring faith” in the election process.
In Michigan, Tom Barrett, a former Army helicopter pilot, is running for an open seat in the state’s Seventh Congressional District. Mr. Barrett was part of a group of state lawmakers who signed a letter to Vice President Mike Pence in 2020 asking him to postpone “the Jan. 6 opening and counting of the electoral votes for at least 10 days.”
In a debate two years ago, he said: “I think the remedy for what transpired was in the courts, and the courts decided months afterward. Barring that decision, I think it was the obligation to certify.” But he said he still harbored “legitimate concerns” about how the election took place.
Mr. Barrett’s campaign is now under scrutiny for running an advertisement in a Black-owned newspaper that incorrectly listed Election Day as Nov. 6, in what the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus is claiming was an intentional effort to disenfranchise Black voters. Election Day is on Nov. 5.
Mr. Barrett’s campaign denied the allegation and said it was a “proofing error.”
In New Mexico’s rural second district, which has flipped from blue to red and back over the past decade, former Representative Yvette Herrell is running for her old seat after being defeated in 2022 by her Democratic opponent, Gabe Vasquez. In 2021, Ms. Herrell objected to certifying the Electoral College results from Arizona and Pennsylvania. She has emphasized immigration in the race, but Mr. Vasquez and Democrats have focused on reproductive rights, noting that Ms. Herrell said in 2020 that she wished “we could have eliminated all abortion in this state.”
In Washington State, Joe Kent, who ran and lost by a slim margin two years ago, once advocated a national abortion ban, supported Jan. 6 defendants and vociferously denied the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. This year, he has backed away from those stances as he pushes to unseat Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the most vulnerable Democrat in the House, who defeated him last cycle in a district that Mr. Trump won twice.
Mr. Kent says he no longer supports a federal abortion ban, saying now that the matter should be left up to the states. He talks more about the economy and inflation than about the election four years ago. Last cycle, he claimed that the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, was caused by a peaceful crowd being infiltrated by Deep State agents provocateurs. In 2022, he defeated former Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Mr. Trump, in a primary.
“This issue of what took place in 2020 — I don’t hear it when I’m out talking to anybody knocking on doors,” Mr. Kent said at a debate this week when pressed on whether he still believed that Mr. Trump won the 2020 election. “There’s a lot of us that have questions about what took place in 2020; it is not a focus of mine.”
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