The Oregon Secretary of State race between Democrat Tobias Read and Republican Dennis Linthicum is turning the election clock back to 2020.

The Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association produced a social media ad featuring soundbites from the candidates’ Oct. 11 joint appearance on OPB Radio’s Think Out Loud. “The video captures Senator Linthicum’s continued unwillingness to acknowledge the outcomes of the 2020 election,” Read’s campaign manager, Andrea Phillips, said by email on Tuesday. 

Phillips said Linthicum’s “election denialism” was reflected in an Oct. 5 CNN story, the OPB interview and Linthicum’s comments during a Salem Area Chamber of Commerce candidates forum on Oct. 14.

On OPB, State Treasurer Read contended that state Sen. Linthicum has refused to say whether he believes Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election against President Donald Trump. Read said the question was pertinent because the secretary of state oversees Oregon’s elections and certifies the results.

Linthicum said Read’s question was irrelevant because Biden has been in office nearly four years.

“There is no such thing as an ‘election denier,’” Linthicum told EO Media Group in a text on Tuesday. “Biden has been president for four disastrous years. Is my opponent suggesting that the banning of election watchers in Pennsylvania and covering of counting office windows in Georgia was and should be a necessary and appropriate part of our electoral process?”

CNN had published an Oct. 5 story that said, “At least 23 of this year’s 51 Republican nominees for governor, state elections chief or the U.S. Senate have rejected or contested the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump.”

Linthicum was included among four GOP secretary of state nominees who “either explicitly rejected or refused to affirm the legitimacy of Biden’s victory.”

The story noted that Linthicum and 11 other current or incoming Republican legislators asked Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum on Dec. 11, 2020, to join Texas’ lawsuit that sought to overturn the presidential election results in four key states. However, the previous day, Rosenblum had announced she was joining 22 other attorney generals in opposing the lawsuit. On the same day that the Republicans sent their letter to Rosenblum, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Texas’ bid.

In addition, Linthicum was among legislators from around the U.S. who signed an Oct. 4, 2021,letter calling for forensic audits of the presidential election results in all 50 states.

During an Oct. 10 interview with EO Media Group, he was asked whether Oregonians could trust this year’s election results.

“Historically, elections have had people who are trying to engineer outcomes, whether it’s Chicago, whether it’s Pittsburgh, whether it’s Estonia or Latvia. This has always been a problem and people should, I think the appropriate stance is, people should be skeptical, and they should require from their legislative body rules that are strict enough to require faith in the system,” he said.

He was a plaintiff in an unsuccessful lawsuit to end vote-by-mail in Oregon. As secretary of state, he said, he would follow state law, which requires mail balloting, but would review state rules on a variety of matters, including elections.

“The first thing I would do is I would rewrite many of the rules that come from the Secretary of State’s Office,” he said. “The Secretary of State’s office, for example, created a contract with an AI company that put in place a surveillance, censorship type of software package.”

On OPB the next day, Linthicum brought up that contract with Logically AI, a British technology company specializing in analyzing and fighting disinformation. 

That led to the following exchange, as recorded by OPB:

Read: “I think there is kind of a gap between what the senator is trying to tell people right now and his real track record. He’s been unwilling so far to commit to certifying an election if he were secretary of state if he disagreed with the outcomes. In fact, he doesn’t even acknowledge the 2020 election result. I mean, you should ask him right now if he thinks Joe Biden won the 2020 election.”

The candidates then argued about lawsuits before Read interrupted.

Read: “Senator, did Joe Biden win the election in 2020?”

Linthicum: “There is no basis for that claim. You haven’t seen the evidence.”

Read: “Did Biden win the election in 2020?”

Linthicum: “Senator Biden has been president for four years and you’re asking a question like that

Read: “Well, I haven’t heard an answer.”

OPB host Dave Miller: “Yeah, if you want to answer that question — if not, we’ll move on to the next issue here. But Dennis Linthicum, do you want to answer that question?”

Linthicum: “The answer is irrelevant. President Biden has been in office for four years. Vice President Kamala Harris is now the Democratic nominee without being in a single primary, without receiving a single vote in any primary. And Tobias is going to interrupt me here and say that’s because we want to save democracy. There’s no votes going on here that anybody can count or attest to.”