Timothy Ramthun, a Republican pushing to overturn 2020 election, appears poised to enter race for Wisconsin governor

Molly Beck Bill Glauber
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Rep. Timothy Ramthun, R-Campbellsport, listens to testimony.

MADISON – A state lawmaker who was disciplined by the Assembly leader over false election claims and who has repeatedly called on his colleagues to take the impossible action of overturning Wisconsin's 2020 presidential election results, appears to be running for governor. 

A new campaign website that was taken down late Wednesday said Rep. Timothy Ramthun, a Republican from Campbellsport, is running on a platform of election scrutiny and is endorsed by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive who has heavily promoted baseless election conspiracy theories.

"I'm a servant of, by, and for the people who believes in truth, transparency, and integrity," says a message attributed to Ramthun on the website. "I will call for an independent full forensic physical cyber audit for the November 2022 election, beginning with my race regardless of its outcome," the campaign website said. 

"It's time we restore confidence in our elections process."

A Ramthun entry into the race would scramble the Republican primary for governor. Ramthun has been praised publicly and privately by former President Donald Trump for his push to undo the 2020 election result, a legally impossible task. 

Wisconsin remains important to Trump, who began calling the 2020 contest into question before ballots here were even cast and continues to make false claims about an election outcome that has been confirmed by judges, audits and reviews. 

Ramthun filed paperwork to run for governor with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission on Thursday and is planning a Saturday event in Kewaskum. He would join former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and U.S. Marine veteran Kevin Nicholson in the Republican primary for governor. 

Kleefisch and Nicholson have called for the Legislature to dismantle the state elections commission and enact new election rules, but have not shown support for overturning the 2020 election result like Ramthun. 

Ramthun did not return phone calls from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 

Praise from MyPillow's Mike Lindell

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell speaks before President Donald Trump's campaign appearance Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, at the La Crosse County Fairgrounds in West Salem.

Lindell, whose endorsement appears on campaign flyers available to print out from the website, confirmed in an interview with the Journal Sentinel that he endorsed Ramthun for governor and said he plans to be at an event Ramthun is holding on Saturday in Washington County.

"He's going to win — 100%. It's not even going to be close," he said. "We're going to get rid of the (voting) machines. In Wisconsin, and nationwide, we're going county by county. And when you do that, now you're going to have elections that people get one person one vote." 

Ramthun has long called for lawmakers to move to overturn the election results despite there being no legal mechanism to do so and has largely been ignored by legislative leaders, with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos once dismissing it as a "talking point of the far left and far right."

On Jan. 25, Assembly leaders rejected for the second time a proposal from Ramthun to pull back Wisconsin's electoral votes cast in the 2020 election, which is illegal. 

Ramthun proposed the idea during a floor session but the resolution was referred the resolution to a committee used to schedule floor votes for bills, a required action for such proposals under Assembly rules, and that committee's chairman quickly said Ramthun's resolution wouldn't be taken up

"All these Republican legislators, just like in Wisconsin, that didn't do anything about this election crime. Now, it's right in front of their face," Lindell said. "You've got Tim who raised his hand and said we've got to do something here."

Ramthun included on his site a link to his 72-page Power Point presentation on how he plans to revoke the state’s 10 electoral votes for President Joe Biden.

Nonpartisan attorneys for the Legislature have said pulling back the state’s electoral votes is impossible. 

He also set up accounts for his campaign on Instagram, Rumble, TikTok and Telegram.

“Truth-Transparency-Integrity. A battle tested conservative servant of, by, and for the people,” his bio on Telegram said.

The Saturday event may be held at the Kewaskum High School auditorium, according to multiple social media posts advertising a "special announcement" from Ramthun.

Kewaskum School District superintendent Mark Bazata said Tuesday the district had not yet received a reservation for the space, however. Ramthun is a school board member in the same district. 

The Ramthun, Robin Vos feud

The potential entrance to the governor's race comes about three weeks after Vos removed a full-time staff position from Ramthun's legislative office over false claims Vos said Ramthun made about him and the 2020 election. 

The move enraged a segment of the Wisconsin Republican base who want legislative leadership to do more to probe the 2020 election result, a distrust that blossomed after Trump made repeated false claims about "ballot dumps" and other alleged problems that he said contributed to his loss in Wisconsin instead of getting fewer votes than Biden. 

Vos has become a target for that intense exasperation, despite being the only legislative leader who launched a review of the 2020 election. 

More:A who's who guide to the Republican review of Wisconsin's 2020 presidential election

In January, a group of people who appeared to support Ramthun confronted Republican lawmakers in their offices with criticism and calls for Vos to be fired. Many said the review Vos launched was too secretive. 

More:Wisconsin Republican leader Robin Vos is caught in the middle over the election probe as he faces criticism from the left and right

The group surreptitiously filmed two lawmakers as one called for cheating in elections and another slammed a Capitol office door in the face of a man distributing a petition to oust Vos.  

Vos' decision also spurred a handful of county Republican parties in recent weeks to pass resolutions calling for Vos to resign as speaker. At the same time, Ramthun has grown in popularity among Trump loyalists — appearing on a number of far-right podcasts including one hosted by Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist under Trump.

In the days after Vos disciplined Ramthun, more than $20,000 was raised on a GiveSendGo donation page for Tristan Johannes, the full-time staff member who lost his Capitol job with Ramthun.

Ramthun has released a series of videos taped from his legislative office in the state Capitol detailing theories about the 2020 election and how, in his view, it was incorrectly called for Biden. Johannes produced the videos and at times appeared in them. 

More:Wisconsin Republican invokes the QAnon theme as he seeks private funding for an Arizona-style election audit

'The recompense is coming'

The series' theme, "Let there be light," also appears as a campaign theme on the Ramthun website. 

"Without getting into specifics, the recompense is coming," Ramthun said in a Jan. 24 podcast interview about Vos' decision to remove Johannes. 

"I hear stuff like, 'you know, the speaker plays chess while everyone else is playing checkers.' Well, if you have strong intuition and strong discernment in the move-counter move, and anticipate elements of being a good chess player, you would not have done what you did last Wednesday by taking my staff away because you poked the hornet's nest in this entire state and beyond."

Vos has said he stripped Ramthun of his only full-time staffer after Ramthun falsely accused Vos of signing a deal with attorneys for former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to authorize ballot drop boxes. 

He told reporters in January that no one agrees with Ramthun’s claim that Wisconsin can revoke the 10 electoral votes it delivered to President Joe Biden more than a year ago. 

He said an election review he authorized last summer, at a cost of $676,000 to taxpayers, is aimed at changing how future elections are conducted.

Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report. 

Contact Molly Beck at molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.