2022 Republican candidates are still pushing conspiracy theories about Trump's 2020 loss while ignoring their own party's recent momentous victories

• 2022 Republicans are running on Trump's election lies while ignoring their own party's wins.
• GOP Senate candidates continue to jockey for Trump's endorsement as primaries near.

GOP candidates running in 2022 are walking a tightrope of backing former President Donald Trump's 2020 election lies while ignoring the their own party's big victories down the ballot under the same kind of expansive voting rules that Republicans like Trump have decried as unfair and baselessly claimed caused voter fraud.

With the first primaries of the 2022 midterms just months away, Republicans in key swing states are continuing to run on outrage over Trump's loss while turning the other cheek to the strategies and messages that have worked for winning candidates.

Just last week, Republicans pulled off a statewide sweep in blue-trending Virginia, flipping the governorship, lieutenant governorship, attorney general's office, and the House of Delegates - all after the Democrats who currently control those offices spent their time in power expanding access to the ballot and rolling back the state's previously-restrictive voting rules.

But candidates aggressively angling for a Trump endorsement and a large enough share of the GOP primary electorate to win seem to be showing no sign of slowing their roll when it comes to delegitimizing last year's elections.

This dissonance between the GOP continuing to claim foul play was starkly on display in a recent video put out by Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters, a venture capitalist and executive at Thiel Capital, which is backed by billionaire Peter Thiel. Masters has jumped into Arizona's crowded Republican primary to take on Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

"I think Trump won the 2020 election," Masters, walking against a scenic outdoor backdrop, declared in the video. "Maybe you disagree. But this election was really messed up. We saw states change rules at the last minute to flood the zone with mail-in ballots." He made this claim although there is no evidence that expanding mail voting confers a clear advantage to either party.

Masters went on to decry the media and big technology platforms' roles in the election, saying, "Trump wins big in a fair fight."

"I approve this message because election integrity is the most important issue, and we've got to do so much better" he said in conclusion.

Masters did not, however, address how his theory squares with the GOP's downballot victories in 2020 or their more recent victories last week. He also didn't offer specifics on how or why the US's biggest institutions "conspired" successfully to install Joe Biden as president while forgetting to secure more US Senate and House seats or any of last week's Virginia races for the Democrats.

Masters did not respond to Insider's request for an interview.

Although voters rejected Trump for a second term, the GOP held onto tough Senate seats in Maine, North Carolina, and Montana, surprised political observers by flipping 12 seats in the US House with a diverse slate of candidates, and, crucially, defended every single competitive state legislative chamber up for election, including in Arizona. Republicans also flipped over 80 state legislative seats nationwide - largely in states that expanded voting by mail or relaxed voting rules due to the pandemic.

Masters joins a growing slate of Republicans seeking statewide office in competitive races who have out outright said they believe the 2020 election was stolen or baselessly claimed it was tainted by voter fraud. The group includes Ohio US Senate candidate Josh Mandel, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt, and several candidates seeking to serve as their states' chief election officials, including Mark Finchem in Arizona, Jody Hice in Georgia, and Kristina Karamo in Michigan.

Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin, for his part, was selected by members of his party in a ranked-choice convention. So he avoided intense jockeying to appeal to the base that other candidates running in competitive primary elections have to engage in to win Trump's approval.

And Masters, like all candidates running in tough GOP primaries for federal offices especially in 2022, would get a huge boost from Trump's endorsement.

"Blake Masters may be running for Senate in Arizona, but it's clear his audience is one private citizen holed up in Palm Beach, Florida," Arizona's Democratic Party spokeswoman Sarah Guggenheimer said in a statement about Masters' new ad.

"Masters' comments are dangerous and give oxygen to baseless conspiracies that are damaging to our democracy," she added.

Trump has endorsed candidates in competitive Republican Senate primaries in Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, but has not yet chosen a candidate to back in Arizona's Senate primary. He did, however, attend a fundraiser for Masters hosted at his Mar-a-Lago club hosted by Thiel and other heavyweight technology executives and prominent GOP donors.

The former president remains fixated on his 2020 election loss and recently declared that Republicans "will not be voting" unless the GOP "fixes" the non-existent "fraud" of 2020, a statement he later tried to walk back.

But Youngkin's general election victory in a state that Biden won by 10 percentage points in 2020 shows how Republicans can win by adopting some of Trump's messaging on election integrity to motivate their base - and maximize voter turnout without going full-throttle on the stolen election talk - while also focusing on potent issues like employment, inflation, and education.