"Wreak havoc": Text messages suggest a top Wisconsin Republican tried to suppress Black vote
Wisconsin GOP operative Carlton Huffman is blowing the whistle on what he claims was an effort to suppress Black votes ahead of the 2020 election. While unproven confessions from a disgraced figure accused of sexual assault may be viewed with suspicion, the text messages he revealed to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel implicate new Wisconsin GOP executive director Andrew Iverson in an apparent 2020 election plot to sabotage "Souls to the Polls," a Black-led voter turnout group.
"Can Mario [Herrera, head of Hispanic outreach for Trump Victory] help get some Trump supporters to participate in Souls to the Polls?" Iverson texted Huffman on Election Day. "'Can't wait to go vote for President Trump!' Wearing [sic] MAGA hat or something."
The then-Wisconsin state head of Trump Victory continued: "I'm excited about this. Wreak havoc."
Iverson released a statement claiming that the text messages were jokes not meant to be taken seriously. But Huffman said that he didn't take them as such at the time. He told the Journal-Sentinel that Iverson was trying to suppress the Black vote by forcing Souls to the Polls to divert valuable resources on Trump supporters.
"I had had some concerns leading up to that point, but I just kept my head down, did my job and kept my mouth shut otherwise," said Huffman, who claimed to have ignored the directive. "But I had said there was a red line for me, and that was being told to do anything that was immoral."
According to Huffman, Iverson made followup calls throughout Election Day to make sure that his orders were followed through. In response to Huffman's accusations, Iverson derided his former staffer as "a disgruntled colleague who has a history of fabricating the truth and was fired for threatening his coworkers and espousing white supremacist views."
The effort to sabotage Souls to the Polls wasn't the first time Iverson used dubious tactics for electoral gain (what he himself called "stunts"). Huffman claims that, in August 2020, Iverson ordered him to distribute flyers around the Democratic National Convention portraying Vice President Kamala Harris as a cop, hoping that the media would blame disillusioned supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Iverson, for his part, claims he merely approved of a plan that Huffman conjured up himself.
