Gardner, the nation’s longest-serving secretary of state, is by far the most prominent Democrat on the commission. On Sept. 12 he will host its second meeting, in New Hampshire. Those moves have frustrated Democrats and even some Republicans back home.
“I personally wish that he had declined to be involved,” Fergus Cullen, the former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party and a frequent Trump critic, told TPM. “It gives this farce a sense of legitimacy.”