Bedoya disavows QAnon, says slogan on business card was a mistake

Robert Bedoya, a Republican Assembly candidate in the 37th district whose petition signatures are the subject of an ongoing battle, said today that he is not a follower of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon and that the presence of a QAnon slogan on his business card was a mistake.

“I want to make it clear, I am not in any way shape or form an extremist, a conspiracy theorist, or a follower of Q,” Bedoya said in an email to the New Jersey Globe. “The only thing I am is a proud conservative patriot trying to improve his community.”

Bedoya’s business card included the acronym WWG1WGA – short for Where We Go One We Go All, a slogan used by Trump supporters who claimed that a Satanist cabal was intent on removing the now-former president from office. But in his email, Bedoya said he was not aware of the origins of the slogan. 

“I do not espouse [QAnon’s] hateful rhetoric that gets directed to some of the most marginalized members of our society,” he said. “To my own mistake, I was misled to believe that the slogan ‘WWG1WGA’ was a patriotic and military slogan.”

Running in a safely Democratic district, Bedoya might have attracted little attention this election cycle had it not been for his running mate Dierdre Paul’s decision to challenge his petitions. Paul, who is the presumptive Republican Senate nominee in the 37th district, went to court last week to disqualify Bedoya from the ballot.

Administrative Law Judge Joann Candido initially found only 99 of Bedoya’s signatures to be valid, pushing him below the 100-signature threshold necessary for ballot access. But after redoing her calculations earlier this week, Candido determined that Bedoya in fact had 105 valid signatures, and issued a decision keeping him on the ballot.

Paul has since continued trying to disqualify Bedoya’s candidacy, filing objections to Candido’s rulings on certain signatures. Secretary of State Tahesha Way issued a final decision keeping Bedoya on the ballot yesterday; it’s not clear if there’s anything left that Paul can do to fight against the decision.

“I’m going to exhaust every option,” Paul told the New Jersey Globe earlier this week. “I’m not going to let this go down without a fight. If they think that, then obviously they don’t know me.”

This story was updated at 1:22 p.m. with more information about developments in the battle over Bedoya’s petitions.

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