Independent in key House race suspends campaign, saying he was 'pawn' in election fraud scheme

A congressional candidate who said he was tricked by Democrats into running as a spoiler in a competitive House race in Minnesota suspended his campaign Thursday and endorsed his Republican rival.

Thomas Bowman, an independent running in Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District, said he'd come to the realization that he was a “pawn” for Democrats deceptively working to split the conservative vote.

Bowman was among several candidates recruited by the Patriots Run Project, which worked to install pro-Trump conservatives as independent candidates in at least eight key House and Senate races.

An AP investigation found an array of Democratic consulting firms and donors are secretly driving the effort, which used deceptive Facebook pages and websites to recruit candidates and funded efforts to qualify for the ballot.