Placeholder while loading article actions
Voters in Georgia’s Republican primary on Tuesday rejected an attempt by former President Donald Trump to overthrow Republican officials who refused to join his fight to overturn the 2020 election. Gov. Brian Kemp defeated rival David Perdue in a burst and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger won the nomination. .
The race between Kemp and Perdue, a former senator, has been developed over the past five months as the most salient test of Trump’s appeal in this year’s primaries on behalf of the candidates who are largely competing with his false claims that stole his election. He personally recruited Perdue and actively promoted his candidacy against Kemp. Trump has criticized Kemp since the governor certified President Biden’s victory in the state.
In the Georgia vote, another statewide Republican contest was a measure of the intensity behind Trump’s push to oust Republicans who rejected his calls to try to block Biden’s victory. Raffensperger, who rejected pressure from Trump to “find” enough votes to make him the winner, defeated MP Jody Hice, a candidate backed by the former president.
“Even in the midst of difficult primaries, the conservatives in our state did not hear the noise. They were not distracted,” Kemp said in statements to supporters after Perdue had conceded.
The governor did not name Trump by name, but boasted of his record of reopening Georgia during the pandemic and attacked Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.
“Georgia would be just a variant of blockades, government mandates, closed schools and closed businesses,” he said.
Raffensperger was on the verge of winning more than 50 percent of the vote and avoiding a second round, the Associated Press projected Wednesday morning. Prior to this screening, Raffensperger tried to declare a “victory from behind”, saying that he had been “defending the truth and not giving in to pressure”, and that voters saw it.
All the evidence has shown that Biden’s victory in Georgia, and at the national level, was legitimate. And while many Democrats have long criticized Trump’s baseless rhetoric, some powerful Republicans saw Georgia’s primaries as a potential turning point that could push the party away from re-liting the last election and curbing Trump’s efforts to turn many primaries into account resolution matters. during 2020 and attempts to install loyalists who pledge allegiance in future elections.
So far this year, Trump has had a mixed record in contested primaries where he endorsed. JD Vance, an author and venture capitalist backed by the former president, won the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate in Ohio. But Mehmet Oz, his choice in Pennsylvania, is stuck in an unresolved race against a more conventional candidate a week after the primaries, which are likely to lead to a countdown. Trump has faced stronger winds in the gubernatorial race, where his backed Nebraska and Idaho candidates recently lost.
Tuesday’s results in Georgia were a significant blow to Trump. He has worked obsessively to defeat Republicans who did not work to undo their 2020 election defeat, endorsing and sometimes recruiting their main rivals. He has celebrated the retirement of House Republicans who voted to oust him after a January 6, 2021, uprising at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, and will campaign this weekend in Wyoming. by Harriet Hageman, a Republican activist who challenges the rep. Liz Cheney, vocal critic of Trump.
Georgia’s primaries on Tuesday were part of a broader series of intraparty contests in states like Alabama, Texas, Arkansas and Minnesota that strategists were looking at for Democratic and Republican leadership indicators ahead of the November legislature.
In South Texas, a heated Democratic scandal between Rep. Henry Cuellar and immigration lawyer Jessica Cisneros was the latest clash between the centrist and liberal wings of the party. Cuéllar, the only anti-abortion Democrat in the House, clashed with Cisneros, who also ran on his left for immigration. Late on Tuesday night, Cisneros and Cuellar were in a tight race with one estimated at 89 percent of the vote counted.
In the suburbs of Atlanta, Democrat Lucy McBath defeated Democratic Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux in the second member-to-member contest of the year. A new Republican-drawn map of Congress turned McBath’s seat into a Republican safe state, so it ran in an adjacent district against Bourdeaux. McBath raised more money than Bourdeaux, who was one of nine House Democrats who demanded that last year’s bipartisan infrastructure bill be removed from the party’s social spending package.
McBath first ran in Congress in 2018 as an activist against armed violence following the 2012 murder of his teenage son. Ronda Harris, 48, attended McBath’s election night party to show her support for a woman who, like her, is suffering the loss of a child. Harris wore a red shirt that read, “Mothers Demand Gun Sense Action in America.”
“We’re both survivors,” Harris said of McBath. “I lost my son in 2017 due to armed violence. It is still an unresolved case. He was murdered. He was returning home after visiting his father and we are not really sure what happened.… The only way “I think you can survive such a horrible thing. Find a way to defend your loved one, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m not here to fight for your rights. I’m not here to fight for your life. I’m here, so it’s my responsibility to get up and do what I can to prevent other people from having that experience. “
His statements came just hours after a deadly mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that claimed the lives of at least 18 children and a teacher.
Republicans also took part in heated struggles in different states.
In Alabama, a Republican primary for an open Senate seat confronted Rep. Mo Brooks, who had Trump’s endorsement, and then lost it to Katie Britt, a former aide to retiring Republican Sen. Richard C. Shelby. . The two candidates advanced to the second round on Tuesday afternoon.
In Texas, State Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump-backed incumbent, defeated State Land Commissioner George P. Bush, the grandson and nephew of two former presidents, in a heavily guarded second Republican round.
MP Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican from Georgia, won multiple primary opponents, with some Democrats in their Conservative district believing in supporting them.
Trump won an expected victory in Georgia’s Republican primary for the United States Senate, where he won NFL star Herschel Walker. He will face Democratic Sen. Raphael G. Warnock.
In Arkansas, Sarah Sanders, Trump’s former White House press secretary, easily won her candidacy for Republican gubernatorial candidate.
In the southern strip of Minnesota, 10 Republicans and eight Democrats competed for nominations to replace the late Rep. Jim Hagedorn, a Republican who died in February after a battle with cancer. With the majority of votes counted, State Rep. Jeremy Munson was blocked in a tight race with Brad Finstad, a former Trump administration nominee, for the Republican nomination, while Hormel’s former CEO Jeff Ettinger easily won the Democratic nomination.
But much of the focus of both parties on Tuesday focused on the Republican governor primaries in Georgia. Perdue’s loss threatened Trump’s reputation as the creator of GOP kings.
Perdue surrendered to Kemp less than 90 minutes after the polls in Georgia were closed. “I hope you’ve made some reservations for dinner,” he joked in front of a small audience expected for a longer night.
Kemp will now focus on Abrams, a former minority leader in the state House who had no opposition on the Democratic side. Abrams, who lost to Kemp in 2018, is struggling to become the first black female governor in the country.
Voters interviewed Tuesday morning at two polling stations in Republican-oriented East Cobb County outside of Atlanta expressed a strong preference for Kemp over Perdue.
Charles “Stan” Tommasello, 75, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot, said he initially supported Perdue when Trump first supported him, but later hesitated.
“At first I was worried about the original count of the election and the manner [Kemp] supported Raffensperger, “said Tommasello.” I thought Perdue worked very poorly. [campaign] and I didn’t have the energy I expected from him. “
But Tommasello said he sided with Trump in voting against Raffensperger.
Nicki, a 46-year-old business administrator at the Newton County Board of Education who declined to share her last name, said Trump’s endorsements did not influence her, a sentiment that is reflected in the data. state surveys. He voted in favor of Kemp and Raffensperger, congratulating Kemp on keeping business open during the pandemic.
Although he is a supporter of Trump, Nicki said, the former president should have been neutral.
“I think Trump should have been out of Georgia” and not get involved “because his feelings were hurt,” he said.
Leading GOP figures, such as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, took to the track to endorse Kemp in the final weeks of the race, urging the party to look beyond 2020. On Monday, former Vice President Mike Pence, in a direct disapproval of his former boss, campaigned for Kemp in Georgia.
In a competitive tele-rally for Perdue on Monday, Trump tried to convince Republican voters in Georgia that Kemp could not defeat Abrams.
“There are too many people in the Republican Party who will refuse to vote,” he said. The former president also used his Social Truth account on Monday to present more refuted theories of the 2020 election conspiracy.
Perdue said Abrams should “go back to where he came from if he doesn’t like it here,” a comment he recalls when Trump said four black Democratic congressmen should “go back and help fix the totally broken and infested places.” of crimes from which. They came. ” Also lost …