Source: Politics<\/p>\n
VININGS, Ga. \u2014 Brad Raffensperger is fighting to save his political future as MAGA takes hold of the Georgia GOP.<\/p>\n
The secretary of state rose to national prominence by defying President Donald Trump\u2019s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but he is carefully trying to avoid the anti-Trump lane while he runs for governor.<\/p>\n
Instead, he\u2019s running an old-school campaign aimed at an old-school Republican Party: He\u2019s holding low-key events compared with his GOP opponents\u2019 flashier rallies<\/a>, and he\u2019s focusing on bread-and-butter issues, rather than harping on election security. At one Atlanta-area rotary club gathering in April, Raffensperger was all too happy to tout his business background and his pledge to cap property taxes. Everywhere he goes, he drops the word conservative.<\/p>\n \u201cI have my own lane, and I feel good where we are,\u201d Raffensperger told POLITICO after the event. \u201cIt\u2019s the lane about being a Christian conservative businessman who\u2019s built a business from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n At its core, Raffensperger\u2019s candidacy is a test of whether the party\u2019s non-MAGA guard can hold on in one of the nation\u2019s premiere battleground states. He\u2019s defied expectations before, fending off a Trump-backed candidate in 2022<\/a> to keep his current position. But 2026 poses a new challenge, as Georgia\u2019s GOP has increasingly shunned its small government roots in favor of aligning with the populist right.<\/p>\n Raffensperger maintains he has a path to victory. Asked whether Trump\u2019s grip on the party is complicating it, he deflected: \u201cI’m doing just fine. I’m going to be in the run-off.\u201d<\/p>\n But the reality is Raffensperger is still struggling to break through in the governor\u2019s race, polling at a consistent third place<\/a> behind Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson ahead of the May 19 primary. Republican strategists and officials in the state were widely skeptical of Raffensperger\u2019s chances of success.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the party of Trump today \u2014 like it or not, it is \u2014 and I find it very difficult to see someone being able to be anti-Trump in a Republican primary and be successful,\u201d said Casey Cagle, a Republican who served as lieutenant governor from 2007 to 2019. He\u2019s experienced the rise of the MAGA base firsthand and has since tacked further to the right.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe base has grown far, far greater to the right than what it was in my day,\u201d said Cagle, who is supporting Jones in the governor\u2019s race. \u201cThe core of the Republican Party has moved far away from the Chamber of Commerce mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n Before February of this year, Raffensperger seemed poised to draw enough support in the primary to keep Jones under the 50 percent threshold he needed to trigger a run-off election. Then Jackson upended the race with his bombastic spending and MAGA pandering, pushing Raffensperger further down in the polls<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even if the secretary of state were to make a run-off against either Jones or Jackson, his chances of actually winning the nomination are still slim, said GOP strategist Jeremy Brand, who has worked on Gov. Brian Kemp-aligned committees<\/a> and is unaffiliated in the governor\u2019s race.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’d be incredibly tough,\u201d Brand said. \u201cThe edge in a run-off where voters are traditionally more conservative, that are willing to come back out again, I think the odds go to the more conservative candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n Raffensperger has been battling his own party on various fronts since he first stood up to Trump.<\/p>\n A faction of the Georgia GOP tried to bar him from seeking office<\/a> again on the Republican ticket. And local party leaders recently broke with precedent<\/a> to allow the RNC to eschew its neutrality and spend resources on backing Jones in the primary. The MAGA base that failed to oust Raffensperger in 2022 is trying again to end his political career \u2014 along with others deemed insufficiently loyal to the president.<\/p>\n Attorney General Chris Carr, like Raffensperger, is also mounting a bid for governor and previously defeated a Trump-backed challenger in 2022. But he\u2019s polling even lower<\/a> than the secretary of state. And Gabriel Sterling, a former top Raffensperger lieutenant, is locked in a noisy primary in his bid for secretary of state<\/a> as he faces off against a former Democrat-turned-MAGA acolyte and a GOP state representative who once served as Kemp\u2019s top aide.<\/p>\n The 2020 election has continued to be a key litmus test in Georgia, especially as Trump continues to air his grievances<\/a> over his loss. Several recounts and extensive litigation have only proven Raffensperger\u2019s case that former President Joe Biden fairly defeated Trump in 2020. But many voters and candidates continue to question the truth of the results in a show of loyalty to the president, further isolating the secretary from the increasingly conservative Republican base.<\/p>\n \u201cI voted for Trump. I wish he\u2019d have won. I think he did win, I’m one of those people,\u201d said Bruce Brooker, 72, outside a Jones campaign event in rural Atkinson County earlier this month.<\/p>\n An April POLITICO Poll found<\/a> that most respondents who plan to vote for Republicans this midterm are still skeptical: Nearly 40 percent say the 2020 election was stolen, while 25 percent don\u2019t believe it was but have questions about the election\u2019s legitimacy. Just 25 percent say the election wasn\u2019t stolen.<\/p>\n Raffensperger continues to defend his work and the integrity of Georgia’s elections at large \u2014 \u201cI’m really proud because we made elections more secure\u201d \u2014 and is quick to highlight the changes he and state Republicans made in their 2021 overhaul of how the state conducts elections, which drew ire from Democrats and the MLB<\/a> alike.<\/p>\n Still, several Georgia Republicans say he\u2019s struggling to play catch-up as the base shifts away from his technocratic approach to politics.<\/p>\n \u201cBrad stands in stark conflict to a party that is at the activist level very much aligned with President Trump, when Raffensperger is anything but,\u201d said one former longtime state GOP official, granted anonymity to speak openly about evolving party dynamics. \u201cHis candidacy will be and is a test to determine if that lane still exists in the Georgia Republican Party apparatus.\u201d<\/p>\n On a recent afternoon, Raffensperger, clad in a navy suit and striped red tie, headlined the Vinings-Cumberland Rotary Club\u2019s weekly meeting, shaking hands and chatting with voters before taking his place behind the lectern at the front of the room. The state\u2019s legislative session had ended barely a week earlier.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I thought I\u2019d do is tell you where we are right now. We just finished up my last session,\u201d he told the audience, ticking through accomplishments: streamlining professional licensing processes, securing an agreement<\/a> to have money returned to victims of a local Ponzi scheme, and improving systems to make Georgia elections \u201cfree, fair and fast.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t the kind of red meat fodder that Republican politics thrive on in the Trump era, but the type of accolades that resonate with the kind of voters at the meeting, held just over the border from Atlanta\u2019s city limits in suburban Cobb County.<\/p>\n Cobb County is one of several former Republican bastions surrounding metro Atlanta that have flipped blue as the Trump-styled GOP turned off suburban voters. Once the homebase for conservative stalwart former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the county voted overwhelmingly<\/a> for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 despite her statewide loss to Trump.<\/p>\n It\u2019s still home to plenty of business-focused Republican voters who are not keen on the president \u2014 then-Sen. Marco Rubio carried the county over Trump during the 2016 GOP primaries, and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley performed nearly twice as well in the county compared to her statewide returns against the president in 2024. These are the voters Raffensperger is focused on, content to let Jones and Jackson battle it out for the MAGA class.<\/p>\n Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County Republican chair, said the low-key civic group events have \u201cbeen the hallmark of Brad Raffensperger\u2019s success\u201d and an emblem of the party\u2019s business-focused past. It\u2019s in sharp contrast with the attention-grabbing rallies that have defined Trump\u2019s dominance of Republican politics.<\/p>\n2020 election woes<\/h4>\n
Raffensperger\u2019s path forward<\/h4>\n