ATLANTA: Republican voters delivered a stark repudiation on Tuesday of Donald Trump’s "Big Lie" that the 2020 US election was stolen, backing Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for re-election by a huge margin over a candidate recruited by the former president.
Trump had banked much of his own political capital hand-picking David Perdue to oust Kemp in the nominating contest to compete for the governor’s mansion in November’s midterm elections.
Perdue made Trump’s bogus claims about 2020 a centerpiece of his campaign, in a direct appeal to his endorser’s supporters who continue wrongly to question the validity of the outcome.
But the former senator was forced to concede, in an embarrassing blow for Trump, as the early count showed him trailing by almost 50 points less than 90 minutes after polls closed. "Four years of the Kemp administration will mean that you keep all of your hard-earned money," Kemp said in his victory address.
"Your communities will be safe. Your kids will be in school without fear of partisan agendas in the classroom. Parents will have a voice and we’ll keep working to bring good paying jobs to every corner of our state."
Kemp, frequently the target of Trump’s wrath for refusing to help overturn the election, was always expected to win, but the margin of defeat represents a stinging rebuke of Trump from a state he lost by the narrowest of margins in 2020.
Five states were holding nominating contests for congressional elections that will decide which party controls the US Senate and House of Representatives for the remainder of President Joe Biden’s first term.
But all eyes are on Georgia, where wounds from the 2020 presidential election are still festering two years after Biden won the state by under 12,000 votes. Up and down the ballot, the Republican side of the Georgia primary pitted candidates peddling the former president’s election fraud claims against hopefuls who pushed back in defense of the Constitution.
The race to be Georgia’s secretary of state is seen as equally consequential as the contest for governor, as these are the officials who oversee elections in the United States. Democrats fear that, across the country, Trump will be able to install loyalists who can weaponize specious fraud accusations from 2020 to make it harder for his opponents to vote in 2024.