MONDAY, MAY 23 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
BY AMY GARDNERsavannah, ga. — When Geor-
gia Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger (R) addressed the
local Rotary Club here this
month, he eagerly reminded the
audience that he was the guy who
resisted former president Donald
Trump’s pleas to find enough
votes to reverse the 2020 elec-
tion.
As the Rotarians lunched on
chicken pot pie, the Republican
ticked through the “rumor
whack-a-mole” of fraud allega-
tions that had surfaced in Geor-
gia and explained why they were
false.
But in the next breath, the
state’s top election official offered
Trump voters concerned that
elections could be compromised
reasons to vote for him in Tues-
day’s hotly contested primary: He
supported legislation to tighten
up the security around balloting
— despite resistance from voting
rights groups — and has made
cracking down on noncitizen vot-
ing the No. 1 issue of his cam-
paign, even though the evidence
shows it is already quite rare.
That dual message reflects the
delicate balance Raffensperger is
trying to strike to win in a state
where most Republicans still love
Trump and believe his false nar-
rative about the 2020 election.
Squaring off against an ardent
Trump acolyte, Raffensperger
has chosen the path of political
pragmatism, courting the former
president’s base while not com-
pletely abandoning his image as
the rare Republican willing to
take Trump on.
Whether Raffensperger can
pull it off could help set the
direction for the Republican Par-
ty at a time when Trumpism
remains very much alive even as
Trump himself is struggling to
propel his preferred candidates
to victory. The outcome will also
bear directly on the 2024 presi-
dential vote, when Georgia is
again expected to be a key battle-
ground and the secretary of state
will have oversight over how
votes are cast, counted and certi-
fied.
Polls suggest an extremely
close contest. That reflects a re-
markable evolution from a year
ago, when Raffensperger was
widely seen as politically dead
following his showdown with
Trump.
“The fact that it’s competitive
is a monumental shift in the
environment,” said Brian Robin-
son, a GOP political consultant in
the state, noting that many Re-
publican voters are tired of
Trump’s election claims whether
they like him or not. They want to
hear about solutions to inflation
and rising gas prices, not about
the previous election, he said.
Raffensperger shot to promi-
nence following a Jan. 2, 2021,
phone call with Trump in which
the then-president urged him to
“find” enough votes to reverse his
defeat in Georgia.
Throughout the hour-long call,
as Trump alternately berated
Raffensperger, tried to flatter
him, begged him to act and
threatened him with vague crimi-
nal consequences if he refused to
pursue his false claims, Raffen-
sperger stood firm, explaining
that the president was relying on
debunked accusations and that
Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in
the state was fair and accurate.
“Well, Mr. President,” Raffen-
sperger said on the call, “the
challenge that you have is, the
data you have is wrong.”
In the months that followed,
few if any strategists in Georgia
said Raffensperger could survive
a Republican primary. He had
been anointed a hero on the left
and shot to near the top of
Trump’s enemies list. Many Re-
publican voters wanted someone
to blame for Trump’s loss, and
Raffensperger became the target.
His top competitor in the pri-
mary is U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, a
full-throated Trump supporter
who earned the former presi-
dent’s endorsement after em-
bracing the false claim that Biden
did not really win Georgia. Hice’s
central argument to voters is that
if he had been secretary of state
in 2020, he would not have certi-
fied the presidential result, as
Raffensperger did.
“This last election should not
have been certified without prop-
er investigation,” Hice said dur-
ing a May 2 televised debate with
Raffensperger and two other can-
didates. “The allegations were
tremendous. They were all over
the place, and they still are.”
On Thursday evening, Hice
told a gathering of the Atlanta
Young Republicans that the
“voice of the people” had been
“violated” in 2020, and he held
Raffensperger responsible for
not being tough enough in en-
forcing the law.
In an interview with The
Washington Post, he cited allega-
tions of widespread “ballot har-
vesting,” or residents illegally
turning in other people’s ballots.
Some of those allegations were
dismissed by the Georgia State
Elections Board this week.
“If there are no consequences
for breaking the law and cheat-
ing, people will continue to cheat
when it comes to elections,” Hice
said. “There must be consequenc-
es.”
Yet it is unclear whether Geor-
gia Republicans have been per-
suaded by Hice’s argument. Polls
show the Trump-backed candi-
date for governor, former senator
David Perdue, well behind the
incumbent, Brian Kemp, who
also became an object of the
former president’s ire for refus-
ing to go along with false fraud
claims.
In polling published last
month by the Atlanta Journal-
Constitution, Raffensperger and
Hice were roughly tied, with
more than 35 percent of likely
GOP primary voters saying they
were still undecided.
Some Republicans remain
skeptical that Raffensperger will
eke out a win Tuesday. But more
and more say they believe he will
at least qualify for a runoff with
Hice in the four-way race should
no candidate garner the majority
required for an outright win.
Both Raffensperger and Hice
have undergone transformations
since the start of their political
careers. Raffensperger, the soft-
spoken owner of a lucrative engi-
neering firm who seems more
comfortable talking about build-
ing structure than giving rousing
speeches, started on the city
council in the Atlanta suburb of
Johns Creek in 2011. There, he
focused on such bread-and-but-
ter priorities as streetlights and
sidewalks.
Later, in the state legislature,
Raffensperger developed a repu-
tation as a conservative Reagan-
style Republican, focused on low
taxes and streamlining regula-
tions. In 2018, he was cited by the
Faith and Freedom Coalition of
Georgia for a perfect conserva-
tive voting record. That same
year, he was elected secretary of
state. His life changed two years
later, when he found himself in
Trump’s crosshairs.
Hice entered Congress in 20 15
after a 25-year career as a Baptist
minister. At first, he focused al-
most exclusively on social issues,
regularly criticizing same-sex
marriage and even extolling the
benefits of conversion therapy,
the discredited practice of “con-
verting” people to heterosexuali-
ty. He also took on the IRS over
threats to strip churches of their
tax-exempt status if ministers
preached about politics from the
pulpit.
With Trump’s rise in 2016, Hice
became an ardent surrogate for
the candidate. Following the
2020 election, Hice was one of
the loudest voices in Congress to
advocate overturning the elec-
tion result. On Jan. 6, 2021, he
was among 147 members of Con-
gress to object to the counting of
electoral college votes.
That loyalty to Trump remains
a positive quality for many Geor-
gia Republicans, who question
whether Raffensperger shares it.
“The election was stolen the
last go-round by extremely smart
people,” said Anne Cooper, 60, a
Republican voter in rural Griffin,
Ga., an hour south of Atlanta. “I
think Raffensperger could have
been more diligent getting into
the computer system. I don’t
think he did everything that he
could.”
On the campaign trail, Raffen-
sperger is unafraid to blame
Trump directly for his 2020 de-
feat. “Twenty-eight thousand
Georgians skipped the presiden-
tial race, and yet they voted down
ballot in other races,” Raffen-
sperger told the Savannah Rota-
ry. “Republican congressmen col-
lectively got 33,000 more votes
than President Trump. And that’s
why President Trump came up
short.”
Many Republican voters inter-
viewed at polling locations this
month said that they believe
fraud tainted the 2020 election
and that they like Trump, yet they
are exhausted by his singular
obsession with it and are ready to
move on. Raffensperger and
Kemp are also attracting moder-
ate Republicans in the Atlanta
suburbs who are no fans of the
former president.
Outside the Dunwoody Li-
brary in DeKalb County, one of
the few remaining Republican
enclaves in suburban Atlanta,
voters casting early ballots said
they were opting for Raffensperg-
er and Kemp. Over three hours,
not a single voter among dozens
interviewed said they were vot-
ing for Hice or Perdue.“I think the election was sto-
len, I definitely do,” said Virginia
Christman, 72, who is retired
from the magazine publishing
industry. “But I don’t think Brad
Raffensperger or Brian Kemp
could have done anything about
it. There was a lot of cheating
going on that they got blamed
for.”
In late March, Trump held a
rally in rural Commerce, Ga., in
which he touted Hice. More re-
cently, the former president host-
ed a Hice fundraiser at Mar-a-La-
go, his club in South Florida.
But Hice is not running ads
and regularly goes days at a time
without campaign appearances,
giving Raffensperger the oppor-
tunity to define the four-term
congressman in a seven-figure ad
campaign airing across the state
— a remarkable sum for what
used to be a sleepy down-ballot
position.
“When Stacey Abrams at-
tacked Georgia’s elections, Jody
Hice did nothing — not a singlebill to protect our elections,”
states one of Raffensperger’s ads,
referring to the presumed Demo-
cratic nominee for governor.
“Brad was the first to do a full
audit to make sure only Ameri-
cans vote in Georgia. Brad out-
lawed ballot harvesting and re-
quired photo ID in all elections.
When Jody did nothing, Brad
made Georgia’s elections the saf-
est in the nation.”
Turnout thus far has been
heavy, which may be good news
for the incumbent. This week,
Raffensperger’s office announced
that more than 600,000 Geor-
gians had cast ballots so far in
early and mail voting — more
than triple the number over the
same period in the 2018 primary
and, remarkably for a nonpresi-
dential year, nearly triple the
number in 2020.
“It appears the electorate is
going to be historically large,”
said Robinson, the GOP consul-
tant. “I would say the bigger the
electorate, the more competitiveRaffensperger is, because a small-
er electorate is more ideologically
driven and therefore more driven
by Trump’s narrative on the sto-
len election.”
There is also strong evidence
that at least some Democratic
voters are crossing over to vote in
the Republican primary this year.
More than 15,000 voters who
have previously cast ballots in
Democratic primaries have cho-
sen the GOP ballot so far in early
in-person voting, which began
May 2 and concludes Friday, four
days before Election Day.
Antoinette Jordan, the poll
manager at a voting center at
Emory University in Atlanta, said
at least a half-dozen voters had
asked her if they could vote in the
Republican primary but still vote
Democratic in the fall. When she
told them they could, they asked
for a GOP ballot, she said.
“Georgia is in a very precarious
place right now,” said Yvette Bar-
ton, 52, a Democrat who works in
sales support in Decatur and whoconsidered voting in the GOP
primary but ultimately stuck
with her preferred party, where
five candidates are vying for the
secretary of state nomination.
“We can’t afford candidates sup-
ported by Trump.”
In an interview following his
Rotary appearance in Savannah,
Raffensperger downplayed the
significance of crossover votes.
“I’m talking to Republican vot-
ers,” he said. “This is a decision
for Republicans to make.”
Yet he also acknowledged the
tension inherent in his campaign
message.
“I’m looking down that thin
red, white and blue line of integ-
rity that all election officials need
to walk,” he said. “I have con-
servative principles, but also I
believe you have to have rules,
and then you have to follow the
rules.”Alice Crites in Washington and
Matthew Brown in Atlanta
contributed to this report.After defying Trump, Ra≠ensperger now courts his base
Ga. secretary of state is
running in tight primary
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