A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, MAY 26 , 2022
Election 2022HYOSUB SHIN/ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ra≠ensperger put in the miles to regain supporters in Ga.
false claims of election fraud to
anyone who would listen.
His victory Tuesday seemed to
embolden him to offer an even
more direct rebuke of the former
president.
“The vast majority of Geor-
gians are looking at honest peo-
ple for elected office,” he told a
clutch of cameras at his election
night party in the northeastern
suburbs of Atlanta late Tuesday.
“Someone who would do their
job, follow the law and look out
for them regardless of the per-
sonal cost to do so.”
He added: “Standing for you,
standing for the rule of law and
election integrity, standing for
the truth and not buckling un-
der the pressure, is what people
want.”
His main opponent, Hice, did
not hold a public event or issue a
public concession Tuesday.
Trump, in a statement on the
social media site Truth Social,
trumpeted victories for his pre-
ferred candidates in Arkansas,
Alabama, Texas and in the Sen-
ate contest in Georgia. The for-
mer president omitted any refer-
ence to Raffensperger or Geor-
gia Gov. Brian Kemp, who also
resisted Trump’s 2020 pressure.
Defeating Raffensperger and
Kemp had become an obsession
for the former president, one
RAFFENSPERGER FROM A1 displayed frequently both in
public and behind closed doors,
according to those in Trump’s
orbit. But Kemp cruised to victo-
ry Tuesday over the Trump-
backed former senator David
Perdue by an astonishing 52
points.
Raffensperger’s path to re-
demption among Republican
primary voters began about a
year ago, when he received a rare
invitation to speak from a local
Republican Party chairman in
Ben Hill County, about three
hours south of Atlanta. Trump
had won the county with 63
percent of the vote in 2020.
More than 100 Georgians
packed into the Grand Theatre
in Fitzgerald, the county seat.
Raffensperger learned later that
some had driven hours to hear
him speak — not because they
were admirers, but because they
believed he had failed to uncover
the fraud that Trump falsely
claimed had fueled Biden’s victo-
ry.
He told them that night that
they did not have the facts.
“Simply stated, what happened
in 2020 is that 28,000 Georgians
skipped the presidential race”
while voting in races down-bal-
lot, he recalled telling the crowd,
in a speech that he would deliver
again and again over the follow-
ing year. “You have to share the
facts, and then they have to
understand that I do have the
facts.”
Raffensperger put 40,
miles on his Ford F-150 pickup
truck, crisscrossing the state to
speak to anyone who would
listen. Early this month, he
drove nearly four hours to Sa-
vannah for a Rotary lunch — and
stayed the rest of the afternoon
for a meet-and-greet with just
over a dozen members of the
local Jaycees.
The miles paid off: Raffen-
sperger racked up huge margins
in Metro Atlanta, but he also
held his own across the state. He
defeated Hice by more than 20
points in the congressional dis-
trict of pro-Trump firebrand
Marjorie Taylor Greene. Hice
scored some of his biggest wins
in his own congressional dis-
trict, but the numbers were too
low to affect the margin.
“It’s a comeback for the ages
and a testament to an official
who accepted every invitation
from any group in the state or
media outlet and kept telling his
story,” said Brian Robinson, a
Georgia-based Republican strat-
egist, whose firm consults on
communications for the secre-
tary of state’s office but was not
affiliated with any of the cam-
paigns.
Even in Ben Hill County,
where all those Trump support-
ers had gathered last year todemand answers from Raffen-
sperger, he won 50 percent of the
vote. That news astonished Aus-
tin Futch, the GOP chairman
who had invited Raffensperger
to speak — and had lost his
leadership post as a result.
“Up until this morning I
wouldn’t have dared tell anyone
that I supported Raffensperger,”
Futch, a Realtor, said in an
interview Wednesday. “But yes, I
feel like I have a pretty good
reason to say it now. Georgia has
issued a referendum on Donald
Trump, and it is to stay out of
Georgia. Donald Trump lost in- And he needs to accept
that fact.”
In the weeks following the
2020 election, Raffensperger
and his top aides received death
threats from Trump supporters.
His wife, Tricia, fielded obscene
text messages. Someone broke
into the home of his daughter-
in-law. At Tuesday’s party at a
cozy suburban restaurant, two
off-duty Gwinnett County police
officers stood at the door, hired
by Raffensperger as a precau-
tion.
Those threats only made him
more certain of his decision to
defend the election results,
Raffensperger said. He brought
a steadiness to his predicament
that he cultivated over decades
designing high-rises and bridges
and post-tensioned box girders,
but that also reflects a far more
searing experience four years
ago — the death of his elder son
from a fentanyl overdose.
“I understand what I can
change and what I can’t change,”
Raffensperger said. “You’ve got
all these people spreading their
deceit and misinformation, but
it’s not supported by the facts.”
Whether Raffensperger and
Kemp have provided a blueprint
for other Republicans elsewhere
in the country to defy Trump
remains unknown. Both officials
are longtime Republicans who
served in the legislature and
have extensive records support-
ing conservative causes. They
are well-known in Georgia, and
they came to this year’s election
with name recognition and the
ability to raise millions of dol-
lars. Raffensperger, the founder
of a lucrative engineering firm,
poured in some of his own funds,
as well.
In an interview Tuesday night,
Raffensperger said he had pre-
pared four different sets of re-
marks for the evening: one if he
won, one if he lost, one for a
runoff if he placed first, and one
for a runoff if Hice did. He
wasn’t pessimistic, he said —
just practical. He’d put the victo-
ry speech in his left lapel pocket,
alone and most easily retriev-
able.
He still doesn’t know whichDemocrat he will face in the fall
because that primary is headed
to a runoff. Democrats have
accused Raffensperger of en-
abling election conspiracists by
supporting a strict new voting
law last year and championing
efforts to reduce noncitizen vot-
ing.
Bee Nguyen, a Democratic
state lawmaker and the front-
runner for the nomination, has
campaigned heavily on the idea
that democracy is on the ballot
in November. But that message
will be more complicated
against Raffensperger than it
would have been against Hice,
who boasted that he would not
have certified Biden’s Georgia
victory.
Raffensperger said he is un-
likely to change his message for
the general election. He also
offered a glimpse of a potential
next ambition, one that seemed
out of reach just a few months
ago: to run for Georgia governor.
“My runway is short,” he joked,
having recently celebrated his
67th birthday.
“What I have found is that
every Georgian wants safe, se-
cure elections, with the right
balance of accessibility with se-
curity,” he said. “That’s where
Georgia voting is today.”Lenny Bronner in Washington
contributed to this report.DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POSTTOP: Former president Donald Trump onstage during a March
rally i n C ommerce, Ga. ABOVE: Former vice president M ike Pence,
speaking Monday in Georgia, may challenge Trump in 2024.BY JOSH DAWSEY,
MICHAEL SCHERER
AND ASHLEY PARKERatlanta — Donald Trump has
long been the dominant force in
Republican politics, but as he has
faced a spate of setbacks in recent
weeks — punctuated Tuesday
night by the defeat of his favored
gubernatorial candidate here in
Georgia — the former president
has been privately fretting about
who might challenge him.
Trump has been quizzing advis-
ers and visitors at his Mar-a-Lago
resort in South Florida about his
budding rivals for the 2024 Re-
publican presidential nomina-
tion, including his former vice
president, Mike Pence, and Flori-
da Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Among his questions, accord-
ing to several advisers, who like
others spoke on the condition of
anonymity to describe private
conversations: Who will actually
run against him? What do the
polls show? Who are his potential
foes meeting with?
He also had revived conversa-
tions about announcing a presi-
dential exploratory committee to
try to dissuade challengers, they
say, even as some party officials
and advisers continue to urge him
to wait until after the midterm
elections to announce that he’s
running.
Trump’s deliberations follow
prominent defeats this month for
his chosen candidates in Idaho,
Nebraska, North Carolina and
now Georgia, where former sena-
tor David Perdue was defeated
Tuesday by Trump’s arch-nemesis,
Gov. Brian Kemp, who refused his
entreaties to overturn the election
he lost in the state in 2020. The
defeats were driven by rival Re-
publican power centers amid a
growing sense that Trump may
not hold the dominant sway he
once had over the party.
Throughout Georgia, Republi-
can voters said they simply dis-
missed Trump’s sharp criticisms
of Kemp and overwhelmingly
elected the incumbent governor,
delivering a remarkable repudia-
tion of the former president by
giving Kemp a victory margin of
about 50 percentage points.
“I voted for him twice. Would I
do it again? No!” said Vijah Bahl, a
65-year-old developer who at-
tended Kemp’s election-night par-
ty Tuesday at the College Football
Hall of Fame. “Trump’s divisive-
ness hurt Perdue here, and his
endorsement backfired. It wasn’t
really his content but his delivery.
And Trump can be a very vindic-
tive person.”
Over the din of a lone country
crooner on the stage, Jim Braden,
a 62-year-old developer, stood
near the front of the makeshift
indoor football field and said it
was an easy choice to pick Kemp
for governor.
“We’re not like the rest of the
country that’s going to follow the
lie,” he said of Trump’s false claims
of winning the 2020 election.
In his victory speech, Kemp did
not mention Trump and barely
mentioned Perdue. “Even in the
middle of a tough primary, con-
servatives across our state didn’t
listen to the noise. They didn’t get
distracted,” he said. “Georgia Re-
publicans went to the ballot box
and overwhelmingly endorsed
four more years of our vision for
this great state.”
That Trump spent more than
$2.5 million on behalf of Perdue,
held a rally in Georgia and relent-
lessly attacked Kemp but was still
defeated was the latest sign that
his influence over the Republican
Party, while considerable, has re-
ceded somewhat in recent
months. In another defeat, Brad
Raffensperger, the Georgia secre-
tary of state who resisted Trump’s
calls to “find” votes in 2020, de-
feated his opponent, Trump-
backed Rep. Jody Hice.
The Republican Governors As-
sociation steered $5 million to
defeat Perdue after backing vic-
tors against Trump picks in Ne-
braska and Idaho. The emerging
field of 2024 rivals has grown
increasingly bold in showing a
willingness to campaign against
his interests. And in the Senate, all
but 11 Republicans joined with
Democrats on a recent military
aid bill for Ukraine, despite
Trump’s criticism of the measure
as a misplaced priority given the
domestic baby formula shortage.
“Donald Trump is truly the
leader of the party right now, but
there are many people, particular-
ly those in elected office, who also
stake a claim to the ‘America First’
agenda,” Trump’s former White
House counselor, Kellyanne Con-
way, said Tuesday during a Wash-
ington Post Live event when asked
about the growing dissent within
the party.
The former president has also
found himself fighting in races in
Ohio, Alabama and Pennsylvania
against the Club for Growth, a
deep-pocketed conservative
group that once advised him. His
candidate for Senate in Pennsyl-
vania, Mehmet Oz, is locked in a
tight race headed for a recount
after the May 17 primary there and
has ignored Trump’s repeated
calls to declare victory before all
ballots are counted. And Trump’s
pick for governor in Pennsylvania,
Doug Mastriano, found his pri-
mary victory marred last week by
a statement from the RGA sug-
gesting that the group did not see
him as a competitive candidate.
The shifts add up to the biggest
challenge to Trump’s self-image —
“The king of endorsements,” he
recently boasted — since his role
in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S.
Capitol thrust his party into tem-
porary chaos. Few in the party still
publicly oppose or criticize him
while seeking elected office, but a
growing group has been working
overtime to show that he can be
ignored and is not infallible.
Trump has publicly batted
away such concerns as he has
vowed to allies that he plans to run
for president again.
“I looked at the polls, and I’m
ahead by 60 or 70 points,” the
former president said during a
recent interview with The Post at
Mar-a-Lago, when asked about hisPence’s decision to campaign
for Kemp, whom Trump has called
“a disaster” for not overturning
the 2020 election results, is partic-
ularly notable — an early sign of
clear separation between the
longtime allies. Pompeo, another
potential 2024 contender, has also
become increasingly vocal, criti-
cizing Oz after Trump endorsed
him and calling for the “counting
of valid absentee ballots” in Penn-
sylvania after Trump suggested
Oz declare victory over rival David
McCormick before the primary
ballots were counted.
In Georgia, results were in be-
fore 9 p.m. for Kemp and Perdue
had already conceded. There was
little suspense in either crowd.
Advisers have repeatedly had to
talk Trump out of announcing a
run for president ahead of the
midterms, which Republican
strategists worry would offer a jolt
to Democratic prospects by shift-
ing the focus away from frustra-
tions with President Biden, whose
approval rating hovers around 40
percent. Trump has privately
raged against some of his former
allies, such as Pence, and has been
discussing how to attack potential
2024 foes.
On the ground in key states,
Trump’s intervention has caused
friction with some of his local
supporters.
In Alabama, Rep. Mo Brooks
(R) lost only two of his 67 county
campaign chairs in his Senate race
after Trump pulled his endorse-
ment in March, according an ad-
viser. Both later signed back up, as
Brooks continued to campaign by
arguing that Trump had been mis-
led by the advisers around him.
Brooks’s share of the vote in public
polls more than doubled in the
weeks after Trump withdrew his
endorsement, as the other candi-
dates in the race turned their fire
on each other. After Tuesday’s pri-
mary, Brooks is now headed for a
runoff against rival Katie Britt.
In the Senate, Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whom
Trump has singled out as a foe in
recent months, publicly celebrat-
ed in an interview with Politico
the recent overwhelming vote to
send more support to Ukraine as a
repudiation of “some loose talk
during the Trump years” about
wavering Republican commit-
ment to allies in Europe. Trump
had released a statement a week
earlier, describing the $40 billion
effort as a move by “Democrats”
that was improper, given the baby
formula shortage. “America
First!” he wrote.
The former president nonethe-
less remains a strong favorite if he
chooses to run again, with a mas-
sive small-dollar fundraising op-
eration and continued support
within the party. A Post-ABC News
poll released this month found
that 6 in 10 Republican and Re-
publican-leaning voters said party
leaders should follow Trump’s
leadership, compared with 34 per-
cent who wanted to take the party
in a different direction.
“I think he’s going to run. I’ll be
shocked if he doesn’t run. All the
polling shows he would be the
front-runner by a country mile,”
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.)
said. “The day that Trump makes
it clear he’s going to run — it wouldbe a mountain to climb to beat
him.”
Ed McMullen, a longtime
Trump ally and former ambassa-
dor, recently attended a small
fundraising dinner for DeSantis
in South Carolina, his home state,
raising eyebrows in the Palmetto
State. But McMullen said he was
for Trump all the way — should
Trump run. “I’m supporting
Trump in 2024, and I have no
doubt he’s running,” McMullen
said.
“When you look at states like
Pennsylvania, everyone envel-
oped themselves and wrapped
themselves in Trump policy,” he
continued. “All the candidates are
embracing the president.”
Fabrizio said he’d polled in five
different states about whether
voters would support Trump in a
primary campaign, and over 50
percent in each of the states said
they would vote for him “regard-
less,” if he entered the race.
But he said it would be easier
said than done to defeat Trump.
“Just because people speak out
and take him on doesn’t mean
they can beat him. They have to
beat him somewhere, not some
candidate he endorsed. They have
to beat him. I haven’t seen any
data that showed any of these
people are beating him anywhere.
In fact, the person that comes
closest is DeSantis, and all the rest
of these people chattering on the
sidelines can’t even break into
double digits,” Fabrizio said.
Some of his opponents have
been heartened by his electoral
struggles. Christie, Pence and
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) —
all potential 2024 candidates —
appeared on behalf of Kemp. All
three have told others they might
run against Trump.
In the meantime, Trump has
focused on directing the public’s
attention to his own count of pri-
mary endorsement wins, which
he tallied at 82 to 3, before Tues-
day night, a statistic that includes
dozens of uncontested races with
little competition. It also leaves
out races like the Alabama Senate
contest, where he withdrew his
endorsement of Brooks.
Taking account of only the
prominent and heavily contested
contests in May, his record is 6 to 4
after Tuesday, with one race still
outstanding. Trump’s endorse-
ments have lost in the Nebraska,
Idaho and Georgia gubernatorial
primaries, and one House pri-
mary in North Carolina, where
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.)
failed to win the nomination. His
endorsements for two other
House seats, in North Carolina
and West Virginia, won, as did his
picks in Senate contests in Ohio,
North Carolina and Georgia, as
well as his pick of Mastriano for
governor of Pennsylvania. His
pick for the Pennsylvania Senate,
Oz, leads slightly in that race, with
more ballots to tally and a recount
pending.
Down-ballot in Georgia on
Tuesday, Trump did poorly, with
his pick for attorney general los-
ing, along with his picks for insur-
ance commissioner and secretary
of state.Scherer and Parker reported from
Washington.Trump faces a loosening grip on G OP after key losses
Former president, still a
party favorite in 2024, i s
looking over his shoulderRepublican opponents for the
2024 nomination, without citing a
specific poll. He repeatedly
bragged that he “made” several of
them, or argued they owed him
loyalty.
When asked about other Re-
publicans, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-
Tex.), who have repeatedly cam-
paigned against his endorsees,
Trump said he was watching
closely.
“This is their prerogative,” he
said. “People can do that, but it
doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
But privately, his team increas-
ingly expects Republican chal-
lengers — potentially including
DeSantis, Pence, former secretary
of state Mike Pompeo and former
New Jersey governor Chris Chris-
tie, along with others — to come
after him in 2024. Among his ad-
visers’ biggest concerns, though,
is that DeSantis, who has domi-
nated chatter among Republican
operatives and donors, takes
Trump on.
“My guess is a lot of people run
against him,” said Tony Fabrizio,
his longtime pollster, if Trump
announces he’s running.
That view is now widely held inRepublican circles.
“I think there is a very real and
growing sense — albeit in hushed
tones, private conversations, and
rarely publicly but more publicly
now than ever before — of people
saying maybe not that he’s a paper
tiger, but that his power is greatly
diminished,” one person close to
him said. “Privately, no one
around Trump — and when I say
no one, I mean no one, other than
the handful of people who
wouldn’t have any professional
existence without him — wants
him to run again.”
Another Republican operative
who recently met with Trump said
it is now clear that Trump will
have to compete to win the 2024
GOP nomination, for which the
former president remains heavily
favored.
“It isn’t going to be a clear field
for him. There’s a lot of people who
want to go against him,” the opera-
tive said. “If he runs, Pompeo,
Pence and Chris Christie all will
consider running against him.
Who knows what DeSantis will
do? These guys are out there work-
ing, they are hitting every donor
they can find, they want to run.”“There are many people, particularly thosein elected office, who also stake a claimto the ‘America First’ agenda.”
Kellyanne Conway, former Trump White House counselor