A8 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, MAY 25 , 2022
Election 2022contest was a measure of the in-
tensity behind Trump’s push to
dislodge Republicans who bucked
his calls to try to block Biden’s win.
Secretary of State Brad Raffen-
sperger, who rejected Trump’s
pressure to “find” enough votes to
make him the winner, was leading
Rep. Jody Hice, a candidate
backed by the former president.
Raffensperger was on pace to
win the nomination and avoid a
runoff, receiving 51.9 percent sup-
port with an estimated 93 percent
of votes counted. While the Associ-
ated Press had not yet projected a
winner, shortly before midnight,
Raffensperger sought to declare a
“come-from-behind victory,” say-
ing that he’d been “standing for
the truth and not buckling under
pressure,” and that voters saw
that.
All evidence has shown Biden’s
PRIMARIES FROM A1 win in Georgia, and nationally,
was legitimate. And while many
Democrats have long railed
against Trump’s baseless rhetoric,
some powerful Republicans saw
the Georgia primary as a potential
inflection point that could shift
the party away from re-litigating
the last election and blunt Trump’s
efforts to turn many primaries
into score-settling affairs over
2020 and attempts to install loyal-
ists pledging fealty in future elec-
tions.
So far this year, Trump has had a
mixed record in contested pri-
maries where he made endorse-
ments. J.D. Vance, an author and
venture capitalist backed by the
former president, won the Repub-
lican nomination for U.S. Senate
in Ohio. But Mehmet Oz, his pick
in Pennsylvania, is locked in a
still-unresolved race against a
more conventional candidate a
week after the primary, which is
likely headed to a recount. Trump
has faced stiffer head winds in
gubernatorial races, where his en-
dorsed candidates in Nebraska
and Idaho recently lost.
Tuesday’s results in Georgia
amounted to a significant blow to
Trump. He has obsessively worked
to defeat Republicans who did not
work to overturn his 2020 election
loss, endorsing and sometimes re-
cruiting their primary challeng-
ers. He has celebrated the retire-
ments of House Republicans who
voted to impeach him after the
Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the
U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob,
and will campaign this weekend
in Wyoming for Harriet Hageman,
a GOP activist who’s challenging
Rep. Liz Cheney, a vocal Trump
critic.
The primaries in Georgia on
Tuesday were part of a larger array
of intraparty contests in states in-
cluding Alabama, Texas, Arkansas
and Minnesota that strategists
were watching for indicators of
the direction Democrats and Re-
publicans are headed in the run-
up to the November midterms.
In South Texas, a heated Demo-
cratic runoff pitting Rep. Henry
Cuellar against immigration at-
torney Jessica Cisneros was the
latest showdown between the cen-
trist and liberal wings of the party.
Cuellar, the only antiabortion
Democrat in the House, clashed
with Cisneros, who also ran to his
left on immigration. Late Tuesday
night, Cisneros and Cuellar were
in a tight race with an estimated
89 percent of the vote counted.
In suburban Atlanta, Rep. Lucy
McBath bested fellow Democratic
Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux in the
year’s second member-vs.-mem-
ber contest. A new Republican-
drawn congressional map turned
McBath’s seat safely Republican,
so she decided to run in an adja-
cent district against Bourdeaux.
McBath out-fundraised Bour-
deaux, who was one of the nine
House Democrats who demanded
that last year’s bipartisan infra-
structure bill be separated from
the party’s social spending pack-
age.
McBath first ran for Congress in
2018 as an activist against gun
violence following the 2012 mur-
der of her teenage son. Ronda
Harris, 48, attended McBath’s
election night watch party to show
her support for a woman, who like
her, is grieving the loss of a son.
Harris was wearing a red shirt that
said, “Moms Demand Action for
Gun Sense in America.”
“We’re both survivors,” Harris
said of McBath. “I lost my son in
2017 to gun violence. It is still an
unsolved case. He was murdered.
He was coming home from visit-
ing his father, and we’re really not
quite sure what happened. ... The
only way I think you can survive
something so horrific is to find a
way to champion for your loved
one, and that’s what I am doing.
He’s not here to fight for his rights.
He’s not here to fight for his life.
I’m here, so that’s my responsibili-
ty to stand up and do what I can to
prevent other people from having
this experience.”
Her remarks came just hours
after a deadly mass shooting at a
Texas elementary school that
claimed the lives of at least 19
children and a teacher.
Republicans were also engaged
in heated fights across different
states.
In Alabama, a Republican pri-
mary for an open Senate seat pit-
ted Rep. Mo Brooks, who had
Trump’s endorsement and then
lost it; against Katie Britt, a former
top aide to retiring Republican
Sen. Richard C. Shelby. The two
candidates advanced to a runoff
late Tuesday.
In Texas, state Attorney General
Ken Paxton, an incumbent backed
by Trump, beat state land commis-
sioner George P. Bush, the grand-
son and nephew of two former
presidents, in a closely watched
Republican runoff.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a
far-right Republican from Geor-
gia, prevailed over multiple pri-
mary opponents, with some Dem-
ocrats in her conservative district
crossing over to support them.
Trump notched an expected
win in the Georgia’s Republican
primary for U.S. Senate, where
former NFL star Herschel Walker
won. He will face Democratic Sen.
Raphael G. Warnock.
In Arkansas, Sarah Sanders,
Trump’s one-time White House
press secretary, easily won her bid
to be the GOP gubernatorial nomi-
nee.
In Minnesota’s southern tier, 10
Republicans and eight Democrats
were competing for nominations
to replace the late congressman
Jim Hagedorn, a Republican who
died in February after a battle with
cancer. With most ballots count-
ed, state Rep. Jeremy Munson was
locked in a tight race with Brad
Finstad, a former Trump adminis-
tration appointee, for the GOPnod, while former Hormel CEO
Jeff Ettinger easily won the Demo-
cratic nomination.
But much of the focus in both
parties Tuesday was on the Repub-
lican gubernatorial primary in
Georgia. The loss there by Perdue
threatened Trump’s reputation as
GOP kingmaker and to diminish
his standing in the party.
Perdue conceded to Kemp less
than 90 minutes after polls closed
in Georgia. “I hope you made some
dinner reservations,” he joked to a
small audience that had been ex-
pecting a longer night.
Kemp will now turn his atten-
tion to Abrams, a former state
House minority leader who was
unopposed on the Democratic
side. Abrams, who lost to Kemp in
2018, is vying to become the first
Black female governor in the
country.
Voters interviewed Tuesday
morning at two polling places in
Republican-leaning east Cobb
County outside Atlanta expressed
strong preference for Kemp over
Perdue.
Charles “Stan” Tommasello, 75,
a retired Delta Air Lines pilot, said
he initially supported Perdue
when Trump first threw his sup-
port behind him, but later
changed his mind.
“At first, I was concerned about
the original count of the election
and the way [Kemp] strongly sup-
ported Raffensperger,” Tomma-
sello said. “I thought that Perdue
ran a very lackluster [campaign]
and didn’t have the energy I ex-
pected of him.”
But Tommasello said he did
side with Trump in voting against
Raffensperger.
Nicki, a 46-year-old business
administrator with the Newton
County Board of Education who
declined to share her last name,
said Trump’s endorsements didn’t
sway her; a sentiment reflected in
polling data in the state. She voted
for Kemp and Raffensperger, com-
mending Kemp for keeping busi-
nesses open during the pandemic.
Though she is a Trump support-
er, Nicki said the former president
should have remained neutral.
“I think Trump should have
stayed out of Georgia,” and not get
involved “because his feelings
were hurt,” she said.
Prominent GOP figures such as
former New Jersey governor Chris
Christie and Arizona Gov. Doug
Ducey hit the trail to vouch for
Kemp in the final weeks of the
race, urging the party to look be-
yond 2020. On Monday, former
vice president Mike Pence, in a
direct rebuke of his former boss,
campaigned for Kemp in Georgia.
In a competing tele-rally for
Perdue on Monday, Trump sought
to convince Georgia Republican
voters that Kemp was unable to
beat Abrams. “He’s got too many
people in the Republican Party
that will refuse to vote,” he said.
The former president also took to
his Truth Social account Monday
to bring up more disproved 2020
election conspiracies.
Perdue said Abrams should “go
back where she came from if she
doesn’t like it here” — a comment
that echoes of when Trump said
four Democratic congresswomen
of color should “go back and help
fix the totally broken and crime-
infested places from which they
came.” Perdue also said Abrams
was “demeaning her own race.”
Outside a Baptist church in At-
lanta on Tuesday, Abrams dis-
missed Perdue’s racist comments,
saying she has “listened to Repub-
licans attack me, but they’ve done
nothing ... to articulate a plan for
Georgia.”
In neighboring Alabama,
Trump and his allies were also a
factor. Brooks fell out of favor with
Trump after suggesting people not
focus on re-litigating the 2020
presidential election. He had been
one of Trump’s most ardent sup-
porters, who donned body armor
and spoke at the Stop the Steal
rally in Washington on Jan. 6,
2021, urging the crowd to “fight”
before many of them did just that,
overtaking the U.S. Capitol in a
violent insurrection.
Trump unendorsed Brooks in
March, but didn’t throw his sup-
port behind anyone else. The win-
ner of the GOP primary will be the
likely successor of Shelby, in a
state that leans heavily conserva-
tive. Thomas LaPointe, 32, in Au-
burn, Ala., said he hoped that
would be Britt, who previously
worked as Shelby’s chief of staff.
“As somebody who cares about
the state of Alabama a lot, I know
that Richard C. Shelby was very
good at working the system in
Washington and for me, Katie
Britt was the candidate who would
probably do the best job at kind of
continuing that,” he said.Josh Dawsey, Mark Shavin and Alex P.
Kellogg in Georgia; Gheni Platenburg
in Alabama; and Eugene Scott and
Amy B Wang in Washington
contributed to this report.Kemp’s Ga. p rimary win could telegraph direction of the GOP
DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) takes the stage with h is wife a nd
family members during his primary victory party at the College
Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta a fter capturing renomination.See it.
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