Raffensperger tests – Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger is trying to hold a non-MAGA lane as the state GOP aligns more closely with Trump, ahead of the May 19 primary.
VININGS, Ga.. — Brad Raffensperger rose to national attention by standing up to President Donald Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.. Now the fight for his political future has shifted from whether he can defy Trump. to whether he can survive in a Republican Party increasingly shaped by Trump’s populist wing.
As Raffensperger runs for governor. he is trying to avoid a direct anti-Trump lane that could alienate the MAGA base without surrendering the old-school conservative identity he says he represents.. His campaign has leaned into a quieter, businesslike style, staging low-key events rather than chasing the flash of larger rallies.. He has also kept returning to bread-and-butter promises. including capping property taxes. and using the term “conservative” frequently in stump remarks.
“I have my own lane, and I feel good where we are,” Raffensperger said after an April appearance at a rotary club in the Atlanta area. “It’s the lane about being a Christian conservative businessman who’s built a business from scratch.”
The wager at the center of his candidacy is whether Georgia’s GOP still has room for Republicans who don’t match the party’s current posture.. Raffensperger’s current office is not new territory: he previously fended off a Trump-backed challenger in 2022 to keep the secretary of state seat.. But 2026 is viewed by many Republicans in Georgia as a tougher test. one in which the state party has moved further away from its small-government roots and closer to the populist right.
Raffensperger insists he has a path. Asked whether Trump’s grip on the party complicates his campaign, he deflected, saying, “I’m doing just fine. I’m going to be in the run-off.”
Still, a May 19 primary is shaping up to put his credibility—and his strategy—under strain.. Ahead of the vote, he is polling consistently in third place behind Trump-backed Lt.. Gov.. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson.. Republican strategists and state officials widely doubted his ability to close the gap.
“This is the party of Trump today — like it or not. it is — and I find it very difficult to see someone being able to be anti-Trump in a Republican primary and be successful. ” said Casey Cagle. a Republican who served as lieutenant governor from 2007 to 2019.. Cagle, who is supporting Jones, said the party’s internal compass has moved.
“The base has grown far, far greater to the right than what it was in my day,” he said. “The core of the Republican Party has moved far away from the Chamber of Commerce mindset.”
Before February, Raffensperger appeared close enough to draw enough support to keep Jones from clearing the 50 percent threshold that would avoid a run-off. But Jackson’s entry, marked by heavy spending and MAGA-leaning messaging, disrupted the race and pushed Raffensperger further down.
Even if Raffensperger were to win a run-off against either Jones or Jackson, GOP strategist Jeremy Brand said the odds of him capturing the nomination remain low.
“It’d be incredibly tough,” Brand said. “The 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.”
Election skepticism remains a central fault line
Raffensperger’s political problems have deep roots in the 2020 election.. Since he first stood up to Trump. he has faced continued pressure from factions within the Georgia GOP seeking to limit his future in the party’s ranks.. A faction attempted to block him from seeking office again on the Republican ticket.
More recently, local party leaders moved to break from precedent by allowing the Republican National Committee to abandon its neutrality and spend resources backing Jones in the primary.
The dynamics are familiar to those who watched 2020 unfold in Georgia.. Several recounts and extensive litigation have reinforced Raffensperger’s position that former President Joe Biden won fairly.. Yet many voters and candidates continue to question the legitimacy of the results in ways that are often treated as loyalty tests to the president.
“I voted for Trump. I wish he’d have won. I think he did win, I’m one of those people,” said Bruce Brooker, 72, outside a Jones campaign event in rural Atkinson County earlier this month.
An April POLITICO Poll found that among Republicans planning to vote in the midterm, nearly 40 percent believe the 2020 election was stolen, while 25 percent say they do not believe it was stolen but still question its legitimacy. Just 25 percent said the election was not stolen.
Raffensperger continues to defend his work and the integrity of Georgia’s election system. saying he is “really proud because we made elections more secure.” He also points to changes implemented in 2021. when state Republicans overhauled how Georgia conducts elections.. Democrats and Major League Baseball criticized those changes at the time.
Still, several Republicans say Raffensperger is trying to catch up with a base that has shifted away from his technocratic approach.
“Brad stands in stark conflict to a party that is at the activist level very much aligned with President Trump. when Raffensperger is anything but. ” said one former longtime state GOP official. speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe changing party dynamics.. “His candidacy will be and is a test to determine if that lane still exists in the Georgia Republican Party apparatus.”
A governor’s race framed by spending and momentum
Outside the political theater. Raffensperger’s campaign has leaned into the kind of civic engagement that signals an earlier era of Republican politics.. On a recent afternoon. he appeared at the Vinings-Cumberland Rotary Club’s weekly meeting in navy suit and a striped red tie. shaking hands and speaking with voters before taking the lectern.. The state legislative session had ended just days earlier.
Raffensperger told the audience he wanted to report where things stood after finishing his last session. highlighting accomplishments including streamlining professional licensing processes. securing an agreement to return money to victims of a local Ponzi scheme. and improving Georgia elections to make them “free. fair and fast.”
The event took place just outside Atlanta’s city limits in suburban Cobb County. an area that has long been important to Republican fortunes around the metro.. Cobb has been shifting politically as the Trump-styled GOP has turned off suburban voters.. The county voted overwhelmingly for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, even though Trump won statewide.
At the same time, Cobb remains home to business-focused Republicans who are not necessarily aligned with Trump.. In 2016 GOP primaries, then-Sen.. Marco Rubio carried the county.. In 2024, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley performed nearly twice as well in Cobb compared with her statewide returns against Trump.
Raffensperger’s campaign appears to be aiming at those voters, leaving Jones and Jackson to battle for the MAGA-heavy energy of the party base.
Jason Shepherd. the former Cobb County Republican chair. said the low-key civic group events have “been the hallmark of Brad Raffensperger’s success” and reflect the party’s business-focused past.. He contrasted that approach with the attention-grabbing rallies that have defined Trump’s dominance over Republican politics.
That strategy helped Raffensperger in 2022, when he overcame a primary challenge from former Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who ran with Trump’s endorsement. Then, Raffensperger held incumbency and benefited from a temporary waning of Trump’s influence after January 6 and the outcome of the 2020 election.
This time, the obstacles are sharper. Trump is back in power, and Raffensperger faces two MAGA candidates competing for the base’s attention. He is also outspent, with his $4 million dwarfed by Jackson’s $61 million and Jones’ $26 million in expenditures, according to an AdImpact analysis.
Campaign officials quickly rejected any suggestion that Raffensperger can reach the run-off and win. A spokesperson for Jackson did not respond to a request for comment.
Other statewide races show the breadth of the pressure
While Raffensperger focuses on the governor’s contest, Georgia’s broader Republican slate reflects how aggressively the party’s MAGA wing is seeking to reshape who rises.
Attorney General Chris Carr, who is also running for governor, previously defeated a Trump-backed challenger in 2022. But Carr is polling even lower than Raffensperger.
Gabriel Sterling, a former top Raffensperger lieutenant, is locked in a noisy primary for secretary of state. He faces a former Democrat-turned-MAGA acolyte and a GOP state representative who once served as Kemp’s top aide.
For many voters, the question of what happened in 2020 has remained the deciding line. That has continued to isolate Raffensperger from a party base that increasingly treats election disputes not as facts to be litigated but as loyalty to be performed.
If Raffensperger loses the primary, it would be another sign of how difficult it has become for Republicans to resist the MAGA turn inside Georgia’s party.
For his allies, though, the point is not only winning. It is proving that his lane exists at all, and that an older version of Republican politics is still capable of drawing support.
“Brad Raffensperger never really stopped from 2022 on. ” said Sterling. who is running for secretary of state and has also faced MAGA’s ire for refusing to overturn election results.. “He could have set up a foundation. gone around the country and just talked about democracy and he would have been applauded.. Instead he chose to go into the battle and fight.”
Brad Raffensperger Georgia GOP MAGA Burt Jones Rick Jackson May 19 primary elections
wasnt this the guy who deleted votes or something
I dont trust him at all honestly. Like you cant just flip flop and act like everything is fine now. Georgia republicans need to wake up because this guy is just trying to save his own career at this point, thats all this is.
okay but property tax caps actually matter to regular people so i dont care what lane he says he’s in or whatever that means. my property taxes went up like crazy last two years and nobody in atlanta is doing anything about it. all these guys care about is trump this trump that and nobody is talking about real stuff. i own a small house and im basically being taxed out of it. anyway i probably wont vote in the primary anyway because whats the point.
This man literally tried to help steal the election from Trump in 2020 and now he wants Georgia republicans to vote for him for governor. The audacity is actually insane. I remember watching the whole phone call thing and he was so disrespectful. People in Georgia have short memories I guess but some of us dont forget. He can have all the rotary club meetings he wants it doesnt change what he did. Also I heard he was actually a democrat before which explains everything. The GOP should not let someone like this anywhere near the governors office. He had his chance and he blew it. Just my opinion but I feel like most real conservatives already know this.