Donald Trump has suffered this Tuesday what is probably his toughest electoral defeat since he lost the 2020 presidential elections. And it has been, precisely, against the governor of Georgia, who refused to cheat to turn the electoral result around. Trump was seeking revenge, but has failed.
The former president launched a campaign of harassment and takedown against Brian Kemp, the current governor, 58, who seeks to revalidate his position in the November elections. He has said that he is a “total and complete disaster”, that he is a “coward”, that he lost the 2020 presidential elections in Georgia (he was the first Republican defeated since 1992) and that he also lost the Senate to the Republicans, suggesting that he allowed fraud in both cases.
To defeat Kemp, the former president promoted the candidacy of former senator David Perdue. He financed him with $2.6 million of his own funds as he repeatedly tried to discredit Kemp. The governor has avoided a direct clash, but has not shied away from the battle. This Monday he campaigned with Mike Pence, vice president with Trump and who ended up at odds with him. “I have had a great relationship with Mike Pence. I had a great relationship with President Trump,” Kemp said. “I have never said anything bad about him and I don’t intend to. I’m not mad at him, I think he’s mad at me. It’s something I can’t control,” he added.
Since the visibility of his position, Kemp has taken measures to please his electoral base, has shown that his politics are very right-wing and has had the support of many other positions in the Republican Party, who believe that insisting all the time on the The 2020 election theft hoax is far less effective than talking about inflation, the economy, security, or abortion.
Trump’s chosen one, meanwhile, has been out of place the entire campaign. Perdue has embraced the stolen election hoax and has extended it to his own defeat in the 2020 senator election, with a runoff in January 2021, but he seemed to want to justify it.
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Although it could be seen coming, Trump’s defeat has been painful. But Trumpism is not dead, far from it. Many of the former president’s candidates have won the primaries this Tuesday. Among them, Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG), a conspiracy theorist who has won her district to try to revalidate her seat in the House of Representatives. Or Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was spokesman for the White House with Trump and has prevailed in the primaries to run for governor of Arkansas. Or former football player Herschel Walker, who will run for senator from Georgia.
More open was the struggle in the primaries for Secretary of State. In them, Brad Raffensperger was another Trump obsession. It is the position to which he asked to “find” enough votes to turn around the 2020 electoral result, which he refused. Now, he is fighting to renew his position and this Tuesday he was leading the ballot, but he had not yet secured the 50% majority that would allow him to avoid a dangerous second round.
Whether there is a second round or not, that Raffensperger is the most voted shows that a growing part of the voters considers that it is time to turn the page and stop insisting on the hoax of the stolen elections of 2020. Some, like the governor of Maryland , Larry Hogan, have taken advantage of the occasion to openly raise their voices against the dynamic in which Trump has installed the Republican Party. Most prefer to shy away from open confrontation.
A good part of the Republican primaries are being held under the shadow of Trump, who seems to want to measure his influence in the party and his chances of running for president again in 2024. Whatever happens in Pennsylvania, where the vote is still being fought for vote in the Senate primaries, there is a majority of Trump-backed candidates who have won their respective primaries. Sometimes the former president has jumped on the winning horse at the last minute, as with Doug Mastriano, a candidate for governor of Pennsylvania. But despite undoubted victories, such as that of JD Vance in Ohio, it has become clear that Trump’s support is not infallible. In addition to what happened in Georgia, his gubernatorial candidates in Ohio, Idaho and Nebraska have also lost the primaries and Madison Cawthorn has been left out of the race for the House of Representatives in her North Carolina district, for example.
november road
The primaries that are being held by the States are the prologue to the mid-term elections on November 8. They completely renew the House of Representatives and just over a third of the 100 senators. In addition, multiple state and local offices are elected.
Following his victory in the Georgia primary, Governor Kemp will face 48-year-old Democrat Stacey Adams, who won with almost no opposition in her party. The Republican has already defeated this same rival in previous elections, but Trump has now predicted that many voters in his party will not want to vote for him in November because of what he did in 2020.
For the Democrats, what is vital is keeping the position of Senator Raphael Warnock. The popularity as an athlete of Walker, his Republican rival, is tarnished by the accusations that his ex-wife has made of mistreatment, violence and threats.
Elsewhere, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s spokeswoman for two years and the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, won hands down to run for governor of Arkansas. In Texas, Ken Paxton defeated George P. Bush in the second round, the last politician of the family saga, grandson and nephew of presidents, in the primaries for state attorney general.
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