Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.
The headline contest was one that we already knew was probably a lost cause for Team Trump. But we didn’t really know the half of it. It was an absolute rout: Former senator David Perdue (R-Ga.) trailed incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp (R), 73 percent to 22 percent, with 96 percent of votes in.
This was perhaps the one race former president Donald Trump most targeted to make a statement about the 2020 election. Members of the GOP establishment in turn wanted to send a message that Trump should give up on his “vendetta tour,” punctuated by a Kemp endorsement from former vice president Mike Pence.
It’s unlikely this will chasten Trump much. Election deniers are winning primaries elsewhere, and they’ll continue to do so. But there was a time relatively recently when we wondered whether the idea of a stolen election would be a litmus test in the GOP primaries; Kemp has now showed you don’t absolutely have to toe that line.
That doesn’t mean others will be able to replicate his success. Kemp had built credibility with the conservative base, and it’s not like he denounced Trump’s lies as a handful of other Republicans have. He also made a point to support new voting restrictions in Georgia.
In some ways, Tuesday’s biggest surprise in Georgia was Secretary of State Brad Raffenspeger (R), who had been left for political dead after more directly repudiating Trump’s voter-fraud claims.
Then he, unlike many Republicans who denounce Trump, actually ran for reelection. He went on to fend off a high-profile, election-denier opponent in Rep. Jody Hice — without a runoff.
Combined with Chris Carr’s easy win over a lackluster Trump-backed challenger for attorney general — Carr had said there was no widespread voter fraud — Trump went 0 for 3 in endorsing against statewide Georgia Republicans who assured the election was valid.
