Atlanta (AP) – The former Republican and former Georgia Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan is a democrat for the governor, a remarkable step for a convinced critic of President Donald Trump, who left the conservative folds in a region in which party age has gone in the other.
“I never took care of Trump. So the Republicans of Georgia threw me out of their party,” said Duncan in his video published on Tuesday. “I went anyway. Now I know myself as a proud democrat for the governor.”
Duncan, a 50-year-old inhabitant of a Republican fortress north of Atlanta, joins an already overcrowded field of life-long Democrats. The top candidates include the former mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, Senator Jason Esteves and the former work officer Michael Thurmond.
Duncan is the most selectable democrat in a state that still leans slightly republican. With regard to guidelines, he plans to focus on access in healthcare and living costs. And he plays his opposition against the Trumpians of the GOP.
“I Kandle for the governor to put Georgians in the best position to love their neighbors again,” he said. “And to make Georgia the front of democracy and a deficit against extremism.”
Duncan won the state’s second highest office in 2018 after an term in the State House. He ran in the shadow of now Gov. Brian Kemp, who narrowly defeated the national democratic Star Stacey Abrams. Two years later, the democrat Joe Biden had experienced a victory in a state republican for two decades. Kemp and other vital republicans in Georgia have trumps to overthrow the results in 2020, but Duncan was perhaps the most pronounced opponent who punished the state states’ senators who supported Trump’s efforts.
Kemp stood the resistance of Trump and beat up a challenger in the GOP primary school in 2022 on the way to defeating Abrams again. However, Duncan decided against a re -election offer, instead as a former chosen Republican who spoke out against Trumpism to become a paid CNN mechanic. The state of GOP officially excommunicated Duncan in January and said that actions, including speaking on the Democratic National Convention of 2024, meant in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris that Duncan has “even claimed to be a nominal republican”.
Some of Duncan’s political stops as governor of Leutnant can contact Democrats, such as in the mediation of a state hate crime law and supporting the improvement of care. A candidate who praised in 2018 with “100% pro-life” should have keen questions about his support of a state law of 2019 that prohibits the most abortions. Duncan also supported a Republican revision of the Georgia electoral law after the victories of bidges and two democratic senators. It tightened the coordination regulations and reduced the apply of ballot -drop boxes.
When he finally came to the Democrats in August, Duncan explained his moral change as well as political terms.
“When I was elected as a state representative from 2013 and then became a governor Leutnant so difficult to find the right way as a Republican to do the right thing,” Duncan told NPR Affiliate Wabe.
He quoted the GOP opposition against stricter regulations of the weapons and the expansion of the Medicaid health insurance as examples of republican orthodoxy, which he could no longer support.
The question for Duncan is whether he can corrralize enough democratic voices to gain nomination. He has spent years without political home since his office.
The Republicans of the Georgia remain enthusiastic about Trump – demonstrated by the fact that Duncan’s successor as a lieutenant is governor Burt Jones. Jones now ran for the governor and declared himself a “properly chosen and qualified” voter for Trump in 2020. Jones also pushed to a special meeting in Georgia, which aimed at lifting bidens of close victory in the state.
In the neighboring Florida, the former Republican governor Charlie Crist made a comeback as a democrat in 2022.
In contrast to Florida’s meandering Democratic Party, Georgia Democrats have a bank of nationwide candidates.
Duncan’s consultant and allies underline his blunt for Harris. But Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, also supported Harris and used to work in Biden’s west wing.
They advertise Duncan’s relative teenage people, but Esteves, an emerging legislator, is even younger at 42.
They keep his experience as a former legislator who has won a nationwide office. However, the 72 -year -old Thurmond was a legislator, won three times as Georgia Labor Commissioner and headed the school system and the county government in DEKALB County. This suburb of Atlanta is a democratic bastion. Thurmond, like Duncan, also appeals moderate and even some conservatives that Trump cannot endure.
