Atlanta (AP) – Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, the Republican Foreign Minister, who had rejected Donald Trump’s call to overthrow the election results of the state in 2020, said on Wednesday that he ran for the governor in 2026.
The wealthy engineering entrepreneur could be the most addressed to business-oriented Republicans who once dominated GOP forecasts in Georgia, but he promises a strongly conservative campaign, even if it is despised by Trump and his allies. Raffensperger’s entry into the field has strengthened the primary in a state since 2002 with an unbroken line of republican governors.
“I am a conservative republican and I am ready to make the difficult decisions. I follow the law and the constitution, and I will always do the right thing for Georgia, no matter what happens,” said Raffensperger in an announcement video.
Raffensperger opposed Trump’s anger to re -election in 2022, but he will again test the tolerance of the GOP voters for a candidate that is clearly targeted by the President. His first challenge could even be qualified for the primary. In June, the Republican Party in Georgia voted to prevent Raffensperger from running under his banner, although the party leader said that the attempt could not be going on anywhere.
Two other top Republicans are already in the race – Lt. Governor Burt Jones and Attorney General Chris Carr. Jones swore to be a “properly elected and qualified” voter for Trump in 2020, although the Democrat Joe Biden was declared the winner of the state. Carr was on the Raffensperger side to reject the challenges to the results. Other Republicans are Clark Dean, Scott Ellison and Gregg Kirkpatrick.
On the democratic side, the top candidates, the former mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Senator Jason Esteves, and the former state working officer Michael Thurmond Geoff Duncan, the Raffensperger, such as Trump’s advance, to overthrow the 2020 elections to the Republican lieutenant governor, tipped off as a democrat on Tuesday.
Raffensperger promises what he calls the “bold conservative agenda”, including the elimination of state income tax, the discussion of property taxes for seniors, the ban on drugs that block puberty from gender care and spotless “Woke Curriculum” of schools. He also promises to work with Trump to enhance jobs, deport immigrants with a criminal register and “restore law and order”.
An introverted in national limelight
Although he later begins as other candidates, Raffensperger benefits from a electorate that already knows him, as well as the ability to finance his own campaign. The 70-year-old sold his concrete reinforcement company tendon systems in 2023 for an undisclosed amount.
Raffensperger was certainly in the conservative wrinkle before insisting that the election results in 2020 transformed the introverted engineer into an unlikely national figure. He rejected the abortion and, as a state legislator, urged tax cuts that ran on a platform for leadership skills for the State Secretary in 2018. During this race one of his three sons, Brenton Raffensperger, died of an overdose of fentanyl at the age of 27.
He spent most of his first two years in office against complaints submitted by Democrats and the Georgia under the then secretary of the state of Brian Kemp, who had illegal voter suppression at Kemp’s victory against Democrat Stacey Abrams. Raffensperger was also commissioned to exclude recent Dominion tuning machines for a choice in 2020 from Coronavirus pandemic.
Biden’s close victory in Georgia changed things. Raffensperger said publicly that he wished Trump had won, but who found that he had not seen any evidence of widespread fraud or voting rights. Trump and his partisans set attacks.
In his book “Integrity Counts” in 2021, Raffensperger told the death threats that his wife had suspected of being an encounter with men he suspected, and it was a handful of protesters, as a handful of protesting a day, on the day when a handful of protesting the building stormed into the building, in the US -Kapitol Stormed.
But it was a call on January 2, which wrote Raffensperger’s name in history. Trump pushed the Foreign Minister to “find 11,780 votes” – enough to overthrow Joe Biden’s victory in the state, and quoted repeatedly refused fraud claims and increased the prospect of “criminal offense” if the officials did not change the number of votes according to the reconciliation of the conversation.
Raffensperger pushed back and found that complaints that made these claims had been unsuccessful.
“We don’t agree that they won,” said Raffensperger to Trump.
Political career after 2020
Raffensperger made this refusal to Buckle a huge political goal. The legislator prohibited a repetition of his decision to send absent -making applications to the voters and constrained the exploit of absence drop boxes. They robbed him of his postal chairman of the state election committee and finally created a trump-oriented body, whose attempts to assert control over election processes were shot down by the courts. Trump advocated the US MP Jody Hice, who rejected that Georgia’s votes were counted for President Joe Biden to challenge Raffensperger in the Republican area code in 2022.
When Raffensperger rattled, he did not change his public style. He followed a campaign with placid speeches before the members of the Civic Club struck after a tough lunch. The voters renowned him, including thousands, who had previously coordinated in democratic primaries, but gave ballot papers in the GOP competition. Then he drove to re -election via a democrat.
