Republican who defied Trump over 2020 election results launches battleground state governor bid

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who rejected a push by President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the key southeastern battleground state, launched a 2026 Republican bid for governor.

Raffensperger’s announcement on Wednesday adds more drama to an already combustible GOP gubernatorial primary between Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and state Attorney General Chris Carr. 

And while Raffensperger has a long track record as a conservative Republican, he’ll likely once again face the scorn of Trump, who last month endorsed Jones for governor.

“I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions. I follow the law and the Constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what,” Raffensperger said in a campaign launch video. “As governor, I’ll deliver a bold conservative agenda, and build Georgia even stronger.”

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Raffensperger’s agenda includes a push to eliminate the state income tax, capping property taxes for seniors, repealing taxes and fees on closing costs for homebuyers, expanding tax credits for parental school choice, banning drugs that block puberty from gender-affirming care and purging “woke curriculums” from schools.

A statement from his campaign also highlighted that Raffensperger pledged “to work alongside President Donald Trump and congressional leaders to bring jobs back to Georgia, deport criminal aliens, and restore law and order in communities across the state.”

The now-70-year-old engineering entrepreneur, along with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, refused to aid Trump as the president tried to reverse now-former President Joe Biden’s razor-thin 2020 election victory in Georgia.

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Trump appeared to pressure Raffensperger in an early January 2020 call when the president urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to upend Biden’s victory. Raffensperger told Trump at the time that his data was wrong and that “we believe our numbers are right.”

That earned Trump’s scorn, and he backed Republican primary challenges against Kemp and Raffensperger when they both ran for re-election in 2022.

But Kemp and Raffensperger ended up easily defeating the Trump-supported primary challengers en route to general election victories.

The Democratic Governors Association’s Kevin Donohoe, pointing to Raffensperger’s 2026 campaign launch, argued that it “injects a new level of chaos into what was already a messy primary — and is bad news for Burt Jones and Chris Carr.”

Raffensperger’s announcement came the day after former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan launched a Democratic campaign for Georgia governor, in the race to succeed Kemp, who is term-limited.

Duncan, who as lieutenant governor was also a vocal GOP critic of Trump’s repeated efforts to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia, decided against seeking re-election in 2022.

Duncan endorsed Biden in the 2024 presidential race and later supported then-Vice President Kamala Harris after she replaced Biden at the top of the Democrats’ 2024 ticket. Duncan spoke in a high-profile speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last summer. Earlier this summer he announced he had switched parties and become a Democrat.

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Duncan joined a Democratic primary field that already includes former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, former DeKalb County CEO Mike Thurmond and former State Sen. Jason Esteves.

While Georgia was once right-leaning, it has become a key general election battleground. But Republicans have won every gubernatorial contest in the state since 2002.