BURSTThe 2020 election is looming large over the Georgia GOP gubernatorial primary as three men who played critical roles in defending or challenging the state’s presidential results look to succeed term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp (R).
State Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, state Attorney General Chris Carr and state Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger are vying for the GOP nod to be Georgia's next top executive.
Jones was one of more than a dozen fake electors who sought to overturn former President Biden's narrow win over President Trump in the state and has earned Trump's endorsement. Meanwhile, Raffensperger and Carr both garnered coverage for rebuffing Trump’s efforts to overturn the results.
The dynamic has turned the GOP primary into a barometer for how willing Georgia Republicans are to support an independent-minded candidate, or whether they prioritize loyalty to Trump above all else.
“I think it's gonna play a part,” said former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a former adviser to Trump in 2016, referring to the 2020 election.
“If not actively, it's in people's hardwiring,” he added.
Georgia was one of a handful of states to narrowly go for Biden over Trump five years ago. The Peach State subsequently became ground zero for election conspiracies and efforts to overturn Trump’s losses.
Jones, who was a state senator at the time, was among a slate of 16 alternative electors who sought to overturn Biden’s win in the state, though he was not charged with any wrongdoing.
Peter Skandalakis, the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia who made that determination, said in a statement last year that he found “the conduct and involvement of Senator Jones as an elected representative to be reasonable and not criminal in nature.”
“His actions of serving as an alternate elector were based upon the advice of attorneys and legal scholars,” he added. “While the advice may eventually be judged to be incorrect, Senator Jones, like any other citizen, should not be punished for relying upon the guidance of counsel under these specific facts and conditions.”
Raffensperger and Carr, meanwhile, found themselves on the other side of the 2020 election dispute. The Georgia secretary of state became a household name when leaked audio of a phone call between him and Trump revealed the president pressuring him to “find” more than 11,000 votes to change his loss in the state.
Raffensperger rebuffed the president’s efforts, angering conservative activists so much that Georgia GOP delegates passed a resolution during their convention earlier this year calling him “repugnant” to their brand and seeking to keep him off a GOP ballot in the state.
Carr also rebuffed efforts to change the trajectory of the election, defending the state against multiple lawsuits over the election results. His office called one such lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in an effort to challenge results in several states including Georgia, “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong.”
Skandalakis noted that Jones, despite having been a fake elector, also showed some hesitance over challenging the results. He noted Jones “expressed reservations” when he was initially asked to serve as an alternative elector and that he “did not commit to serving as an elector” one day before a meeting with the alternative slate.
He also didn’t deliver a letter to then-Vice President Pence from a Georgia Senate Judiciary subcommittee chair asking the vice president to delay the Electoral College count. Still, Jones — who’s a former team captain for the University of Georgia football team — has largely been seen as a hero among the base for standing beside Trump.
Crossing Trump ordinarily would have been the death knell for his GOP opponents, yet Kemp, Carr and Raffensperger all survived GOP-backed challengers during the 2022 election.
“It's probably just going to be like, who are the guys with Trump and that were fighting for his agenda, and who are the people that weren't,” said Republican strategist Jay Williams regarding the dynamic in next year’s Republican contest.
“I think that's probably the differentiator,” he added.
Jones believes his alliance with Trump is key, touting the president’s endorsement in an ad last month while describing Carr and Raffensperger as “Never Trumpers.”
Yet, his opponents believe there’s a path forward despite breaking with Trump.
During an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's “Politically Georgia” podcast released this week, Raffensperger was asked how he planned to deal with some of the opposition he’s already dealt with inside the party as he campaigned for governor.
“Like I did in 2022,” Raffensperger said, referring to his nearly 20-point win over Trump-backed challenger Jody Hice. “Just go out and talk to folks, and I won a primary without a runoff and I won in the fall — largest winning percentage.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with The Hill, Carr sought to align himself with Kemp over the issue of the 2020 election results while targeting Jones on it.
“I'm proud of the role that I played defending the rule of law and the Constitution in 2020, and I stood with Brian Kemp [to] uphold that rule of law, and we followed the facts, we followed the law and we followed the evidence,” Carr told The Hill.
“I think Burt Jones wrapping himself in the 2020 election chaos — it's simply a losing strategy that cost Georgia two Senate seats, and Georgia Republicans remember all the time ... that we don't have those two Senate seats that should be ours, but it was because of that chaos,” he added.
Asked given those comments if he believed Jones played a role in Georgia losing its two Senate elections in 2020, Carr said, “Absolutely, I do.”
Jones’s campaign declined to comment on Carr’s remarks.
Republicans say the best shot for Raffensperger or Carr to have a chance will be trying to force Jones into a runoff by blocking the GOP lieutenant governor from getting more than half the vote during the primary.
“I think somewhere in there, [Carr] and Raffensperger are going to be splitting whatever other vote that will not vote for Burt Jones for whatever reason and are looking for an alternative,” former state GOP Chair Chuck Clay said.
While Clay said Raffensperger likely enjoyed a higher name ID compared to Carr from the 2020 election, he called it a mixed bag.
“That cuts both ways, obviously,” Clay said.