Republican Brad Raffensperger to run for Georgia governor after defying Trump over 2020 election

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who rejected Donald Trump’s call to help overturn the state’s 2020 election results, said Wednesday that he’s running for governor in 2026.

The wealthy engineering entrepreneur might appeal most to business-oriented Republicans who once dominated GOP primaries in Georgia, but he is pledging a strongly conservative campaign even while he remains scorned by Trump and his allies. Raffensperger’s entry into the field intensifies the primary in a state with an unbroken line of Republican governors since 2002.

“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 an announcement video.

Raffensperger defied Trump’s wrath to win reelection in 2022, but he will again test GOP primary voters’ tolerance for a candidate so clearly targeted by the president. His first challenge may be to even qualify for the primary. Georgia’s Republican Party voted in June to ban Raffensperger from running under its banner, although the party chairman said that attempt might not go anywhere.

Two other top Republicans are already in the race — Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Attorney General Chris Carr. Jones swore himself to be a “duly elected and qualified” elector for Trump in 2020 even though Democrat Joe Biden had been declared the state’s winner. Carr sided with Raffensperger in rejecting challenges to the results. Other Republicans include Clark Dean, Scott Ellison and Gregg Kirkpatrick.

On the Democratic side, top candidates include former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, state Sen. Jason Esteves and former state Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond. Geoff Duncan, who like Raffensperger spurned Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election as Republican lieutenant governor, entered the governor’s race Tuesday as a Democrat.

Raffensperger pledges what he calls a “bold conservative agenda,” including eliminating the state income tax, capping property taxes for seniors, banning drugs that block puberty from gender-affirming care and purging “woke curriculums” from schools. He also promises to work with Trump to increase jobs, deport immigrants with criminal records and “restore law and order.”

An introvert in the national spotlight

Although he starts later than other candidates, Raffensperger benefits from an electorate that already knows him, plus an ability to finance his own campaign. The 70-year-old sold his concrete reinforcement company, Tendon Systems, for an undisclosed amount in 2023.

Raffensperger, was securely inside the conservative fold before his insistence on honoring the 2020 election results turned the introverted engineer into an unlikely national figure. He opposed abortion and pushed tax cuts as a state legislator, running for secretary of state in 2018 on a platform that emphasized managerial competence. During that race, one of his three sons, Brenton Raffensperger, died at age 27 from a fentanyl overdose.

He spent most of his first two years in office battling lawsuits filed by Democrats that fruitlessly alleged Georgia, under then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, engaged in illegal voter suppression in 2018 in Kemp’s victory over Democrat Stacey Abrams. Raffensperger also was tasked to roll out new Dominion voting machines for a 2020 election thrown off-kilter by the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden’s narrow win in Georgia changed things. Raffensperger said publicly that he wished Trump had won, but firmly held that he saw no evidence of widespread fraud or voting irregularities. Trump and his partisans ratcheted up attacks.

In his 2021 book, “Integrity Counts,” Raffensperger recounted death threats texted to his wife, an encounter with men whom he suspected of staking out his home, and being escorted out of the Georgia Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a handful of protesters entered the building on the day many more protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

But it was a phone call days earlier, on Jan. 2, that wrote Raffensperger’s name into history. Trump pressured the secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” — enough to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state, repeatedly citing disproven claims of fraud and raising the prospect of “criminal offense” if officials didn’t change the vote count, according to a recording of the conversation.

Raffensperger pushed back, noting that lawsuits making those claims had been fruitless.

“We don’t agree that you have won,” Raffensperger told Trump.

Post-2020 political career

That refusal to buckle made Raffensperger a huge political target. Lawmakers outlawed a repeat of his decision to mail absentee ballot applications to voters and restricted the use of State Election Board, eventually creating a Trump-aligned body whose attempts to assert control of election processes were shot down by courts. Trump endorsed U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, who objected to Georgia’s electoral votes being counted for President Joe Biden, to challenge Raffensperger in the 2022 Republican primary.

If Raffensperger was rattled, he didn’t change his public style. He stuck to a campaign of quiet speeches before civic club members dozing off after a heavy lunch. Voters renominated him, including thousands who previously voted in Democratic primaries but cast ballots in the GOP contest. He then cruised to reelection over a Democrat.