Georgia election results - live: Trump foe Brian Kemp wins primary as Herschel Walker secures GOP Senate nom

Key primaries in several US states today saw high-profile Republican candidates facing off against each other and in some cases trying to triumph over rivals endorsed by Donald Trump.

In Georgia, incumbent Governor Brian Kemp won a decisive victory over his main challenger, Trump endorsee and former senator David Perdue, whose campaign failed to catch fire despite the ex-president’s loud interventions. Mr Trump’s former no 2, Mike Pence, campaigned for Mr Kemp.

The state’s GOP senate primary saw the nomination of controversial ex-footballer Herschel Walker, a very popular grassroots figure coaxed into the race by Trump himself whose sometimes erratic behaviour, business dealings and history of personal problems have left some Republicans worried about his general election chances. Also on the ballot was Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose grassroots popularity and massive campaign fundraising cleared her path over a field of GOP rivals.

And in Alabama, Congressman Mo Brooks hopes to make a comeback in the Republican senate race despite having lost Mr Trump’s endorsement earlier this year. At the time he was sinking in the polls, and also called on his supporters to start “moving on” from the 2020 election, thus provoking Mr Trump’s disdain.

Key Points

• Controversial Herschel Walker likely to triumph in GOP Georgia senate race

• Incumbent Georgia governor Brian Kemp seeing off Trump-backed rival

• Mo Brooks apparently back in running in Alabama after being dumped by Trump

Progressive state senator to launch campaign aimed at rebuking DCCC chair

Tuesday 24 May 2022 03:13 , John Bowden

Progressives are opening fire on Sean Patrick Maloney, the establishment-aligned chair of the Democrats’ House campaign wing after Mr Maloney declined to run in a congressional seat considered to be at risk in November for the chance instead to run in a seat currently occupied by another Democrat.

New York state Senator Alessandra Biaggi announced on Monday that she was launching a primary campaign against Mr Maloney for the newly redrawn seat. She already has the backing of one New York congressman incensed at Mr Maloney’s apparent willingness to oust another Democratic congressman to save his own skin, and could pick up more endorsements from members of the congressional delegation in days ahead.

The situation is brewing in a troubling manner for Mr Maloney, who as chair of the Democrats’ campaign arm will likely have to face questions about why he chose to battle a Democrat in a midterm election year instead of a Republican.

Meet Brian Kemp: The man who could deal a blow to Donald Trump in Georgia

Tuesday 24 May 2022 04:45 , John Bowden

Georgia’s Brian Kemp may become known, at least after Tuesday, as the man who did the impossible: Defeat a candidate backed by Donald Trump in a Republican primary in the deep south.

That certainly looks to be the case as the incumbent governor charges into Tuesday’s primary with a double-digit polling lead over David Perdue, the Trump acolyte who looks to be set to deliver the former president his first defeat of the 2022 primary season.

Read more in The Independent:

Meet Brian Kemp: The man who could deal a blow to Donald Trump in Georgia

Texas primary will test relevance of abortion ruling

Tuesday 24 May 2022 06:15 , John Bowden

A contested primary on the Texas border will test the relevance of abortion as an issue heading in to November’s general elections.

Atypical of a Democratic primary, the battle between Jessica Cisneros and Henry Cuellar, an incumbent congressman, has centered around the issue as Mr Cuellar remains the last anti-abortion Democrat in the House.

The race took on new significance after a draft opinion from the Supreme Court was leaked earlier in May indicating that the Court may soon overturn Roe vs Wade.

Read more about the race’s newfound relevance in the Associated Press:

Texas race tests abortion's resonance with Democratic voters

Who is Herschel Walker, Donald Trump’s man in Georgia?

Tuesday 24 May 2022 08:00 , John Bowden

Herschel Walker remains a favorite to win the GOP Senate nomination in Georgia on Tuesday thanks to his campaign’s ability to coalesce support not only from Mr Trump and his wing of the party but also from establishment figures including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But just who is the three-time Heisman winner, and how did he win Donald Trump’s endorsement in the race to unseat Raphael Warnock?

Read more in The Independent from john Bowden:

Meet Herschel Walker, the football-player-turned-Trump-acolyte in Georgia

Trump endorsee Perdue takes last-minute hail-mary with racist remarks

Tuesday 24 May 2022 09:25 , Andrew Naughtie

David Perdue, the former senator whom Donald Trump backed to take on Brian Kemp in Georgia, looks set to lose heavily in the state’s primary today, but he’s pulling out all the stops in the race’s final hours – and indulging in some old-fashioned racism directed at Stacey Abrams, who’s running for governor on the Democratic side.

This isn’t the first time Mr Perdue has pointed to a candidate of colour’s non-whiteness to draw a contrast. In 2020, as he fought what turned out to be a losing Senate battle against Democrat Jon Ossoff, Mr Perdue took to deliberately mispronouncing Kamala Harris’s name at rallies for comedic effect.

Who is Herschel Walker?

Tuesday 24 May 2022 10:24 , Andrew Naughtie

Georgia’s Republican voters look set to choose as their Senate nominee Herschel Walker, a former NFL player who was already wildly popular before Donald Trump endorsed his campaign.

Mr Walker is polling strongly against Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock, who was elected in a special election runoff at the start of 2020. However, he has long raised concerns among more establishment-leaning Republicans with his periodically erratic public statements and behaviour, and they also worry his personal baggage may be too much for many general election voters to swallow.

He faces an allegation of domestic violence dating back two decades, when his then-girlfriend told police that he threatened to “blow her head off” during an argument. However, he told Axios last year that he’s “accountable” for his previous violent behaviour.

Read more from John Bowden:

Meet Herschel Walker, the football-player-turned-Trump-acolyte in Georgia

Who is Brian Kemp?

Tuesday 24 May 2022 11:00 , Andrew Naughtie

Georgia’s Brian Kemp may become known, at least after Tuesday, as the man who did the impossible: Defeat a candidate backed by Donald Trump in a Republican primary in the deep south.

That certainly looks to be the case as the incumbent governor charges into Tuesday’s primary with a double-digit polling lead over David Perdue, the Trump acolyte who looks to be set to deliver the former president his first defeat of the 2022 primary season.

Read more from John Bowden.

Meet Brian Kemp: The man who could deal a blow to Donald Trump in Georgia

Watch: Cruz campaigns for Brooks despite Trump’s un-endorsement

Tuesday 24 May 2022 12:21 , Andrew Naughtie

Just as Mike Pence stood up for Brian Kemp in Georgia yesterday in direct opposition to Donald Trump’s endorsement of David Perdue, Texas Senator Ted Cruz hit the trail for Alabama congressman and Senate candidate Mo Brooks, who earlier this year lost the ex-president’s backing after he began to tank in the polls.

Mr Brooks responded by sharing the alarming claim that Mr Trump has repeatedly asked friends and colleagues about the possibility of having himself somehow reinstalled as president between now and the next election.

Here’s video of Mr Cruz standing up for the abandoned representative, who it seems may have made a late rally in the race.

Oz-McCormick battle moves to the courts

Tuesday 24 May 2022 12:54 , Andrew Naughtie

The impossibly close Pennsylvania primary between Dr Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick has taken another turn, with Mr McCormick taking legal action to count mail-in and absentee ballots posted in undated envelopes.

The challenge comes with the two candidates still separated by fewer than 1,000 votes, putting them well within the margin that triggers an automatic recount. That mail-in ballots may put Mr McCormick over the top is not lost on Donald Trump, who has called on his endorsee Dr Oz to prematurely declare victory and thus delegitimise the outstanding votes.

Read more below from Politico.

Michigan Republicans off ballot thanks to insufficient signatures

Tuesday 24 May 2022 13:30 , Andrew Naughtie

The Michigan gubernatorial race is a top target for Republicans, with Democratic incumbent and Trump bete noire Gretchen Whitmer fighting for re-election in a purple state. But the party has hit a major hiccup: several of its candidates have failed to qualify for this August’s primary.

As reported by the Associated Press, the affected candidates include former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who has led in primary polling despite campaign problems, and businessman Perry Johnson, who has spent millions of his own money to run. Their election petitions were challenged by Democrats who accused them of mass forgery of the signatures required by law.

Read more:

Is Brian Kemp’s likely victory the start of a turn against Trump?

Tuesday 24 May 2022 14:00 , Andrew Naughtie

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp looks set to survive his challenge from Trump-backed ex-senator David Perdue – and if he does, it will be with the help of none other than Mike Pence, who has been steadily cultivating a personal image of integrity by defending his decision not to try and overturn the 2020 election in Congress.

For some, the two men’s apparently successful link-up raises the prospect that Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party might not be quite as tight as it once seemed.

As The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes described it on MSNBC last night: “You have the party rallying around a very conservative Republican governor who is in no way a RINO, but has been targeted specifically and really solely because of his refusal to go along with the Big Lie. So this is a pure referendum on Donald Trump’s most important obsession, and he’s going to lose badly in a crucial state.”

Watch his remarks below.

Pence to North Carolina

Tuesday 24 May 2022 14:33 , Andrew Naughtie

Fresh off his appearance with Georgia’s Brian Kemp, a Trump target who looks set to survive, Mike Pence is continuing his campaign roadshow by stumping for North Carolina’s Tedd Budd, the GOP nominee for the state’s open Senate seat.

Unlike Mr Kemp, Mr Budd had Mr Trump’s backing over former governor Pat McCrory. The seat is crucial to Republicans’ efforts to retake the Senate.

Trump-backed Ted Budd beats former governor McCrory in North Carolina Senate primary

Marjorie Taylor Greene set to hang on as challengers make little headway

Tuesday 24 May 2022 15:00 , Andrew Naughtie

Far-right Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the highest-profile Republicans facing a primary today, but her race has gotten little attention. That’s partly because none of her five challengers is particularly well known, but more because her incredible fundraising power (she’s raked in $9.2m this cycle) makes her the envy of candidates across the country.

Here’s a write-up of the race, such as it is, courtesy of The Hill.

Trump offers Perdue last-minute boost

Tuesday 24 May 2022 15:30 , Andrew Naughtie

As turnout in Georgia’s primary reportedly runs high, Donald Trump has blasted out an email reiterating his endorsement of David Perdue, whom the polls say is set to lose heavily in his challenge to incumbent Brian Kemp.

Here’s the former president’s message:

Herschel Walker says he’s never heard Trump say the election was stolen

Tuesday 24 May 2022 16:21 , Andrew Naughtie

Herschel Walker looks set to be the Republican nominee to take on Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock in November, but many Republicans are worried about his habit of making odd statements in public that scramble his own and his party’s campaign narrative.

Among those is this resurfaced clip in which Mr Walker claims he has never heard Donald Trump say the 2020 election was stolen – the entire basis for the ex-president’s endorsement of David Perdue in the simultaneous governor’s race.

Analysis: Democrats row in public in Texas, Georgia and beyond

Tuesday 24 May 2022 16:50 , Andrew Naughtie

The Republican primaries in Alabama and Georgia are getting most of today’s attention, but as Eric Garcia writes, what’s going on on the Democratic side deserves attention too. Incumbent members of Congress are duking it out for the chance to represent redrawn districts, and simmering resentments over the non-passage of Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislation are spilling over into public rows.

Read his full analysis below.

Democrats turn on each other in primaries as Build Back Better acrimony lingers

ICYMI: Georgia is test for Donald Trump, one he may fail

Tuesday 24 May 2022 18:36 , John Bowden

Georgia’s primary elections represent a dual test for Donald Trump: On one hand, he is hoping to see Herschel Walker, his favoured US Senate candidate, prevail in the primary election to determine who will challenge Raphael Warnock in November.

On the other hand, he is also hoping for a victory by David Perdue in the governor’s race, an outcome that has grown increasingly unlikely as the Trump-endorsed candidate has slipped further behind incumbent Gov Brian Kemp in the polls.

As a result, Tuesday could be the first major example of Donald Trump failing to oust a state-level GOP official who broke with him during his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

ICYMI: Meet Herschel Walker, the man who will likely take on Raphael Warnock

Tuesday 24 May 2022 19:50 , John Bowden

Herschel Walker, the three-time Heisman trophy winner, had far from your typical path to Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary in Georgia.

But he stands to advance to November’s general election regardless, thanks in no small part due to the endorsement of Donald Trump.

Learn more about the man likely to become the GOP’s next US Senate nominee in Georgia:

Meet Herschel Walker, the football-player-turned-Trump-acolyte in Georgia

Mo Brooks grilled by reporter on January 6 subpoena

Tuesday 24 May 2022 22:08 , John Bowden

Rep Mo Brooks, who is surging in the polls and could be headed to victory or a runoff Tuesday in Alabama’s US Senate primary, battled with an MSNBC reporter over his participation in the January 6 committee’s investigation.

Speaking with the network’s Vaughn Hillyard as the primary concluded on Tuesday, Mr Brooks denied that he had been served with a subpoena by the committee and denounced it as an effort to “affect the 2022 election”.

Watch more, from MSNBC:

Marjorie Taylor Greene faces crucial test

Tuesday 24 May 2022 22:42 , John Bowden

Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, the conspiracy-spewing congresswoman stripped of her committee memberships for comments about violence against Democrats, is up for renomination to the US House on Tuesday.

She faces a wide primary field in Georgia’s 14 district, which was recently redrawn to include more left-leaning areas of the state in Cobb County.

The district is one of the least-polled in the country, and therefore is hard to predict. But Ms Greene has a crucial incumbency advantage, and has avoided earning the ire of any members of Georgia’s congressional delegation, a lesson her fellow far-right House member Madison Cawthorn failed to heed in North Carolina.

Marjorie Taylor Greene reacts to Uvalde shooting with rallying cry against gun control

Wednesday 25 May 2022 00:09 , John Bowden

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right conspiracy spreader up for renomination in Tuesday’s primary elections in Georgia, was one of the first to jump into the fray with a call to oppose new gun control efforts after news of a school shooting broke in Uvalde, Texas.

“America is failing our youngest generations from decades of rejecting good moral values and teachings,” the freshman House member, up for reelection in a GOP primary on Tuesday, wrote in a tweet. “We don’t need more gun control. We need to return to God.”

Read more from The Independent’s John Bowden:

Marjorie Taylor Greene tweets ‘we don’t need more gun control’ in response to Uvalde

Polls close in Georgia

Wednesday 25 May 2022 00:29 , John Bowden

Polls closed in Georgia at 7:00 p.m. eastern time. The state is home to several high-profile races, including its gubernatorial contest and Republican US Senate primary.

David Perdue, the Trump-endorsed former senator, looks to be on the verge of defeat in his bid to rebuke Gov Brian Kemp on the former president’s behalf. And NFL veteran and Heisman-winner Herschel Walker could take home a new trophy: GOP nominee to the US Senate.

There’s also the primary election in the 14th district, where Marjorie Taylor Greene faces several Republican challengers.

Stacey Abrams advances to likely rematch with Brian Kemp

Wednesday 25 May 2022 00:45 , John Bowden

Polls are closed in Georgia, and that means Stacey Abrams is officially the Democratic nominee in the state’s gubernatorial election. She ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.

Ms Abrams lost an election to incumbent Gov Brian Kemp, who looked poised to win his own primary on Tuesday, in 2018 after an election concluded that was marred by accusations of voter suppression made by Ms Abrams’ campaign regarding voter roll purges conducted by Georgia’s government in the months leading up to the vote.

Now, she looks to be headed for a rematch with Mr Kemp after spending several years building a voter registration machine in the state.

Herschel Walker wins blowout victory in GOP Senate primary

01:13 , John Bowden

Three-time Heisman-winner Herschel Walker is headed to a general election in November after a commanding win in Georgia’s Republican Senate primary on Tuesday.

The race was called around 8:00 p.m. eastern time, when Mr Walker was ahead of his closest opponent by a massive 57-point margin.

He will face Rev Raphael Warnock, the incumbent, for Georgia’s US Senate seat later this year.

Marjorie Taylor Greene wins GOP primary in Georgia

02:09 , John Bowden

Far-right Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is once again the GOP nominee for Congress in the 14th District of Georgia.

The controversial House member won her primary on Tuesday by a wide margin, and she was leading her closest opponent by about 50 per cent by the time the race was called shortly before 9pm.

Read more in The Independent:

Ken Paxton beats George P Bush in Texas attorney general’s race

02:28 , John Bowden

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won renomination on Tuesday against George P Bush, the last scion of the Bush political dynasty.

The race was characterised by Mr Paxton’s image as a warrior in the courts for various conservative causes as well as both men’s attempts to win the favour of Donald Trump, who endorsed Mr Paxton despite Mr Bush’s willingness to seek his support even over the former president’s frequent criticism of other Bush family politicians.

Read more from The Independent’s Eric Garcia:

Ken Paxton beats George P Bush in Texas attorney general’s race

Brian Kemp rebukes Donald Trump in Georgia

02:55 , John Bowden

Tuesday’s primary elections concluded Donald Trump’s effort to oust a GOP governor who refused to bend to his will and support his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Brian Kemp won a decisive victory over David Perdue, the state’s former senator, on Tuesday, claiming more than 70 per cent of the vote.

Read more in The Independent from John Bowden:

Brian Kemp staves off Trump’s effort to oust him in Georgia

Biden met with boos at Herschel Walker’s victory party

03:20 , John Bowden

President Joe Biden’s call for the US to stand up to the gun lobby was not well received at the victory party of Herschel Walker in Georgia.

Mr Walker, a Trump-endorsed former NFL player, won Tuesday’s GOP primary for the US Senate in the state.

Abortion access a focus in Texas runoff

03:40 , John Bowden

Texas’s runoff election for the state’s 28th district was a duel between Jessica Cisneros and Henry Cuellar, an incumbent conservative Democratic congressman who held a slight lead over his opponent heading into the evening with just over 80 per cent of the vote reported.

The race shifted its focus to Mr Cuellar’s opposition to abortion rights earlier this month when it became clear that the Supreme Court may be on the verge of overturning Roe vs Wade.

Read more from The Associated Press:

Abortion access a focus of Cuellar, Cisneros runoff in Texas

Herschel Walker responds to Texas shooting

04:20 , John Bowden

Trump-endorsed Senate candidate Herschel Walker responded to a question about the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, from CNN’s Manu Raju on Tuesday after being declared the winner of his primary race in Georgia.

Mr Walker said only that he wanted to see more about the shooting before he made up his mind what legislation, if any, he thought would be an appropriate response to the shooting.

Who is Brian Kemp, the man who just dealt Donald Trump a blow in Georgia?

05:20 , John Bowden

Brian Kemp is headed for a rematch with Stacey Abrams after winning his primary on Tuesday against David Perdue, an ex-senator who enjoyed the endorsement of former President Donald Trump in his bid to unseat the governor.

But who is the one-term governor whose conservative bonafides were enough to outweigh an endorsement from the GOP’s supposed kingmaker?

Read more from The Independent’s John Bowden:

Meet Brian Kemp: The man who could deal a blow to Donald Trump in Georgia

Ken Paxton reissues call to arm teachers amid primary victory and deadly mass shooting

06:40 , John Bowden

Texas’s attorney general is doubling down on his call for teachers and other school officials to carry firearms after a deadly mass shooting at an elementary school in his state rocked the nation on Tuesday.

Ken Paxton responded to the news as his primary campaign ended in a victory over his challenger, George P Bush.

“The reality is we don’t have the resources to have law enforcement at every school,” he said. “It takes time for law enforcement, no matter how prepared, no matter how good they are to get there. So having the right training for some of these people at the school is the best hope.”

Read more in The Independent from Eric Garcia:

Texas attorney general calls for teachers to be armed after massacre in Uvalde

Meet Herschel Walker, the man who will take on Raphael Warnock

07:40 , John Bowden

Herschel Walker is headed to a November showdown with Sen Raphael Warnock, the state’s first Black US senator, after easily winning the state’s Republican Senate primary on Tuesday.

A three-time Heisman winner who first met Donald Trump in the 80s, Mr Walker is far from your typical senator.

Learn more about his unique background in this profile from The Independent:

Meet Herschel Walker, the football-player-turned-Trump-acolyte in Georgia

ICYMI: Marjorie Taylor Greene easily wins nomination in Georgia

08:20 , John Bowden

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is once again the GOP’s nominee for the 14th congressional district of Georgia after easily winning her primary on Tuesday.

She avoided making enemies in the state’s Republican congressional delegation, and enjoyed a national profile as an acolyte of Donald Trump and frequent purveyor of his falsehoods about the 2020 election.

Ms Greene now heads for the general election in a district redrawn to include more Democratic areas than before.

Read more in The Independent from John Bowden:

Marjorie Taylor Greene wins GOP primary in Georgia

Stacey Abrams in trouble for out-of-context “worst state” comments

09:20 , Andrew Naughtie

Democrat Stacey Abrams, who has become a nationwide leader in the battle against restrictions on voting rights, is the Democratic nominee to challenge Brian Kemp for the governorship of Georgia, putting the two in a rematch after Mr Kemp bested the then-secretary of state in an extremely narrow race in 2018.

As Mr Kemp pivots away from attacking David Perdue to focus on her, Ms Abrams is under fire for comments that Republicans say show she holds the state of Georgia in disdain and simply views the governor’s mansion as a stepping stone to the White House.

In fact, Ms Abrams was talking about the state’s extremely poor record on health outcomes, standards of living and incarceration. Here’s what she actually said:

Graig Graziosi has the story.

Stacey Abrams forced to explain why she called Georgia the ‘worst state’ to live

ICYMI: Trump rambles about a possible Pence challenge in 2024

10:00 , Andrew Naughtie

The sight of Mike Pence campaigning for Brian Kemp, whom Donald Trump disdained for declining to endorse his lies about the 2020 election, was accompanied by a New York Times interview in which the ex-vice president clearly left open the door to a 2024 presidential campaign.

Asked during a phone-in appearance about the possibility that he could be challenged by his own former deputy, Mr Trump went into a typically free-flowing rant about Mr Pence’s refusal to illegally overturn the election in Congress on 6 January 2021. Have a listen below...

Watch: Herschel Walker gives incoherent gun control answer

10:35 , Andrew Naughtie

As he celebrated his victory in the Georgia Senate primary, Herschel Walker was asked by CNN’s Manu Raju whether the Texas elementary school shooting indicates it is time for new gun safety laws. His answer was not just generic but also strikingly incoherent – the kind of mumbling statement that has some Republicans worried about his viability in November.

“Call me Lazarus”: Mo Brooks headed for runoff in Alabama

11:10 , Andrew Naughtie

Despite his un-endorsement by Donald Trump, congressman Mo Brooks has lived to fight another day in Alabama’s GOP Senate primary. He was a dogged ally of the former president right to the last, even speaking at the 6 January rally outside the White House, but when he began to sink in the polls and suggested that Republicans should move on from the Trumpist fixation on the 2020 election, Mr Trump hung him out to dry.

Mr Brooks initially responded by telling tales out of school, describing how he had had to explain to Mr Trump that there was no legal way for him to be reinstalled as president and that he should stop clinging to the idea. However, Mr Brooks continued to campaign using the ex-president’s prior approving words about him, and he managed a last-minute rebound.

“Two months ago, the experts declared our campaign was dead in the water,” he said in his victory speech last night. “Today, I guess, call me Lazarus.”

Raffensperger’s survival in perspective

11:40 , Andrew Naughtie

Brad Raffensperger’s surprisingly strong victory in Georgia last night means that Donald Trump has failed to satisfy one of his deepest post-2020 grudges. But as Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report points out, that Mr Raffensperger has survived doesn’t mean Georgia’s GOP voters have taken a turn away from the right...

Anti-abortion Democrat Henry Cuellar declares runoff victory over progressive challenger

12:09 , Andrew Naughtie

Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar, an anti-abortion Democrat who has been supported by the House leadership despite his politics, says he has triumphed in his runoff race against progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros, albeit by less than 200 votes.

However, even with more than 95 per cent of the vote counted, the race has not been officially called yet.

Mr Cuellar’s views on abortion and his relative conservatism on gun rights have earned him the intense disdain of left-wing leaders, including within his own party.

Report: Trump insisted David Perdue was headed for Georgia victory

12:53 , Andrew Naughtie

Writing for the New York Times, Michael C. Bender and Maggie Haberman have some fascinating colour from behind the scenes of Trump’s doomed Georgia endorsements – and in particular his failed effort to get David Perdue the gubernatorial nomination.

Read the full piece below.

What do last night’s GOP results mean for 2024?

13:44 , Andrew Naughtie

Aside from the question of whether or not Donald Trump will run again – and most observers currently think he will – the main guessing game about the 2024 Republican presidential race is whether he or some anointed successor will face a serious primary challenge, and if so, from what angle.

And now, the failure of Trump-backed candidates who tried to carry out his revenge against post-2020 apostates has got anti-Trump commentators debating whether the “big lie” really does hold enough sway in the party to guarantee a win for a candidate who espouses it:

Herschel Walker’s victory party reacted to Biden’s gun speech

14:15 , Andrew Naughtie

As Herschel Walker clinched the GOP’s senate nomination in Georgia with Donald Trump’s backers, his supporters gathered for a victory party where they watched Joe Biden’s speech on gun safety after the news broke of the massacre at a Texas elementary school.

Here’s a report on how the crowd reacted...

Perspective: just how badly David Perdue lost

14:45 , Andrew Naughtie

It’s not possible to know for sure whether Donald Trump and David Perdue genuinely expected to defenestrate Brian Kemp in Georgia – but as Shane Goldmacher points out, their statements in the campaign’s closing weeks ended up setting them up for a worse humiliation than they may have anticipated.

Fact check: Herschel Walker’s misleading claims about...his misleading claims

15:15 , Andrew Naughtie

One of the many things that has establishment Republicans concerned about Herschel Walker is his record of misleading claims about his background, in particular his education.

Now, he has taken to claiming that he never made the false claims in the first place. CNN has revisited the story and produced this fact check detailing where Mr Walker has misled the public.

Catch up: Raffensperger triumphs over Trump’s fury

15:45 , Andrew Naughtie

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is one of Donald Trump’s least favourite Republicans thanks to his refusal to help overturn the 2020 election, and his full-on denial of the lie that it was stolen from the former president.

That earned him what was expected to be a stiff primary challenge from a Trump-backed candidate – but in the end, Mr Raffensperger not only won, but cleared the 50 per cent threshold to avoid a runoff.

Eric Garcia has more:

Brad Raffensperger wins GOP Secretary of State primary in Georgia

AOC calls Congress an “incumbent protection racket” as Cuellar claims victory

16:15 , Andrew Naughtie

The Democratic House leadership’s decision to back Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar over a progressive challenger infuriated the caucus’s left-leaning members – not least because of his opposition to abortion, but also because he is far more open to the pro-gun lobby than the mainstream of his party.

Mr Cuellar is claiming victory in his runoff race against opponent Jessica Cisneros, but the race officially remains too close to call, with the two candidates separated by an incredibly tight margin. For now, the left are drilling down on the leadership’s support for Mr Cuellar, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leading the charge:

Read more below from Eric Garcia.

AOC criticises Democratic leadership for supporting pro-gun incumbent after shooting

Trump memory-holes his failed endorsements

16:46 , Andrew Naughtie

Not everything went wrong for Donald Trump, but by failing to knock out Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger while also seeing Mo Brooks make it through to a runoff, he lost some of his biggest bets of the primary season.

And yet, he is as ever rewriting history already, congratulating “all” while boasting about how many of his endorsees have won.

Vanquished right-wing candidates try and move on

17:15 , Andrew Naughtie

Josh Mandel, who for a time looked like the likely GOP nominee for Ohio’s open senate seat before JD Vance humiliatingly stole his thunder, appears to be trying to clear the record, locking his Twitter account and deleting scores of incendiary tweets from the hardcore right-wing campaign he ran to curry favour with the GOP’s Trumpist base.

Meanwhile, Madison Cawthorn, who suffered a mortifying defeat last week after a flurry of sordid scandals and now faces a House Ethics Committee investigation, appears to be licking his wounds in Rome.

Oz-McCormick fight drags on as last votes trickle in

18:00 , Andrew Naughtie

More than a week after polling day, Dr Mehmet Oz is still leading Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate primary – but only just, with the gap between them now less than 1,000 votes wide.

The Republican Party has stepped in to try and keep undated mail-in ballots from being included in the count. If the party manages to limit the number of votes that can be counted, it would probably favour the Trump-endorsed Dr Oz.