Trump’s Hold Over GOP Electorate to Be Tested in Closely Watched Primaries
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
High-profile GOP candidates across the South will face voters in closely watched Tuesday night primary contests, which are being seen as another test of former president Donald Trump’s hold over the Republican electorate.
Georgia is undoubtedly the most important venue, where party nominees for state-wide offices and Congressional seats will be chosen. Eighteen months after Trump made the state ground zero in his effort to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election, Republican politics in the state have been polarized between supporters and opponents of Trump’s claims about the election.
Atop the state’s ballot is the gubernatorial primary, which reflects this divide markedly. Republican incumbent Brian Kemp is running against former U.S. Senator David Perdue. Kemp, once a top Trump ally, has been heavily criticized by Trump for refusing to call a special session of the state legislature to appoint new slate Trump-allied electors to the 2020 Electoral College. His opponent, Perdue — who lost re-election to the Senate in a 2021 run-off race to Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff — has been endorsed by Trump in an effort to remove Kemp from office for defending the integrity of the 2020 election.
Kemp currently leads Perdue by a large margin (22 percent), per RealClearPolitics’ average of major opinion polls, and — should he win — may avoid a run-off race provided that no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote. The winner will face presumptive Democrat nominee Stacey Abrams, who is running for the Democratic nomination unopposed after losing to Kemp in 2018.
Another critical race is the primary for Georgia’s Secretary of State, the state’s top elections authority, where incumbent Brad Raffensperger faces U.S. Representative Jody Hice, who is relinquishing his seat in Congress at Trump’s behest to run for the post. As Georgia’s top elections authority in 2020, Raffensperger was the central figure opposing Trump’s efforts to reverse the state’s presidential electoral results that year. An infamous phone call between Trump and Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, where Trump asked him to “find 11,780 votes” (one more than the margin of his loss to Biden) attracted huge controversy, with Raffensperger being both criticized and praised for resisting Trump. The call was cited as primary evidence in the article of impeachment against Trump passed by the House of Representatives after events of January 6, 2021.
Hice, meanwhile, has embraced Trump’s claims that Georgia’s 2020 electors were “stolen” from him. A recent poll by SurveyUSA places Raffensperger in the lead with 31 percent of the vote, and Hice at 20 percent, meaning that the race will likely head to a runoff on June 21st.
Alongside state-level primaries are federal contests, with Georgia’s 14th Congressional District featuring incumbent Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene garnering the most media attention. Throughout her ongoing first term in Congress, Greene has become among the body’s most controversial members for publicly supporting various online conspiracy theories — e.g., ‘QAnon,’ and ‘Pizzagate’ — and expressing support for Vladimir Putin during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Greene was stripped of her committee assignments by the Democratic-led House last year. She is facing five GOP challengers, with businesswoman Jennifer Strahan the leading contestant. However, owing to her national profile, Greene has raised $9.2 million and spent $6.6 million for her reelection campaign — an unprecedented sum for a House member — compared to $400,000 for Strahan. A January poll showed Greene in the lead with 60 percent support, in a district whose Cook Partisan Voting Index score is “R+27”.
Less controversial yet, perhaps, more important to Republicans is the U.S. Senate primary, where former professional football player Herschel Walker has dominated the field with an average of 65 percent support across all major polls. Ranked by ESPN as among the top three “greatest college footballers of all time,” he has gained the endorsements of both Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., K.y.). Walker will run against the Democratic incumbent, Senator Raphael Warnock — who himself won a special election to the seat in 2021 — in November’s election to a full six-year term.
Adjacent to Georgia, Alabama is conducting a primary election to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring seven-term Senator Richard Shelby.
Katie Britt, a 40-year-old first-time candidate who served as Shelby’s chief of staff, leads the field with 32 percent support per an Emerson College poll. Her candidacy received a boost after Trump rescinded his endorsement of Congressman Mo Brooks, who represents the state’s 5th District, for refusing to join efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He has claimed that Trump asked him to work to remove President Joe Biden from office and hold a “special election” for president, which is not possible under the U.S. Constitution.
A primary election for Alabama’s gubernatorial race is also being held, where incumbent Governor Kay Ivey is seeking a second term. She currently leads the field with a 30-point margin over her two main rivals — former Trump-appointed U.S. Ambassador to Slovenia Lynda Blanchard and businessman Tim James — though has not polled above the 50 percent needed to avoid a run-off, scheduled for June 21.
In Texas, meanwhile, run-off races for state-wide and Congressional offices are being conducted following the state’s Attorney General, Ken Paxton, is running in a high-profile primary contest against George P. Bush, the state’s land commissioner — a member of the Bush Family and son of former Florida Governor and 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush. Paxton has been one of Trump’s most avowed supporters and a perpetual legal challenger of the Biden Administration, with CNN terming the state a “legal graveyard” for Biden’s agenda due to his efforts. Bush has also been a strong supporter of Trump, breaking from his family’s opposition to him.
Polls in all states will close at 7:00 p.m. in their respective time zones. Official information on how and where to vote is available at the websites of the Alabama, Georgia, and Texas secretaries of state.
