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PEACHTREE CORNERS, Georgia – Last spring, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Rafensperger was ready to launch his re-election campaign in 2022. He wanted to start with a meeting with every state district committee.
Rafensperger lost the favor of a large number of Republicans in Georgia after he refused the demands of former President Donald Trump to cancel the victory of Joe Biden in 2020. An internal GOP poll showed that he could lose by up to 40 points in primary party elections.
On Tuesday, Rafensperger defeated Trump-backed US opponent Jodie Hayes by nearly 19 points. He did so by closing a difference between Republican voters, attracting Democrats who celebrated his decision to abide by the law, and 52 percent of the vote in a four-candidate field, avoiding the run-off that even his allies predicted just days ago.
Rafensperger, 67, won in part by courting Trump’s base with promises of tighter election security. But he also won, not trying to hide from his role in 2020: An outspoken civil engineer, he dismissed Trump’s false allegations of election fraud to anyone who listened.
Tuesday’s victory seems to have encouraged him to reprimand the former president even more directly.
“The vast majority of Georgians are looking for honest people for office,” he told a number of cameras at his party on election night in the northeastern suburbs of Atlanta late Tuesday. “Someone who will do their job will obey the law and take care of them, regardless of personal expenses.”
He added: “To stand up for you, to stand up for the rule of law and the integrity of elections, to stand up for the truth and not sway under pressure is what people want.
His main opponent, Hitch, did not hold a public event or issue a public concession on Tuesday.
Trump, in a statement on the social media site Truth Social, trumpeted victories for his favorite candidates in Arkansas, Alabama, Texas and in the Senate race in Georgia. The former president missed any mention of Rafensperger or Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who also resisted Trump’s pressure in 2020.
The victory of Rafensperger and Kemp had become a mania for the former president, which was often shown both in public and behind closed doors, according to those in Trump’s orbit. But Kemp beat former Trump-backed Senator David Purdue on Tuesday with an astonishing 52 points.
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Rafensperger’s path to redemption among Republican voters began about a year ago when he received a rare invitation to speak from the chairman of the local Republican Party in Ben Hill County, about three hours south of Atlanta. Trump won the county with 63 percent of the vote in 2020.
More than 100 Georgians gathered at the Bolshoi Theater in Fitzgerald, the county seat. Rafensperger later learned that some drove for hours to hear him speak – not because they were fans, but because they believed he had failed to uncover the deception that Trump falsely claimed had fueled Biden’s victory. .
He told them that night that they did not have the facts. “Simply put, what happened in 2020 is that 28,000 Georgians skipped the presidential race.” while voting in competitions with lower ballots, he remembers telling the crowd in a speech he would deliver again and again next year. “You have to share the facts and then they have to understand that I have the facts.
Rafensperger drove 40,000 miles in his Ford F-150 pickup truck, crossing the state to talk to anyone who listened. Earlier this month, he traveled nearly four hours to Savannah for a Rotary lunch – and stayed the rest of the afternoon for a meeting and greeting with just over a dozen members of the local Jaycees.
The miles paid off: Rafensperger made huge profits at Metro Atlanta, but also stayed across the state. He beat Heath by more than 20 points in the pro-Trump congressional district favorite Marjorie Taylor Green. Hayes scored some of his biggest wins in his own congressional district, but the numbers were too low to make a difference.
“It’s a comeback for centuries and a testament to an employee who accepts every invitation from any group in the state or the media and continues to tell his story,” said Brian Robinson, a Georgia-based Republican strategist whose firm consults for communications. the Secretary of State’s office, but was not involved in any of the campaigns.
Even in Ben Hill County, where all these Trump supporters had gathered last year to demand answers from Rafensperger, he won 50 percent of the vote. The news stunned Austin Fitch, the Republican chairman, who invited Rafensperger to speak – and as a result lost his leadership position.
“Until this morning, I would not dare to tell anyone that I support Rafensperger,” Futsch, a real estate broker, said in an interview Wednesday. “But yes, I feel I have a good reason to say it now. Georgia has issued a referendum on Donald Trump and must stay out of Georgia. Donald Trump lost in 2020. And he must accept that fact.
In the weeks following the 2020 election, Rafensperger and his best aides received death threats from Trump supporters. His wife, Trisha, was sending obscene text messages. Someone broke into his daughter-in-law’s house. At Tuesday’s party at a cozy suburban restaurant, two Gwyneth County police officers stood at the door hired by Rafensperger as a precaution.
Those threats only made him more confident in his decision to defend the election results, Rafensperger said. He brought stability to his difficulty, cultivating for decades by designing tall buildings and bridges and post-stressed box beams, but it also reflects a far more market experience four years ago – the death of his eldest son from a fentanyl overdose. .
“I understand what I can change and what I can’t change,” Rafensperger said. “You have all these people spreading deception and misinformation, but this is not supported by the facts.
It remains unknown whether Rafensperger and Kemp have provided a plan for other Republicans elsewhere in the country to oppose Trump. Both officials are longtime Republicans who have served in the legislature and have extensive records supporting conservative causes. They are well known in Georgia and came to this year’s election with name recognition and the ability to raise millions of dollars. Rafensperger, founder of a lucrative engineering firm, also poured some of his own money.
In an interview Tuesday night, Rafensperger said he had prepared four different groups of remarks for the evening: one if he won, one if he lost, one for the run-off if he ranked first, and one for the run-off if Hayes did. He was not pessimistic, he said, just practical. He had the victory speech in his left pocket on his lapel, alone and most easily removed.
He still does not know which Democrat he will face in the fall, because the primary elections are about to run. Democrats have accused Rafensperger of allowing electoral conspirators by supporting a tough new law last year and supporting efforts to reduce non-citizen voting.
Bi Nguyen, a Democratic lawmaker and a favorite for the nomination, is campaigning hard for the idea that democracy is in the November elections. But that message will be more complicated against Rafensperger than against Heath, who boasted that he would not attest to Biden’s victory in Georgia.
Rafensperger said he was unlikely to change his message about the general election. He also offered to see a potential next ambition that seemed unattainable just a few months ago: to run for governor of Georgia. “My track is short,” he joked after recently celebrating his 67th birthday.
“What I have found is that every Georgian wants safe and secure elections, with the right balance between accessibility and security,” he said. “There is today’s vote in Georgia.”
Lenny Bronner of Washington contributed to this report.
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