Former President Donald Trump lost in Georgia in 2020, and he helped Republicans lose there in 2021. Intent on keeping the streak going, Trump made Georgia’s GOP primaries all about him, and, sure enough, he ended up losing in the state all over again.
After Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he went to war with Georgia Republicans who refused to rig the election in his favor, even though he still would have lost, even with Georgia’s electoral votes. He helped tank the GOP in the Senate runoffs in 2021, encouraging Republicans to stay home and helping Democrats win both seats, handing the Senate majority to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
For the midterm elections, Trump backed former Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) (one of the senators he helped lose the year before) to defeat Gov. Brian Kemp. Perdue ran on Trump’s ego and the idea that Kemp couldn’t beat Democrat Stacey Abrams, even though he did exactly that in the 2018 Democratic wave year. Perdue was an avatar for Trump’s “stolen election” tantrum, happy to rip the Georgia GOP apart if it meant he still had a political future.
Instead, Perdue was demolished. With more than 95% of the vote counted, Kemp defeated Perdue by almost 52 points. Kemp won every county in the state but one by double digits, winning by only 9 points in Chattahoochee County. He won “strong Trump areas,” according to the New York Times, by 48 points.
But Kemp wasn’t Trump’s only target. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was the more vulnerable official, and U.S. Rep. Jody Hice won Trump’s backing to challenge him. Raffensperger went on to win by nearly 19 points with more than 52% of the vote, avoiding a one-on-one runoff with Hice altogether. Raffensperger even won by 20 points in the district represented by extremely Trumpy U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Trump ended up losing all three major races, as Attorney General Chris Carr easily defeated Trump’s chosen candidate.
Voters simply do not care about Trump’s personal feuds, especially when it comes to his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and future elections will be stolen if he doesn’t get his way. Georgians recognize this better than most, given that Trump’s antics in their state directly benefited the Democratic Party. It’s time for the few holdouts who have continued pushing these conspiracy theories to move on, including the former president, who has been encouraging it all along.