Opinion: Trump's Midnight Train to Georgia derails
Trump candidates lose badly in Georgia primaries
“He kept dreaming that someday he’d be a star. But he sure found out the hard way that dreams don’t always come true.”
Those lyrics from Glady’s Knight’s hit 1970s song “Midnight Train to Georgia” perfectly describe former President Donald Trump’s revenge tour on Tuesday night, which saw many of his endorsed candidates not just lose, but lose in landslides.
His biggest setback came in the race for Secretary of State, where he launched a personal effort to defeat incumbent Brad Raffensperger for refusing to side with his 2020 election conspiracy theories.
Just weeks before he was set to leave office, we all listened in shock to the then-President’s phone conversation with Sec. Raffensperger as he frantically urged the Republican elections chief to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. That phone call and other Trump campaign efforts are now the subject of a criminal investigation.
Trump had endorsed Jody Hice, a far-right Congressman from Northeast Georgia who helped lead the longshot effort to invalidate electors from swing states won by President Biden. Hice, a preacher and a radio show host, first arrived in Washington in 2015.
Raffensperger pulled off a stunning victory on Tuesday night, clearing the 50% threshold required to avoid a runoff election. Hice hadn’t spent much money on TV ads, with many believing that he was saving his resources for a runoff with Raffensperger.
The Republican primary for Governor saw former U.S. Sen. David Perdue get trounced by incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp. Kemp, a former Trump ally himself, turned into the former President’s punching bag after he certified Biden’s Georgia victory.
Perdue, who was defeated by Democrat Jon Ossoff in a January 2021 runoff election, largely centered his campaign around lies about the 2020 election. He even went as far as to suggest that his loss to Ossoff was rife with fraud.
When Perdue entered the race, he was viewed by many people as the frontrunner. It was widely assumed that a Trump endorsement would carry him across the finish line, even though Kemp had governed as a solid conservative during his first term. But Perdue struggled in polling and was trounced by Kemp in fundraising and on the airwaves. Things got so bad for the former Senator that he pulled all of his TV ads from the airwaves just as early voting got underway.
And as of Wednesday afternoon, the race remained very lopsided. Gov. Kemp amassed a whopping 73% of the vote and carried every county in the state, while Sen. Perdue finished with an abysmal 22%. These are the types of results you would expect from token opposition candidates, not a former U.S. Senator.
Trump also endorsed a handful of other statewide candidates, many of whom were soundly defeated on Tuesday night. In the race for Attorney General, he endorsed fringe attorney John Gordon. He only got 26% of the vote, while incumbent Chris Carr earned a massive 74%.
He endorsed Patrick Witt to take on Insurance Commissioner John King. Witt received less than 17% of the vote. King, who was appointed to the office by Kemp and is now running for a full term, garnered more than 70% of the vote.
This isn’t to say that Trump didn’t have any victories in the Georgia primary. Former UGA football star Herschel Walker, a stanch Trump ally, easily won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. But it’s very likely that he would have won the primary even without the former President’s endorsement because of his high name recognition.
Trump also appears to have gotten his preferred candidate in the race for Lieutenant Governor. Though the race has not yet been projected by the Associated Press, State Sen. Burt Jones — an election conspiracy theorist, was hovering above the 50% threshold on Wednesday afternoon. But the successes of other Trump targets left many people wondering if Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan regrets his decision not to run for re-election.
Trump also endorsed two candidates in open congressional races, both of which will be heading to runoffs in June. In Georgia’s 6th district, he endorsed attorney Jake Evans, who will be facing off against emergency room physician Dr. Rich McCormick in next month’s runoff. In the 10th district — which was represented by Jody Hice — Trump was supporting Democrat-turned-Republican former State Rep. Vernon Jones. He is set to duke it out with truck driver Mike Collins in June. Trump also endorsed five congressional incumbents for re-election. Each of them were renominated against minimal to no opposition.
So what does all of this mean for Trump’s potential 2024 run for the White House? It appears that his standing among Georgia Republicans might be waning. The two incumbent Republicans that he most vocally targeted — Kemp and Raffensperger — easily fended off their Trump-backed challengers. Several other of his statewide candidates were soundly defeated. Two of his congressional candidates were forced to runoffs — which means that he could be facing even more losses in June.
Many of these Trump-endorsed candidates campaigned on relitigating the 2020 election. Tuesday night’s results were perhaps the clearest sign yet that Republicans in Georgia are ready to move on and look to future.
Privately, many Georgia Republicans expressed concerns that divisive primaries could lead to a fractured GOP ahead of the pivotal November election. But if you ask me, these primary results seem to indicate that Georgia Republicans are united. Kemp’s resounding win suggests that Republican voters are looking ahead to defeating Democrat Stacey Abrams for a second time. In fact, the forecasters at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics shifted the race in favor of Republicans following Kemp’s big primary win:
“It is true that incumbent governors do occasionally lose in otherwise strong environments for their party. Probably the most notable recent example was then-Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA), who lost by 10 points to now-Gov. Tom Wolf (D-PA) in the midst of what was an otherwise outstanding environment for Republicans in the 2014 cycle. But Corbett had dreadful approval ratings and other problems. Kemp, on the other hand, is in much stronger shape — if he had big problems, he wouldn’t have crushed Perdue by such a lopsided margin. Abrams likely had a better chance in 2018 — a Democratic-leaning environment — then she does now.”
In short, while Georgia Republicans thought that these primaries would be divisive, they seem to have largely resulted in unity. Perdue even threw his full support behind Kemp after the race was called. Republican voters seem to have understood the assignment: “Our incumbents may not be perfect, but it is imperative that we defeat Stacey Abrams.”
As for the former President? Predicting future elections in a state like Georgia isn’t always easy, but it’s safe to say that his prospects in Georgia in both a primary and a general election in 2024 are not great.
Stacey Abrams for GA Governor 💯👏🏾