Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican Party has been dealt a major blow after the outrageous defeat of the former president-backed candidate in a major primary in Georgia.
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Its Republican governor, Brian Kemp, won his re-election primary on Tuesday against David Perdue, the candidate over whom Donald Trump has tried to exert all his political influence.
In this American state of 10 million people, which Joe Biden won in November 2020, the billionaire Republican has focused for a year and a half trying to prove that the presidential election was for him. . “Stolen” due to alleged “mass fraud”, which was never proven.
In this election series, Donald Trump is constantly criticizing the role of Brian Kemp who refused to nullify the results of the 2020 ballot, and tried to remove him from the position of governor.
But on Tuesday evening, David Purdue conceded his defeat, indirectly becoming the former president’s loss, while the preliminary results put him behind Brian Kemp victorious by 50 points.
Five states were leading in midterm elections scheduled for November, but the eyes of the American political world turned on Tuesday night to Georgia.
“drop it”
The billionaire denounced in a press release Tuesday morning that “Brian Kemp failed Georgia,” calling on “Trump activists” in this southeastern US state to oppose his candidacy in droves.
Instead, the former White House tenant offered his patronage to former Senator David Purdue, who was more fond of the “election irregularities” theories, in which millions of Americans still believe.
“David Purdue has my biggest support,” the former president asserted Tuesday, pouring more than $2.5 million of campaign money into the septuagenarian’s nomination.
The defeat of David Purdue therefore directly challenges the stranglehold that Donald Trump continues to wield on the Republican Party, because in this campaign he invested, in addition to money, a significant part of his political capital.
“Before the weather was great”
Mike Pence, the former vice president of Donald Trump who is credited with presidential ambitions, understood the stakes well.
The 60-year-old, who, like Brian Kemp, refused to withhold certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory, traveled to Georgia this week to campaign personally for the governor’s candidate.
“I supported Brian Kemp before the weather was great,” he said from a small airport in suburban Atlanta.
In addition to selecting a gubernatorial candidate, Georgia voters were required to vote on a range of local seats. And each time, it’s a version of the match between the two types of candidates – those who prevented the reversal of the 2020 election against those who cry fraud – that is brought back.
As for the state attorney general, the Donald Trump-backed candidate also lost.
And at the heart of all greed is the position of Georgia’s Secretary of State, the person responsible for overseeing the smooth running of the election and which many Americans probably didn’t know existed before the last presidential election.
And for good reason, Brad Ravensburger, the man who refused to “find” nearly 12,000 ballot papers in Donald Trump’s name despite an astonishing billionaire phone call, successfully represented himself.
He beat Jodi Hayes, the former president-backed man who – like dozens of others across the country – promised to “restore the integrity” of US polls.
