Brad Raffensperger defied Trump. Georgia voters rewarded him for it. - The Washington Post

He wanted to start by meeting with every county Republican committee in the state.No one would have him.Raffensperger had lost favor with a broad swath of Georgia Republicans after refusing former president Donald Trump’s demands that he reverse Joe Biden’s 2020 win. He did it by closing the gap among Republican voters, attracting Democrats who had celebrated his decision to uphold the law and, with 52 percent of the vote in a four-candidate field, avoiding the runoff that even his allies were predicting just days ago.Raffensperger, 67, won in part by courting Trump’s base with promises of stricter election security. But Kemp cruised to victory Tuesday over the Trump-backed former senator David Perdue by an astonishing 52 points.Donald Trump recalibrates his standing in GOP after primary setbacksRaffensperger’s path to redemption among Republican primary voters began about a year ago, when he received a rare invitation to speak from a local Republican Party chairman in Ben Hill County, about three hours south of Atlanta. Hice scored some of his biggest wins in his own congressional district, but the numbers were too low to affect the margin.“It’s a comeback for the ages and a testament to an official who accepted every invitation from any group in the state or media outlet and kept telling his story,” said Brian Robinson, a Georgia-based Republican strategist, whose firm consults on communications for the secretary of state’s office but was not affiliated with any of the campaigns.Even in Ben Hill County, where all those Trump supporters had gathered last year to demand answers from Raffensperger, he won 50 percent of the vote.