Brad Raffensperger, Who Blocked Trump From Stealing Georgia, Wins GOP Sec. Of State Race

Reporter, HuffPostBrad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who thwarted Donald Trump’s efforts to steal the state’s election in 2020, won his Republican primary on Tuesday night, delivering a thorough rebuke to the former president who spent the last year trying to unseat him.NBC, CNN and other major networks projected early Wednesday morning that Raffensperger had defeated Rep. Jody Hice, a conservative House member who twice voted against the certification of the 2020 election results in Congress and received Trump’s endorsement in the secretary of state race, and two other candidates.With more than 95% of ballots counted, Raffensperger had won roughly 52% of vote, just enough to cross the majority threshold necessary to avoid a runoff. He ultimately voted to contest the election results twice on Jan. 6, and was among the 147 Republicans who challenged the results even after a riotous mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol that day.Democrats and democracy experts saw the GOP secretary of state primary as a crucial fight for the future of American elections, and its democracy as a whole, given that a Hice victory would put him one step away from becoming the top elections official in a key swing state ahead of the 2024 presidential election.But unlike other election deniers who have prevailed in recent Republican primaries, Hice fell short in Georgia, where voters ultimately rejected all three of the Trump-backed candidates running against GOP incumbents who helped thwart the former president’s efforts to overturn his election loss in the state.