Kemp, Raffensperger win in blow to Trump and his false election claims

Georgia Republican primary voters on Tuesday rejected former president Donald Trump’s attempt to unseat GOP officeholders who refused to join his fight to overturn the 2020 election, as Gov. Brian Kemp defeated challenger David Perdue in a landslide and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger won re-nomination.The race between Kemp and Perdue, a former senator, unfolded over the past five months as the highest-profile test of Trump’s pull in this year’s primaries on behalf of candidates running heavily on his false claims that the election was stolen from him. He has celebrated the retirements of House Republicans who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, and will campaign this weekend in Wyoming for Harriet Hageman, a GOP activist who’s challenging Rep. Liz Cheney, a vocal Trump critic.The primaries in Georgia on Tuesday were part of a larger array of intraparty contests in states including Alabama, Texas, Arkansas and Minnesota that strategists were watching for indicators of the direction Democrats and Republicans are headed in the run-up to the November midterms.In South Texas, a heated Democratic runoff pitting Rep. Henry Cuellar against immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros was the latest showdown between the centrist and liberal wings of the party. Bush, the grandson and nephew of two former presidents, in a closely watched Republican runoff.Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican from Georgia, prevailed over multiple primary opponents, with some Democrats in her conservative district crossing over to support them.Trump notched an expected win in Georgia’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate, where former NFL star Herschel Walker won. With most ballots counted, state Rep. Jeremy Munson was locked in a tight race with Brad Finstad, a former Trump administration appointee, for the GOP nod, while former Hormel CEO Jeff Ettinger easily won the Democratic nomination.But much of the focus in both parties Tuesday was on the Republican gubernatorial primary in Georgia. The former president also took to his Truth Social account Monday to bring up more disproved 2020 election conspiracy theories.Perdue said Abrams should “go back where she came from if she doesn’t like it here” — a comment reminiscent of when Trump said four Democratic congresswomen of color should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” Perdue also said Abrams was “demeaning her own race.”Outside a Baptist church in Atlanta on Tuesday, Abrams dismissed Perdue’s racist comments, saying she has “listened to Republicans attack me, but they’ve done nothing … to articulate a plan for Georgia.”In neighboring Alabama, Trump and his allies were also a factor.