Brad Raffensperger Survives Trump-Backed Challenge

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Many Americans in politics wouldn’t have believed that Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, would be able to win re-election. This was just a month ago. Trump supported Congressman Jody Hyice’s campaign to remove Raffensperger from office.

Raffensperger did not have to face a runoff, but he was able to overcome the challenge. Trump supporters claim that Raffensperger’s victory was due to Democrats voting for Raffensperger. Cross-country votes are possible in Georgia, which is an open state. Trump-backed candidates such as Hice still have a problem with Raffensperger’s survival due to Democratic voters.

You would expect that these voters would cross over to cause chaos and make Republicans spend more time in-fighting. Even though Raffensperger may have helped Democrats win 2020, he also backed “Jim Crow 2.0,” a law Stacey Abrams believes causes voter suppression despite all the evidence. If the goal is to steal the election, backing Raffensperger doesn’t make sense. It would be a good idea to screw over the Republicans as much as you can.

However, if Trump was the ultimate goal, it would be a completely different and more likely scenario.

Trump’s only focus during the period leading up to the midterm elections was on the past. Many voters have been turned off by the “Stop The Steal” vendetta. This was David Perdue’s entire campaign strategy and he was completely blown away. Mo Brooks lost focus on Alabama and he began to surge back, forcing Katie Britt, the establishment pick, into a runoff. Trump had previously endorsed Brooks, but Brooks started campaigning to move on from 2020 and Trump switched his support to Britt.

Both Democrats and Republicans conducted internal polling ahead of the Virginia election in 2021. The results showed that voters wanted Congress to end the January 6th riot. This was taken by the Democrats to indicate that voters were very concerned about it and want that to be their main focus. Republicans understood it to mean that voters wanted to end all talk about it and want it over. They won Virginia and started what appears to be a red tsunami that will lead to Democrats in November.

Voters were clear in their message. The future and the present are the most important things. Do not dwell on the past.

However, several Republican candidates now run on platforms from the past. They want to re-litigate the 2020’s election. Voters aren’t happy with it. They chose Brian Kemp because of his Georgia success record, which helped him win a decisive victory over Perdue. Raffensperger’s low points were when he tried to get out of 2020’s mess. His approval level was at its lowest point. He appears to have made some progress, with the Georgia election law and is absent from the headlines.

Incumbency matters, obviously. In most elections, it is the hardest thing to do. It helps if your opponent keeps talking about 2020 when voters are more interested in what’s going on right now. 2020 has passed. The key issues of the moment are everything that the Democrats have done wrong since 2020. Voters see Raffensperger and his support for Republicans in Georgia, and they know that he is on the winning side. It was only a plus that he didn’t fall into 2020’s trap.

This message is important to me. Republicans have so many things they can take advantage of to win in November. To win, they don’t have to re-litigate 2020. It seems that this actually chases away voters.