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CHAMBLEE, Ga. — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger opened a recent campaign stop with a joke about how well-known he has become, but the Republican’s fame is rooted in an act that many in his party still consider unforgivable: his refusal in 2020 to help Donald Trump “find” enough votes to reverse Joe Biden’s narrow victory in the state.
“I think most people by now know who I am,” Raffensperger said Tuesday before a speech in the Atlanta suburb of Chamblee, as a supporter put up campaign signs. That recognition has been a double-edged sword. While it made him a national figure among Trump critics, it turned him into a target for the GOP base Raffensperger now needs to win the May 19 gubernatorial primary.
The 70-year-old former business owner is trying to recast himself as the person he was before the post‑election firestorm. “I really think I need to let people know that I’m actually a conservative Christian businessman,” he told reporters recently. “If you don’t realize, that’s where I cut my teeth.” He has poured $6 million of his own money into the campaign, much of it on television ads that contrast his disciplined, policy-focused approach with the mud‑slinging between his two main rivals: Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, who has Trump’s endorsement and has loaned his campaign $17 million, and healthcare billionaire Rick Jackson, who has spent a staggering $83 million of his own fortune.
Raffensperger’s ads portray Jones and Jackson as reckless. One spot shows the two men firing guns into the air while Raffensperger takes careful aim at targets. Another depicts “creepy Rick Jackson” and “big baby Burt Jones” throwing mud at each other in a barnyard. “All they have been talking about is each other and running each other down,” Raffensperger said. “No one’s talking about the most important person. And that’s our fellow Georgian.”
The secretary of state has been a punching bag for Republicans who continue to spread false claims about the 2020 election. Jones was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate declaring themselves “duly elected and qualified” Trump electors even though Biden carried the state. Sabrina Mao, a Cobb County voter attending a Jones event, said flatly that “everybody knows there is fraud in voting” and dismissed Raffensperger as “just a follower.”
Raffensperger’s campaign estimates that roughly a fifth of Georgia Republicans will never vote for him — a bloc they call the “never-Raffensperger” crowd. His path to the nomination is narrow, and even if he makes a June 16 runoff, the contest would likely become a brawl over which candidate is the most conservative, inviting even sharper attacks on his supposed disloyalty to Trump.
Yet he retains some pockets of support among suburban voters who recoil from Trump but have previously voted for Republicans. Katherine Weber of Sandy Springs, who described herself as “Republican, but not pro-Trump,” said she voted early for Raffensperger because “he is a man of integrity and not swayed by politics.” That small but potentially decisive bloc mirrors the coalition that helped Governor Brian Kemp survive a Trump‑backed primary challenge in 2022.
The campaign has also been shadowed by security concerns. Spokesperson Ryan Mahoney said authorities informed Raffensperger of a credible threat on Monday, just as the candidate began a statewide campaign swing. A police dog at the Macon airport detected a suspicious object before Raffensperger’s arrival Tuesday; the terminal was evacuated, but the object was not a bomb. Mahoney described a four‑page document sent to a sheriff’s office in Mississippi that included a photo of Raffensperger with the word “boom” written across his forehead. Law enforcement agencies did not immediately confirm the investigation.
Raffensperger himself has sought to steer every question toward jobs and the economy, avoiding direct engagement with the 2020 narrative. “If you can create and build great paying jobs for people, you can change their lives,” he said last month when answering a reporter’s question about Georgia’s voting system. He also frequently invokes his past battles with Democrat Stacey Abrams, framing himself as the Republican who stood up to her criticism of election administration — a play to unite Republicans against a shared opponent.
Jones’s campaign, however, is not letting Raffensperger escape the 2020 issue. “Brad Raffensperger secures Georgia’s elections like Joe Biden secures the border — and no amount of false advertising can erase that record,” Jones campaign manager Kendyl Parker wrote to television stations Tuesday, demanding they stop airing Raffensperger’s mud‑slinging ad.
Also in the GOP race is Attorney General Chris Carr, who appeals to many of the same center‑right voters. On the Democratic side, top candidates include former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, state Senator Jason Esteves, and former state Labor Commissioner Mike Thurmond. Former Republican Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, another Georgia official who rejected Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, is running for governor as a Democrat.
Raffensperger’s gamble is that a mix of personal wealth, an appeal to economic conservatism, and the chaos of a primary in which his richer rivals have spent months destroying each other can clear a path for a candidate still defined by a phone call he took more than five years ago.