While former President Donald Trump has been called a “kingmaker” for Republican party candidates, his reputation seemed to falter during Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary in Georgia.
As of Wednesday afternoon, election results available via the Georgia State Board of Elections showed that incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp had a lead in the Republican primary with nearly 74% of the vote. David Perdue, a former Georgia senator backed by Trump, came in a distant second with just under 22%.
“Tomorrow is so critical, it’s a primary,” said Trump in audio posted to Perdue’s YouTube channel this week. “It’s something that we have to win, we want to win. We have a governor who’s done the worst job of any governor, in probably decades, on election integrity.”
Trump has been outspoken regarding his belief that the 2020 election was marred by voter fraud, though he has not been able to provide any evidence to back up his claims. Notably, these election fraud theories fueled the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last January.
While some Republicans support Trump’s claims, others have not. A February Politico-Morning Consult poll found that around half of Republicans said they were ready to move on from election fraud claims.
During a debate held last month, Kemp said he had no authority to challenge the election results when Perdue said that the governor did not do enough after the 2020 election, according to CNN.
Perdue officially lost his senate seat to incumbent Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff in the January 2021 runoff election. Trump lost his bid at a second term in the Oval Office in the 2020 election to current Democrat President Joe Biden.
While Trump seemed solid in his support of Perdue this week, Republicans cited by NBC News said the former president was disappointed in the candidate’s “lackluster campaign effort.”
As the apparent winner of the primary, Kemp is expected to run against Democrat Stacey Abrams, a former U.S. representative for Georgia, in November. Abrams ran uncontested in the Democratic primary Tuesday and previously challenged Kemp in the 2018 gubernatorial race, losing by just 1.4%.
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