Its Republican governor, Brian Kemp, won the primary for his re-election on Tuesday against David Perdue, a candidate on whom Donald Trump had tried to exert all his political influence.
It is in this American state of 10 million inhabitants, won by a hair’s breadth by Joe Biden in November 2020, that the Republican billionaire has been concentrating his efforts for a year and a half to try to prove that the presidential election was for him. “stolen” due to alleged “massive fraud”, never proven.
In this electoral soap opera, Donald Trump constantly castigates the role of Brian Kemp, who refused to overturn the results of the 2020 ballot, and tried to dislodge him from his post of governor.
But on Tuesday night, David Perdue conceded defeat, which indirectly became that of the former president, as preliminary results put him 50 points behind Brian Kemp, victorious.
Five other states were also conducting their primaries for the midterm elections scheduled for November, but the eyes of the American political world turned Tuesday evening to Georgia.
– “Let it go” –
“Brian Kemp has let Georgia down,” the billionaire denounced in a press release on Tuesday morning, calling on “Trump activists” in this state in the southeastern United States to oppose his candidacy in large numbers.
Instead, the former tenant of the White House had offered his sponsorship to former senator David Perdue, much more fond of theories of “electoral irregularities”, which millions of Americans still believe.
“David Perdue has my fullest support,” assured the former president on Tuesday, who injected more than 2.5 million dollars of his own campaign funds into the candidacy of this septuagenarian.
The defeat of David Perdue thus directly questions the stranglehold that Donald Trump still exercises over the Republican Party, because he had invested in this campaign, in addition to funds, a large part of his own political capital.
– “Before it was cool” –
Mike Pence, the former vice-president of Donald Trump who is credited with presidential ambitions, understood the stakes well.
The 60-year-old, who like Brian Kemp refused to block the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory, traveled to Georgia this week to personally campaign for the governor-candidate.
“I supported Brian Kemp before it was cool,” he said from a small airport in the suburbs of Atlanta.
In addition to choosing a gubernatorial candidate, Georgia voters were also asked to vote on a host of local seats. And each time, it’s a version of the match between these two types of candidates — those who prevented the overthrow of the 2020 election against those who cry fraud — that has been replayed.
For the post of attorney general of the state, the candidate supported by Donald Trump also lost.
And at the heart of all covetousness is the position of Secretary of State of Georgia, the person responsible for supervising the smooth running of the elections and of which many Americans probably did not know the existence before the last presidential election.
And for good reason, Brad Raffensperger, the man who had refused to “find” nearly 12,000 ballots in the name of Donald Trump despite a stunning phone call from the billionaire, represented himself.
According to preliminary results with a third of the ballots counted on Tuesday night, he had a good lead over Jody Hice, a man backed by the former president who — like dozens of others across the country — promises to ” restoring the integrity” of the polls in the United States.
