Associated Press
Georgia’s Secretary of State is a man on an island, and the political flood is rising fast, as President Donald Trump and his allies vent their outrage at the fellow Republican and make unsupported claims that mismanagement and fraud tainted the state’s presidential election.
Trump spent the weekend attacking Brad Raffensperger on social media, at one point calling him “a so-called Republican (RINO),” an acronym for “Republican in name only.” Raffensperger punched back, disputing Trump’s claims that he made it easier for Democrats to cheat using mail-in ballots.
The secretary also called U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, who is running Trump’s Georgia recount effort, a “liar,” and says South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called him in an apparent effort to pressure him to improperly discard ballots. Graham dismissed the allegation as “ridiculous.”
The current battle is a switch for Raffensperger.
The 65-year-old, bespectacled engineer spent most of his first two years in office taking abuse from Democrats, who filed lawsuits alleging that Georgia, under then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, engaged in illegal voter suppression in 2018. Kemp, the Republican candidate who narrowly won the governorship over Democrat Stacey Abrams that year, denies the claims.
Also left in Raffensperger’s lap was a breakneck race to replace Georgia’s outdated voting machines in time for 2020 — an undertaking complicated in its closing stretch by the coronavirus pandemic.
Through it all, Raffensperger — currently in quarantine after his wife tested positive for coronavirus — has insisted he’s an impartial administrator of Georgia elections with no desire or agenda to sway the outcome.
Trump and his allies claimed Raffensperger didn’t do enough to root out “illegal” votes.
“The Secretary of State has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections,” GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — both of whom failed to win enough votes to avoid January runoffs with their Democratic opponents — said last week in a statement, without offering any evidence to back up their assertion. “He has failed the people of Georgia, and he should step down immediately.”
Collins, responding to Raffensperger’s “liar” label, fired back Monday on Twitter: “In a year of political division in Georgia, few things have unified Republicans and Democrats — one of them is Brad Raffensperger’s incompetence as Secretary of State.”
