ATLANTA — Georgia Republicans are worried that President Trump’s comments about the integrity of the state’s voting system, as well as bitter infighting, could have a negative impact on the pair of high-stakes runoff races that will determine which party takes control of the U.S. Senate.
The state GOP has been working overtime this week to patch up a widening schism in the party and to get all players on the same page as quickly as possible.
“We are all under enormous pressure, and tensions are high,” Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “But in the end, the consequences for America are too great for us not to come back together for the runoff elections.”
Since Election Day, state GOP leaders have carried the political burden of Trump’s allegations of widespread voter fraud in Georgia. But undermining the state’s voting system as well as its Republican secretary of state could backfire on the party and drive voters away.
“(Republicans) traditionally have an easier time turning out their voters, especially when a president is not on the ballot, and turnout is everything in today’s polarized political environment,” Emory University history professor Joseph Crespino wrote in an opinion piece. “Yet Senators (David) Perdue and (Kelly) Loeffler, in doing Mr. Trump’s bidding, have turned the runoffs into a state referendum on Trumpism and its future, which may boost Democratic turnout once again.”
He added that Trump’s “delusional tweets declaring that he won the election or teasing new revelations of fraud and corruption” evoke “a sense of living in a dream world.”
“Two Democratic victories would not only give Democrats control of the Senate but could also help turn the page on Donald Trump’s influence in American politics,” Crespino said.
As it stands, the Republicans currently hold a 50-48 advantage in the Senate, but a Democrat sweep in Georgia in January would force a tie, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris acting as the deciding vote.
Trump has used Twitter to decry Georgia’s voting system, absentee ballot signature verification, and recount observation rules — a move that’s only intensified the in-fighting and finger-pointing. He’s taken aim and faulted Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, for his management of the state elections.
“Georgia Secretary of State, a so-called Republican (RINO), won’t let the people checking the ballots see the signatures for fraud. Why? Without this the whole process is very unfair and close to meaningless. Everyone knows that we won the state.”
Raffensperger, a lifelong Republican who said he wanted Trump to win a second term, hit back, disputing the president’s claim that he was working in concert with Democrats to cheat using mail-in ballots.
He also called out Rep. Doug Collins, the man tapped by the Trump campaign to head up Georgia’s recount effort, calling him a “liar” and a “charlatan” for pushing baseless theories about the state’s new $100 million election system.
“Failed candidate Doug Collins is a liar — but what’s new?” Raffensperger wrote in a scathing Facebook post that called out Collins over complaints about signature matches.
Collins, who lost his bid for a U.S. Senate seat earlier this month, tweeted Monday about Raffensperger’s “incompetence as Secretary of State.”
The ugly intra-party politics playing out in public isn’t a good look for Republicans who need to win the runoffs. Undermining a voting system that could hand them crucial wins isn’t the best path forward, David McLaughlin, Democratic activist and host of the Kudzu Vine political podcast, told the Washington Examiner.
“You’re seeing the division between federal and local,” he said. “The senators called for Brad Raffensperger to resign, but a lot of state officials have been defending him.”
Two days after the Nov. 3 election, Donald Trump Jr. headlined a rally outside Republican Party campaign headquarters in Atlanta, slamming conservatives for not getting on board with his father’s claims of fraud and said that Democrats had gotten used to “a Republican Party that hasn’t had a backbone.”
“That party is gone,” he said, adding that “anyone that doesn’t fight like that should go with it.”
Almost immediately, the two GOP incumbent senators, Perdue and Loeffler, jumped on the Trump train and called for Raffensperger’s resignation, lobbing insults and accusations of “mismanagement” and a “lack of transparency.”
On Monday, Loeffler told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that she is “concerned” about the vote-counting process in her runoff race against Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock and said that she supports an election in which “every legal vote counts.”
“We have to make sure that we know that Georgia voters can trust the process,” she said, adding, “We have to hold officials accountable for having an election that is fair.”
Biting the hand that fed her could come back to haunt Loeffler should she win, Raffensperger told the Washington Post.
Her attacks on Dominion voting machines could create issues since the Jan. 5 runoffs will be administered using the same Dominion machines she has slammed publicly. “I don’t think it’s helpful when you create doubt in the election process,” Raffensperger said. “People might throw up their arms and say, ‘Why vote?'”
