His gubernatorial candidate, David Perdue, was unable to win over the incumbent Republican, Brian Kemp. With 91% of the votes, the governor had a comfortable advantage over his opponent: 73.2% to 22.2%.
Kemp celebrated his victory in the primary without mentioning Trump. “Conservatives in our state didn’t hear the noise. They were not distracted. They knew of our history of fighting and winning for hard-working Georgians,” Kemp told his supporters at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta.
Kemp had received the support of former Vice President Mike Pence, which made these primaries a battlefield between more traditional Republicans and Trump supporters, most of whom share the myth that he lost the presidential elections because he was did fraud.
The Georgia primary had a higher turnout percentage than the 2018 midterms.
A personal defeat for Trump
This defeat has a personal touch for Trump. Kemp and his secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, fulfilled their legal duty to certify the state’s 2020 election results, despite pressure from Trump to “get” the votes he needed to beat Joe Biden.
In contrast, Perdue echoed the lies of the former president, who continues to maintain that there was an alleged fraud against him.
The current Republican governor will face Stacey Abrams in November. The two already competed in 2018, in an election in which Kemp defeated Abrams by just 54,723 votes, 1.3%.
Abrams vs. Kemp, second part
Abrams became a star in the Democratic Party after his first election for governor and ran unopposed in this year’s primary. She has become a leading advocate for voting rights and is credited with laying the organizational groundwork for Joe Biden to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia in 28 years.
The centerpiece of Abrams’ platform is a call to expand Medicaid to all adults. He also highlights his support for abortion rights and his opposition to state laws that eliminate the requirement for a permit to carry a concealed weapon in public.
In other races, former soccer player Herschel Walker, the Trump-backed Senate contender won the Republican primary and will face Raphael Warnock, whose victory last year gave Democrats their pyrrhic majority in the upper house.