James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters] – Georgia saw the matchups of a prominent governor and U.S. Senate candidate in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

These are the key takeaways of the primaries election.

TRUMP TAKES LEUMPS

With each election, the limits of former President Donald Trump’s power over the Republican Party have revealed themselves.

Last week, Trump’s endorsement of TV wellness expert Mehmet Oz failed to clearly put him over the top in Pennsylvania’s Republican U.S. Senate race, and U.S. Representative Madison Cawthorn lost his re-election bid in North Carolina despite Trump’s support.

Georgia’s incumbent governor Brian Kemp defeated Trump’s favorite candidate David Perdue in Tuesday’s Republican gubernatorial primaries – this was the third loss of a Trump-backed candidate to be elected governor.

Jay Williams, Republican strategist in Georgia said that Perdue didn’t give voters a reason to unseat Kemp. Kemp is a strong conservative who helped the legislature pass broad-ranging measures to limit voting access.

Perdue’s main argument – that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump – wasn’t enough to convince most voters to make a switch, Williams said.

Williams, however, doesn’t see the result as a barometer of Trump’s popularity in the state. He pointed to the close race between Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his Republican challenger, Jody Hice, who also has backed Trump’s fraud claims.

This race was still too close for comfort on Tuesday. It could go to a runoff, according to Georgia electoral law.

Raffensperger has had a more adversarial relationship with Trump over the ex-president’s fraud claims, going so far as writing a book in part about how he stood up to him. Williams claimed that Trump supporters made Raffensperger an aggressor.

Trump’s endorsement helped turn the tide at the Republican U.S. Senate Primary, in which Herschel Walker (former football star) won easily.

ABRAMS VS. KEMP – THE SEQUEL

Kemp’s victory sets up a rematch in the governor’s race with Democrat Stacey Abrams, who was unopposed in her primary.

They find themselves in an entirely different political climate than they were four years ago when Kemp beat Abrams by 1.4%.

The once-conservative state, which was economically sound, has been ravaged by the COVID-19 epidemic. It elected two Democratic senators, supported President Joe Biden and passed the restrictive voting law.

Trump, who was key to Democratic protest votes in 2018 & 2020, has resigned as president. And Biden’s low approval marks have given Republicans hope they can not only keep the governor’s mansion in Georgia, but defeat U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock’s re-election bid.

Abigail Collazo, a Democratic operative who worked on Abrams’ 2018 campaign, said Abrams stands a good chance in the rematch. Her national donor base will provide her with even greater financial resources this time.

Collazo stated that Abrams will be able to take advantage of the threats to their abortion rights if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. She expects some white women in the state’s suburbs, including Republicans, to support them, along with traditional Black Democratic voters and other voters of color.

Walker was unable to show his best results in the large suburban and urban counties. This could have been a sign of trouble for Republicans. Walker received 57% of votes in the Atlanta suburbs. Nearly all the expected ballots were counted. As Tuesday night wore on, counting was still ongoing.

A TURNOUT TEST

Robust turnout numbers had Republicans boasting that Georgia’s much-derided voting reform law, known as SB 202, did not have the draconian impact that some critics said it would.

Raffensperger’s office said a record number of voters – more than 850,000 – cast ballots in the three weeks leading up to Election Day, a 168% increase over the last midterm election in 2018. He said that the state had a record-setting turnout in a midterm primaries.

The bill, passed in part because of Trump’s complaints about the 2020 election, restricted mail-in voting and limited ballot drop boxes, along other provisions.

Biden named it Jim Crow in the 21st Century after it was passed.

Republicans disagreed on Tuesday.

“The rhetoric is proving false before our eyes. These commonsense Republican laws appear to be achieving just what the American people want: Making it easier to vote and harder to cheat,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor.

Experts in elections and groups representing voting rights say that many of the provisions of SB 202 had to do about limiting absentee voting. They also allowed for partisan actors control over local election boards. The law’s effects on accessibility over the long term are still unknown, they cautioned.