Trump-defying Brad Raffensperger facing Democratic re-election challenge

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Brad Raffensperger has one of the highest national profiles of any secretary of state in the nation.

Raffensperger was at the center of one of the nation’s most violent political storms in recent history. Two years ago, Raffensperger repeatedly rebuffed Trump’s efforts and refuted claims of widespread voter fraud in Georgia. Joe Biden became the first Democratic White House candidate to carry Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992, winning the Peach State by .23%.

Georgia was also the only Deep South state to vote Democratic in the 2020 presidential election.

Raffensperger won a crowded, May 24 GOP secretary of state primary by defeating, among others, the Trump-endorsed candidacy of Jody Hice. Now, he’s facing Democrat Bee Nguyen, who has the strong endorsement of gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams, in his battle for re-election.

Earlier this year, Raffensperger testified before the Democrat-organized House Select Committee investigataing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraud “were false.”

Raffensperger told the committee the Nov. 6, 2020, election went “remarkably smooth.

“I felt we had a successful election,” Raffensperger said.

The committee also focused on a phone call that Raffensperger received on Jan. 2 from Trump, in which he asked Georgia’s top elections official “to find 11,780 votes” in order to overturn Georgia’s results.

Full coverage of Georgia’s 2022 midterm elections.

Besides Abrams’ endorsement, Nguyen has other close ties to the Democratic candidate for governor. Nguyen was elected in December 2017 to fill Abrams’ seat in the state House; Abrams had resigned the seat in to focus on her campaign for governor the following year.

Nguyen is the first Vietnamese-American elected to the state House, and would become the first Vietnamese-American to ever be elected to a Georgia statewide constitutional office.

Raffensperger and Nguyen are set to debate each other on Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 11 a.m. on Georgia Public Broadcasting, a debate which will air at 7 p.m. that night on GPB.

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