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GA: First debate of the Republican party for governor
ATLANTA (AP) — Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia has easily dispatched Donald Trump’s hand-picked challenger in a Republican primary that demonstrated the limits of the former president and his conspiracy-fueled politics in a critical swing state.
The results, combined with the loss of the Trump-backed candidate for secretary of state, serve as a stinging rebuke in a race Trump prioritized above almost all others. Angered by Kemp’s refusal to go along with his extraordinary effort to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, Trump recruited former Sen. David Perdue.
But Kemp ultimately emerged as a powerful candidate. He will face Democrat Stacey Abrams this fall in one of the nation’s most consequential governor’s races.
One of the last anti-abortion Democrats in Congress was facing his toughest primary challenge yet in Tuesday’s runoff, while a staunch gun safety advocate ousted her House colleague in a fierce member-on-member congressional primary in suburban Atlanta. In northwest Georgia, far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a conspiracy-peddling provocateur who has endorsed calls to assassinate prominent Democrats, coasted to victory.
Primary elections Tuesday in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota and Texas are offering a glimpse of what the next Congress could look like, with some marquee matchups testing whether voters want to elect agents of change or a return to normal.
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