Politics

Brad Raffensperger navigates his party’s MAGA reality

Published

4 months ago

May 10, 2026

VININGS, Ga. — Brad Raffensperger is fighting to save his political future as MAGA takes hold of the Georgia GOP.

The secretary of state rose to national prominence by defying President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but he is carefully trying to avoid the anti-Trump lane while he runs for governor.

Instead, he’s running an old-school campaign aimed at an old-school Republican Party: He’s holding low-key events compared with his GOP opponents’ flashier rallies, and he’s focusing on bread-and-butter issues, rather than harping on election security. At one Atlanta-area rotary club gathering in April, Raffensperger was all too happy to tout his business background and his pledge to cap property taxes. Everywhere he goes, he drops the word conservative.

“I have my own lane, and I feel good where we are,” Raffensperger told Blue Light News after the event. “It’s the lane about being a Christian conservative businessman who’s built a business from scratch.”

At its core, Raffensperger’s candidacy is a test of whether the party’s non-MAGA guard can hold on in one of the nation’s premiere battleground states. He’s defied expectations before, fending off a Trump-backed candidate in 2022 to keep his current position. But 2026 poses a new challenge, as Georgia’s GOP has increasingly shunned its small government roots in favor of aligning with the populist right.

Raffensperger speaks with attendees at a campaign event with the Vinings Rotary Club at a Copeland’s of New Orleans in Atlanta, on April 8, 2026.

Raffensperger maintains he has a path to victory. Asked whether Trump’s grip on the party is complicating it, he deflected: “I’m doing just fine. I’m going to be in the run-off.”

But the reality is Raffensperger is still struggling to break through in the governor’s race, polling at a consistent third place behind Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson ahead of the May 19 primary. Republican strategists and officials in the state were widely skeptical of Raffensperger’s chances of success.

“This is the party of Trump today — like it or not, it is — and I find it very difficult to see someone being able to be anti-Trump in a Republican primary and be successful,” said Casey Cagle, a Republican who served as lieutenant governor from 2007 to 2019. He’s experienced the rise of the MAGA base firsthand and has since tacked further to the right.

“The base has grown far, far greater to the right than what it was in my day,” said Cagle, who is supporting Jones in the governor’s race. “The core of the Republican Party has moved far away from the Chamber of Commerce mindset.”

Before February of this year, Raffensperger seemed poised to draw enough support in the primary to keep Jones under the 50 percent threshold he needed to trigger a run-off election. Then Jackson upended the race with his bombastic spending and MAGA pandering, pushing Raffensperger further down in the polls.

Gubernatorial candidates Rick Jackson, left, and Burt Jones interact at the Atlanta Press Club Loudermilk-Young Republican primary election debate in Atlanta, on April 27, 2026.

Even if the secretary of state were to make a run-off against either Jones or Jackson, his chances of actually winning the nomination are still slim, said GOP strategist Jeremy Brand, who has worked on Gov. Brian Kemp-aligned committees and is unaffiliated in the governor’s race.

“It’d be incredibly tough,” Brand said. “The edge in a run-off where voters are traditionally more conservative, that are willing to come back out again, I think the odds go to the more conservative candidate.”

2020 election woes

Raffensperger has been battling his own party on various fronts since he first stood up to Trump.

A faction of the Georgia GOP tried to bar him from seeking office again on the Republican ticket. And local party leaders recently broke with precedent to allow the RNC to eschew its neutrality and spend resources on backing Jones in the primary. The MAGA base that failed to oust Raffensperger in 2022 is trying again to end his political career — along with others deemed insufficiently loyal to the president.

Attorney General Chris Carr, like Raffensperger, is also mounting a bid for governor and previously defeated a Trump-backed challenger in 2022. But he’s polling even lower than the secretary of state. And Gabriel Sterling, a former top Raffensperger lieutenant, is locked in a noisy primary in his bid for secretary of state as he faces off against a former Democrat-turned-MAGA acolyte and a GOP state representative who once served as Kemp’s top aide.

The 2020 election has continued to be a key litmus test in Georgia, especially as Trump continues to air his grievances over his loss. Several recounts and extensive litigation have only proven Raffensperger’s case that former President Joe Biden fairly defeated Trump in 2020. But many voters and candidates continue to question the truth of the results in a show of loyalty to the president, further isolating the secretary from the increasingly conservative Republican base.

“I voted for Trump. I wish he’d have won. I think he did win, I’m one of those people,” said Bruce Brooker, 72, outside a Jones campaign event in rural Atkinson County earlier this month.

People vote in Atlanta on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020.

An April POLITICO Poll found that most respondents who plan to vote for Republicans this midterm are still skeptical: Nearly 40 percent say the 2020 election was stolen, while 25 percent don’t believe it was but have questions about the election’s legitimacy. Just 25 percent say the election wasn’t stolen.

Raffensperger continues to defend his work and the integrity of Georgia’s elections at large — “I’m really proud because we made elections more secure” — and is quick to highlight the changes he and state Republicans made in their 2021 overhaul of how the state conducts elections, which drew ire from Democrats and the MLB alike.

Still, several Georgia Republicans say he’s struggling to play catch-up as the base shifts away from his technocratic approach to politics.

“Brad stands in stark conflict to a party that is at the activist level very much aligned with President Trump, when Raffensperger is anything but,” said one former longtime state GOP official, granted anonymity to speak openly about evolving party dynamics. “His candidacy will be and is a test to determine if that lane still exists in the Georgia Republican Party apparatus.”

Raffensperger’s path forward

On a recent afternoon, Raffensperger, clad in a navy suit and striped red tie, headlined the Vinings-Cumberland Rotary Club’s weekly meeting, shaking hands and chatting with voters before taking his place behind the lectern at the front of the room. The state’s legislative session had ended barely a week earlier.

“What I thought I’d do is tell you where we are right now. We just finished up my last session,” he told the audience, ticking through accomplishments: streamlining professional licensing processes, securing an agreement to have money returned to victims of a local Ponzi scheme, and improving systems to make Georgia elections “free, fair and fast.”

It wasn’t the kind of red meat fodder that Republican politics thrive on in the Trump era, but the type of accolades that resonate with the kind of voters at the meeting, held just over the border from Atlanta’s city limits in suburban Cobb County.

Raffensperger prepares to deliver remarks at a campaign event with the Vinings Rotary Club at a Copeland’s of New Orleans in Atlanta, on April 8, 2026.

Cobb County is one of several former Republican bastions surrounding metro Atlanta that have flipped blue as the Trump-styled GOP turned off suburban voters. Once the homebase for conservative stalwart former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the county voted overwhelmingly for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 despite her statewide loss to Trump.

It’s still home to plenty of business-focused Republican voters who are not keen on the president — then-Sen. Marco Rubio carried the county over Trump during the 2016 GOP primaries, and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley performed nearly twice as well in the county compared to her statewide returns against the president in 2024. These are the voters Raffensperger is focused on, content to let Jones and Jackson battle it out for the MAGA class.

Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County Republican chair, said the low-key civic group events have “been the hallmark of Brad Raffensperger’s success” and an emblem of the party’s business-focused past. It’s in sharp contrast with the attention-grabbing rallies that have defined Trump’s dominance of Republican politics.

Raffensperger’s quieter approach has previously served him well, when he overcame a 2022 primary challenge from former Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) who ran with the president’s endorsement. This time is different: Then, he held the power of incumbency and benefited from Trump’s influence waning temporarily in the aftermath of Jan. 6 and his 2020 election defeat.

Now, Trump, back in power, has reaffirmed his iron grip on the party and Raffensperger is up against two MAGA candidates pining for the base’s attention. Add to that the fact he’s being massively outspent: His $4 million has been dwarfed by Jackson’s whopping $61 million and Jones’ $26 million in expenditures, according to an AdImpact analysis.

The Jones and Carr campaigns were quick to dismiss claims that the secretary of state had a path to the run-off and an eventual win. A spokesperson for Jackson did not respond to a request for comment.

If Raffensperger were to lose the primary, his loss would become another nail in the coffin for an old-school GOP that continues to resist MAGA. But his insistence that his lane — and version of the Republican Party — still exists is, for his closest allies, a testament to his persistence.

“Brad Raffensperger never really stopped from 2022 on,” said Sterling, the Raffensperger ally who’s running for secretary of state and has also faced MAGA’s ire for refusing to overturn election results. “He could have set up a foundation, gone around the country and just talked about democracy and he would have been applauded. Instead he chose to go into the battle and fight.”

Politics

Spencer Cox: America’s political divide is destroying families and friendships

Published

9 hours ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Spencer Cox: America’s political divide is destroying families and friendships

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Politics

Stefany Shaheen, daughter of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, wins New Hampshire House primary

Published

15 hours ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Shaheen political dynasty lives on in New Hampshire.

Stefany Shaheen, the eldest daughter of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), won Tuesday’s hotly contested Democratic primary for the state’s 1st District, defeating Maura Sullivan and a host of other rivals despite facing attacks that she was leaning on her well-known surname.

The seat, left open by Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas when he opted to run for Senate, is considered to be fairly competitive for the general election — former Vice President Kamala Harris won it by just two points in 2024.

Shaheen attempted to create distance from her mother throughout her campaign, rebuking the deal the senator helped broker to end last fall’s government shutdown and leaning into her public service in Portsmouth and medical-research advocacy on the trail.

Still, her family name helped her build an early polling lead and bank financial support.

Nearly $740,000 raised by Shaheen’s campaign came from donors who had previously given to her mother — 39 percent of total itemized campaign dollars, according to a Blue Light News analysis. One of those donors told Blue Light News the senator reached out last fall seeking their support for her daughter.

Sullivan, Shaheen’s main rival, attempted to weaponize the scion’s family ties in a year where the Democratic base has repeatedly spurned candidates with a perceived connection to the establishment.

The primary grew acrimonious in its closing weeks as Shaheen and Sullivan tangled over campaign donations and aired attack ads as polls showed a tightening race. The contest also underwent a rapid winnowing toward the end as two candidates dropped out; one, progressive Christian Urrutia, endorsed Shaheen.

Politics

Supreme Court rejects bid to revive Missouri’s pro-GOP redistricting before midterms

Published

21 hours ago

September 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A ruling from the Supreme Court on Tuesday means Missouri voters will likely go to the polls this fall under the same congressional map used two years ago, not one Republican state lawmakers adopted to try to pick up an additional House seat for the GOP.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh turned down a Republican-backed emergency appeal that sought to block a Missouri Supreme Court ruling last week restoring earlier district lines and ordering voters to weigh in on the redistricting plan in November for use in future elections.

Kavanaugh issued the ruling because he handles urgent matters arising in the 8th Circuit, which includes Missouri. Kavanaugh issued no explanation of his decision, nor did he indicate that he referred the matter to the full court, as is customary in significant cases. Missouri officials could ask another justice for relief, but such requests are almost never granted.

The justices rarely disturb state courts’ decisions about matters like the referendum petitions in Missouri that sought to put the redistricting before voters for approval.

However, lawyers for Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins warned the Supreme Court that the state faced “disaster” and “unprecedented chaos” in part because primaries already took place under the new lines last month.

Democrats argued any last-minute chaos to Missouri’s election administration was intentionally created by Hoskins, pointing to Republican leaders in the state arguing that delaying the decision on the redistricting referendum would benefit Republicans.

President Donald Trump denounced the state supreme court ruling last week.

“The Election Process, as usual, is being disturbed in America!” he wrotein a post on Truth Social. “Missouri must be able to use the map that was in effect just a couple of months ago, in the Primary. This is a Dark Day for “Justice” in Missouri!”