The opponent running to unseat Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger already has his biggest endorsement: Former President Donald Trump.
Jody Hice, a Republican congressman in Georgia’s 10th District, announced Monday he’ll run against Raffensperger, someone who’s been in Trump’s crosshairs ever since he refused to entertain ideas of overturning the Georgia election results last November. He wasted no time issuing a statement from Mar-A-Lago full of the usual bluster about how Hice is “one of our most outstanding congressmen” and repeating his lies that the election was stolen.
Hice, that “most outstanding congressman,” is a devout Trump follower who was one of several members of Congress who helped spread Trump’s election lies. He even went along with a brief that asked the Supreme Court to challenge the election results.
Raffensperger is one of Trump’s top targets on his planned Revenge Tour in 2022. Eager to play the role of Republican kingmaker, he is reportedly ready to endorse any candidate who runs against someone the one-term president feels betrayed him or wronged him in some way. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is also on Trump’s hit list, but Raffensperger may be his top foe.
He helped certify Joe Biden’s win in Georgia and refused to back down, even when Trump made that notorious phone call in early January asking Raffensperger to find the votes needed to flip the state toward him. Here’s what he said, verbatim, in that call.
“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.”
Raffensperger’s office is even investigating Trump — along with the Fulton County prosecutor’s office — on the claims he tried to influence the election results.