6/20/2023 0 Comments Nytimes georgia runoff![]() In 2018, when Stacey Abrams came within 1.4 points of beating Mr. They watched in 2016 as Hillary Clinton flipped Cobb County, a fast-diversifying former Republican stronghold in the Atlanta suburbs, on her way to losing the state by just five percentage points. Watching the explosive growth of metropolitan Atlanta over the last decades, and especially the surge in Asian American and Latino voters, Republicans began to worry that their grip on the state was eroding. Trump: On Monday, a parade of Republican senators lined up to condemn his recent call to suspend the Constitution on Tuesday, a jury convicted his company of tax fraud.Īs the runoff outcome became clear, Scott Jennings, a former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell, observed that “Georgia may be remembered as the state that broke Trump once and for all.” Georgia will again be a key state on the presidential map in 2024. Ron DeSantis of Florida as a preferable alternative in 2024, and he has gained ground against Mr. Walker’s loss, Republicans of all stripes were eyeing Gov. Geoff Duncan, “it’s going to be a purple state.”Įven before Mr. “If Georgia Republicans want to keep laying in the mud with Donald Trump,” said Lt. Many Republicans, previously mindful of the former president’s capacity for survival, are now shedding their caution. Walker that was closed to the news media. Instead of one of his signature MAGA rallies in Georgia, the former president was reduced to holding a conference call to support Mr. Run Herschel, run!”ĭuring the runoff, Republicans made clear that they wanted Mr. “He would be unstoppable, just like he was when he played for the Georgia Bulldogs, and in the NFL. “Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the legendary Herschel Walker ran for the United States Senate in Georgia?” Mr. Walker since the 1980s, when he owned the New Jersey Generals football team in the short-lived U.S.F.L., almost single-handedly made Mr. Walker had explored running for office long before 2022. Trump to wriggle his way out of this one. It will be hard - though not impossible - for Mr. Walker’s loss turns up the heat on Trump. And, in comments that made him the butt of late-night jokes, he embarked on a lengthy tangent about werewolves and vampires. Walker extolled the virtues of “gas-guzzling cars” in a state that has aggressively tried to become a hub of electric-vehicle manufacturing. 8 and the runoff by several percentage points. In much of the state, he lost ground between Nov. At another, he said that “Jesus may not recognize” transgender people if they seek to enter heaven. ![]() “I don’t even know what the heck is a pronoun,” he said at one rally. Walker made little attempt to lure back those wayward Kemp voters, and kept serving up red meat instead. Brian Kemp, a fellow Republican, by a larger margin than his entire statewide gap with Mr. During the general election in Fulton County, for instance, he lagged the vote total of Gov. Walker’s problems were especially acute in metropolitan Atlanta, where voters tend to be wealthier and more educated. But in voicing the very concerns many Republicans held, he might have helped to crystallize them. It was a deft strategy for lowering expectations ahead of his lone debate with Mr. “I’m not that smart,” he said at one point. Lurid allegations about his personal conduct drove national news: previously undisclosed children he had fathered, accusations of domestic violence, abortions he had reportedly urged romantic partners to get, exaggerations about his business affairs, questions about his residency in Georgia.įacing incessant doubts about his fitness for office, Mr. Walker, the senator’s team had the perfect foil. The Warnock campaign wanted to make the race a contrast between a reverend and a running back, not a referendum on national Democrats or the Biden administration. ![]() ![]() Republicans chose a deeply flawed candidate.
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