Georgia GOP’s attempt to block Brad Raffensperger from running as a Republican may go nowhere

By JEFF AMY
Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s Republican Party says Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger should not be able to run under the party’s banner anymore, but the party’s chairman says the attempt to kick out the state’s chief election official is going nowhere.

Delegates voted overwhelmingly at the state GOP convention on Saturday in Dalton to adopt a series of resolutions, including one declaring the party shall not “take any action to allow Brad Raffensperger to qualify as a Republican” for future elections.

The resolution shows the deep hostility many Republican activists have toward Raffensperger following his refusal to help Donald Trump overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Alex Johnson chairs the Georgia Republican Assembly, a group that tries to influence the party. He said Raffensperger has been “generally ignoring and disrespecting” the party, including attempts to change the election system, and that Republicans should be allowed to divorce Raffensperger.

“He doesn’t listen to anything that the Republican party has asked him to do,” Johnson said Monday. “He is hostile and has been hostile towards our presidential nominee and now a person who is president.”

But party Chairman Josh McKoon told reporters after the convention ended that while the resolution “presents the sense of the convention on what should happen,” state law requires the party to allow Raffensperger to run as a Republican.

“I don’t really see a way for the Georgia Republican Party to decline someone the opportunity to qualify,” McKoon said.

Spokespeople for Raffensperger did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday. The two-term secretary of state has said he’s considering running for governor or U.S. Senate in 2026.

Georgia has no party registration and its primary elections allow anyone to vote in the party nominating contest of their choice. That means it can be hard to tell who is truly a Republican or a Democrat.

Some Republicans favor a system of voter registration by party and primaries that allow only party members to vote. They also say party officials should decide which candidates should be allowed to run as Republicans.

The Georgia Republican Party’s executive committee voted in January to expel former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan after Duncan endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris for president. The committee voted to ban Duncan from party events and said it would not qualify Duncan to run as a Republican in the future.

But the party in 2023 rejected an attempt to ban ideological traitors from primary ballots. Last year, judges blocked attempts by a county party in northwest Georgia to act as gatekeepers for local candidates.

In a ruling regarding Catoosa County, the state Supreme Court did not get to the heart of the dispute over whether parities can create rules for qualifying candidates in primary elections beyond those found in Georgia law. Those who push that point of view claim being forced to qualify everyone who signs up violates their freedom of association under the U.S. Constitution.

“You can’t force a Baptist church to ordain a Buddhist or a Muslim to be a Baptist minister,” said Nathaniel Darnell, president of the Georgia Republican Assembly. “By the same token, you can’t force somebody who is counteracting the Republican principles and objectives to be Republican.”

A federal judge rejected that argument, but some Catoosa County Republicans have appealed the case. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has not yet ruled. Republicans in Chattooga and Pickens counties passed similar rules.

Those who want to act as gatekeepers generally are seeking to move the party to the right. The state convention on Saturday, for example, called for repealing both the state income tax and local property taxes.

Those who hold a different view say primary election voters should decide who’s a true Republican. U.S. District Judge Billy Ray, a former chair of the Gwinnett County Republican Party, wrote that a party’s associational rights are not “absolute” and voters should decide primaries when he rejected the Catoosa County case now on appeal.

“Trying to limit who can run in a primary seems inconsistent with the purpose of a primary to start with,” Ray wrote in a footnote. “Perhaps the Catoosa Republican Party doesn’t believe that the citizens of Catoosa County can for themselves intelligently decide which candidates best embody the principles of the Republican Party.”