Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wants his state to host an early presidential primary — not in 2024, as President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are pushing.
The Republican election chief, who gained attention for rejecting then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 loss in Georgia, told The Associated Press he would back an early primary in 2028.
This is the first time that Raffensperger, who sets Georgia’s primary election dates, has supported the idea of Georgia as an early nominating state, though sooner than the Democratic National Committee and the White House want.
“Georgia will be a great early primary state in 2028,” Raffensperger told the AP.
“It has a good cross-section of engaged voters from both parties, and as everyone now recognizes, we run great elections,” the secretary panned Democrats’ claim that she and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp have worked . To limit ballot access.
Raffensperger’s position highlights the challenge Democrats face in rearranging their nominating calendar to elevate racially diverse voters and emphasize Iowa and New Hampshire. Those overwhelmingly white states have opened up the nominating process to both major parties for decades and still lead the Republicans’ 2024 calendar as it’s currently set — with national GOP officials showing little interest in reconsidering their slate.
Yet the secretary’s announcement suggests that Democrats are not alone in expanding their growing influence in presidential nomination politics to Georgia, which is now a key general election battleground state.
The question is whether Democrats can muster the momentum among Republicans who control the Georgia Statehouse and with the national GOP forces needed to make such a change. That certainly pales in comparison to the pressure Atlanta faces to win the 2024 Democratic convention, a decision that will be made entirely within the party.
Top Georgia Democrats, including Sen. Raphael Warnock of Atlanta and U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, support the president’s primary move, and Scott Hogan, the state party’s former executive director, has been the top unofficial lobbyist for the idea. . Republicans and the business community.
“This is not just a political conversation. It is very much an economic conversation,” said Williams, who is also the state Democratic chair. “It is a benefit across the board, whether Republican or Democrat.”
Audrey Haynes, a University of Georgia professor tracking the debate, cited studies showing how much more influential an average American voter becomes when they live in an early enrollment state. The economic boon, he said, ranged from television advertising by candidates to tours by national media and permanent field staff of top campaigns and a year’s worth of consumer spending.
“All this spending is worth paying attention to voters and local elected officials,” Haynes said.
Under the plan the Democratic National Committee approved on Saturday, the party’s 2024 presidential primaries will begin on February 3 in South Carolina, the state that carried Biden’s campaign in 2020. That primary will be followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on Feb. 6, Georgia on Feb. 13 and Michigan on February 27.
The national party has given Georgia Democrats until June to show they can comply with that calendar, though the deadline could be extended.
Raffensperger noted that the Republican National Committee has locked in its 2024 calendar with the general opening slates of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The GOP also plans to limit convention delegates to states that move to disrupt that traditional quartet.
Raffensperger said, “This type of move has to be fair, have to happen on the same day, and make sure nobody loses delegates.”
Jordan Fuchs, Raffensperger’s deputy, said the calendar shuffle should have been a “bipartisan decision” “from the beginning”, a tacit acknowledgment that Biden has no favor in Georgia, being the genesis of the Democrats’ plan.
“Just because one party is pushing it doesn’t mean it has bipartisan support,” she said.
Meanwhile, Kemp has made no public indication that he wants a change before 2024. Additionally, Kemp’s advisors have noted that he had no official role in setting the primary dates.
That said, Kemp is at the zenith of his influence as a second-term battleground state governor, winning re-election by nearly 8 percentage points; She defeated Democratic power player Stacey Abrams for a second time after dominating a Republican primary challenger backed by Trump. So he will be crucial in any final innings.
A top Kemp adviser, who was not authorized to speak on the record about an issue the governor is not actively pursuing and requested anonymity, said Kemp and his inner circle are looking for long-term benefits. Let’s not dispute what Georgia would earn as an early state. ,
Yet the concerns for the GOP are not as straightforward as those for the Democrats.
Several recent presidential cycles — the nominations of Barack Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020 — have highlighted the power of black voters already present in Democratic politics in the South. Biden’s path was particularly emphatic as he stormed to the nomination just weeks after finishing fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, effectively exposing his shortcomings as Democratic bellwethers. However, those two states still reflect the overwhelmingly white base of the Republican Party, giving the GOP little incentive to defund them.
Meanwhile, National Democrats have made it clear they want their early nominating window to be stacked with November battleground states; This would give his eventual nominee early exposure in key Electoral College states. Georgia Republicans, by contrast, are still adjusting to their state’s tossup status after dominating all levels of government for decades before 2020, when Georgia narrowly opted for Biden and two Democratic senators.
“I certainly believe this is a two-party state,” said Chip Lake, a veteran of the GOP campaign. “But the conversation among Democrats on what that means at the presidential level is far more advanced than it is among Republicans right now,” Lake said.
And, he said, Kemp’s previous statements effectively cut off any bipartisan movement on the primaries.
“Nobody,” said Lake, “wants to get out in front of the governor.”