# Brad Raffensperger Georgia Secretary of State since January 2019, the Republican election official on the receiving end of [[Donald Trump - find 11780 votes]] requesting that he "find 11,780 votes" to reverse Biden's certified margin in Georgia. A civil engineer and businessman before entering politics, Raffensperger represented Georgia's 50th state House district from 2015 until elected Secretary of State. ## The Trump call and aftermath Raffensperger refused Trump's pressure, walked Trump and his attorneys through the empirical refutation of every fraud claim raised on the call, and — after Trump tweeted misleadingly about the call the next morning — authorized release of the audio recording his general counsel Ryan Germany had made as a precaution. The recording is a predicate act in the [[Georgia RICO Case]] (Fulton County, Fani Willis, August 2023). ## 2022 re-election Trump endorsed primary challenger [[Jody Hice]], a six-term Republican congressman from Georgia, against Raffensperger. Raffensperger won the May 2022 primary outright (52%–33%) without a runoff, and won the general election against Democrat Bee Nguyen 53%–44%. The result was an early signal that Trump's hold on GOP primary electorates was not unconditional, particularly in races where the operative cleavage was the 2020 election rather than substantive policy. ## 2026 run for governor — defeated Raffensperger did not seek a third term as Secretary of State; he ran for **Governor of Georgia** in 2026 and **failed to make the Republican runoff**, taking just **14%** in the May 19, 2026 primary. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (37%) and health-care executive Rick Jackson (34%) advanced to the June 16 runoff. On the same ballot, his own chief operating officer [[Gabriel Sterling]] — the other Georgia Republican most identified with defending the 2020 count — finished fourth in the Secretary of State primary with about 12%. The Secretary of State nomination went to Tim Fleming on "irregularities" framing, after a runoff against an outright denier. See [[2026 Key State Races Hub]]. ## Book and public profile Published *Integrity Counts* in November 2021, a memoir of his role in the post-2020 Georgia counts and certifications. Defended Georgia's election administration through the 2022 and 2024 cycles. ## KB significance Raffensperger is, alongside [[Mitt Romney]] and [[Liz Cheney]], the cleanest example of a conservative Republican whose break with Trump was on conduct (refusing to ratify the [[Stop the Steal]]), not ideology. **The 2022 exception did not hold.** For four years his 2022 primary survival was the data point cutting against the otherwise consistent "defectors pay the price" pattern tracked in [[Trump Impeachments Timeline]]. His 14% third-place finish in the 2026 gubernatorial primary, alongside [[Gabriel Sterling]]'s 12% on the same day, removes the exception: the pattern now runs uninterrupted. The distinction worth preserving is one of *timing*, not outcome — a defector could still win a Georgia Republican primary in 2022 and could not by 2026. > [!note] Framing call > Read the 2022-to-2026 shift as evidence about the electorate rather than about Raffensperger. He ran for a different and more prominent office against a Trump-aligned sitting lieutenant governor, so the two results are not a controlled comparison. What makes it more than a candidate-quality story is that both Georgia Republicans identified with the 2020 count collapsed on the same ballot, in different races, against different opponents. ## Related - [[Donald Trump - find 11780 votes]] - [[Georgia RICO Case]] - [[Stop the Steal]]