# Gabriel Sterling Senior official in [[Brad Raffensperger]]'s Georgia Secretary of State office who became a national figure during the 2020 post-election crisis when he publicly rebuked Trump's election fraud claims and warned that the rhetoric would lead to violence. ## The 2026 primary — he lost, and badly Sterling ran for Secretary of State in 2026 in what was billed as a direct test of whether [[Election Denialism]] or institutionalism prevails in the Georgia GOP. **He finished fourth of five in the May 19, 2026 Republican primary with roughly 12% of the vote** and was eliminated in the first round. Kelvin King, a 2020 election denier, finished third with about 16%. The nomination went to former deputy secretary of state Tim Fleming, who led the first round with 39.2% and won the June 16 runoff 64.5–35.5 over Vernon Jones — a candidate who said flatly that he stood with those who believe there was election fraud. Sterling told the Georgia Recorder plainly that the 2020 outcome was correct. Roughly three-quarters of the Republican first-round vote went to candidates who cast doubt on 2020 or used "irregularities" framing. > [!important] The result is the finding > Sterling is the cleanest available test case: a Republican official whose entire public profile is having defended the accuracy of the 2020 count in the state Trump pressured hardest, running for the office that administers it. He got 12%. On the same ballot his boss [[Brad Raffensperger]] took 14% in the gubernatorial primary and failed to make that runoff. **The 2022 Georgia result — Raffensperger surviving a Trump-endorsed challenger — did not generalise forward.** Any vault page that reads 2022 as evidence the Georgia GOP had absorbed a durable institutionalist wing should be read against this. See [[2026 Key State Races Hub]].