Long before he became Donald Trump’s scapegoat for losing the state of Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was under intense pressure to publicly endorse Trump for president.
According to ProPublica, the Trump campaign started pressuring Raffensperger to publicly endorse Donald Trump in January. But he rejected their requests because he believed that it would be a conflict of interest to take sides in an election that he was in charge of overseeing.
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Leading the charge was Billy Kirkland, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign. Kirkland sought to get Raffensperger on board as an honorary co-chair of the Trump campaign in Georgia. Raffensperger declined.
Their requests for Raffensperger’s endorsement of Trump were repeatedly rebuffed but the campaign simply would not accept his refusal. So, Kirkland crashed a meeting Raffensperger had with the executive director of the Georgia Republican party after the SoS office announced they were going to mail absentee ballots to every registered voter in the state ahead of the June primary.
“A lot of people have noticed you didn’t endorse,” Kirkland reportedly said after barging into the meeting. Raffensperger made it clear once again that it was a conflict of interest to do so.
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Raffensperger had to leave the meeting early and a staffer offered to continue the conversation at a later date. The staffer asked if there was any additional publicly available voter data that the party needed, to which Kirkland responded, “We’ll see how helpful you are in November,” before storming out of the office.
As it becomes clear that Biden has flipped the state, Republicans in Georgia have attacked Raffensperger, accusing him without a shred of evidence, of mismanaging the election. Both Sen. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler have called for him to resign ahead of their crucial run off elections in January. Georgia Republicans in Congress also signed a letter criticizing Raffensperger’s office for a series of supposed irregularities. Lindsey Graham also reportedly called him to suggest that he throw out legally cast ballots.
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Raffensperger now believes that his refusal to publicly endorse Trump is why he’s being attacked by Republicans about his job performance. He said the attacks are “clear retaliation”.
“They thought Georgia was a layup shot Republican win. It is not the job of the secretary of state’s office to deliver a win,” Raffensperger said. “It is the sole responsibility of the Georgia Republican Party to get out the vote and get its voters to the polls. That is not the job of the secretary of state’s office”.
