With the Jan. 6 hearings, we’re given a front-row seat to a parade of Republicans who are guilty of their own right-wing chicanery but, for one reason or another, refused to go along with then-President Donald Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
It’s a common phenomenon we’ve all become acquainted with through years of knowing Trump’s schtick. Some far-right figure defies Trump, and we all remark, “If so-and-so is calling you corrupt, you know you’re corrupt.”
The list seems endless.
John Bolton. Chris Christie. Michael Cohen. Bill Stepien. Jason Miller. Eric Herschmann. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is on that list, as well.
Ultimately, Raffensperger didn’t succumb to Trump’s pressure to “find” more than 11,000 votes and overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in Georgia. But what makes his defiance of that request, and his testimony Tuesday, striking is that Raffensperger has been deeply committed to the cause of helping Republicans in Georgia — and Trump, by consequence — win elections through antidemocratic means.
Trump’s ask was just a bridge too far for him.
Raffensperger has been a true enemy of democracy since becoming Georgia's top elections official in 2019, succeeding Brian Kemp when Kemp was elected governor.
Raffensperger has continued Kemp’s tradition of routinely purging voters from Georgia’s voter rolls. In a 2019 New York magazine article detailing voter purges, Zak Cheney-Rice described them as part of Raffensperger’s “fight to ensure the survival of a years-long project in the state: keeping the chosen political party of black people out of power.”
One of the purges Raffensperger oversaw removed nearly 118,000 voters over perceived inactivity in elections, and he’s continued purging voters from Georgia’s rolls as recently as 2021.
And although Raffensperger claims not to believe in Trump’s lies about election fraud, he’s backed voter suppression measures that stem from those very lies. That includes a law Kemp signed in March 2021 that institutes new voter identification requirements, restricts early voting, curbs the use of drop boxes, and bans giving water and food to people waiting in line to vote.
Raffensperger has publicly praised the law, which is the subject of a racial discrimination lawsuit filed by the Justice Department.
When watching Raffensperger, we must remember: He is no hero. He is a political extremist with some limitations, and the fact that Trump presented a scheme too absurd for Raffensperger to go along with just shows how rotten the plot truly was.