GOP Gov. Brian Kemp routs Perdue as Trump’s hopes for 2020 revenge are dashed in Georgia

Trump has devoted much of his post-presidency to punishing Republicans who defied his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but he flamed out in Georgia.

WASHINGTON — In his biggest electoral defeat since he lost the presidency in 2020, Donald Trump went down in flames Tuesday in his crusade to punish Georgia Republican who defied his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, as NBC News projects the former president’s candidates were crushed in GOP primaries.

Gov. Brian Kemp is on track to rout Trump-backed challenger David Perdue by a stunning 50 percentage points, while Attorney General Chris Carr ran ahead of his Trump-endorsed opponent by a similar margin.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who earned a special place on Trump’s list of targets for secretly recording a phone call in which Trump asked him to “find” him more votes — beat expectations by winning his primary outright without being forced into a runoff, according to NBC News.

Trump has devoted much of his post-presidency to seeking revenge on Republicans who did not support his lies about the election, none more so than Kemp. The former president recruited a top-tier challenger in Perdue, a former U.S. senator, appeared in TV ads for him and helped fund his campaign. 

But Perdue’s campaign struggled to get off the ground and differentiate him from Kemp on anything other than the 2020 election, which proved to be an issue not nearly as important to Georgia Republican primary voters as it is to Trump.

Perdue, who ran a lackluster campaign that ended with a racist remark, quickly conceded the race in a phone call to Kemp — a step Trump never took after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

Kemp will face Democrat Stacey Abrams. It’s a rematch of their hard-fought 2018 battle, which Kemp narrowly won, and it is expected to be one of the highest-profile governor’s races in the country.

Primaries or runoffs are also being held in Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, where news of a school shooting has overshadowed the political contest.

Candidates in both parties offered prayers and commiseration for those killed in Uvalde, about 80 miles west of San Antonio.

In a GOP runoff in Texas, a scion of the Bush dynasty went down as NBC News projected that Attorney General Ken Paxton easily defeated Land Commissioner George P. Bush, the son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the nephew of former President George W. Bush.

The outcome shows how much luster has come off the Bush brand in today’s GOP, especially since Paxton was weighed down by a slew of ethics issues, including an indictment alleging securities fraud.

For Democrats, an ideologically charged congressional runoff in South Texas between moderate Rep. Henry Cuellar and progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros is too close to call, according to NBC News.

Meanwhile, Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia handily defeated Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux in a member-on-member Democratic primary after redistricting forced them into the same district.

In Arkansas, former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders easily secured the GOP nomination for governor to replace term-limited GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson, NBC News projects.