Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Wednesday that he is running for governor, a high-profile Republican entry into the race for the battleground state’s gubernatorial seat.
“I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions,” he said in an announcement video. “I follow the law and the Constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what.”
The current governor, Brian Kemp, is in his second term and is term-limited.
Raffensperger rose to the national stage after the 2020 presidential election, when he rejected President Donald Trump’s plea to “find” more votes in Georgia after losing the state to former President Joe Biden.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump told Raffensperger in a phone call, which later became public. “Because we won the state.”
Biden, though, had won Georgia, and Raffensperger pushed back on the president, saying that “the data you have is wrong,” drawing the intense ire of the president and many in his MAGA base.
Raffensperger said in an interview on “Meet the Press” in 2021 that he had voted for Trump twice, adding that many people “understand that I did my job.”
“I followed the law, I followed the Constitution. And they believe that’s the honorable thing to do,” he said.
Raffensperger’s announcement video emphasized that his “Christian faith guides everything he does” and discussed losing his son to addiction.
“That’s why Brad will make it a personal mission to stop deadly drugs in our state, expand treatment and save lives,” the narrator said.
The video also highlighted some culture war issues embraced by Republicans, including Raffensperger’s vow to “ban biological men in women’s sports,” referring to the debate over transgender women participating in women’s athletics, and ban “transgender surgeries for minors.”