Brad Raffensperger — the Georgia Secretary of State who became the most hated man in MAGA world after 2020 — just got annihilated in the Georgia GOP gubernatorial primary. Not second place. Third. The man who lectured President Trump about "finding votes" couldn't find enough of his own to beat two other Republicans, and honestly, we couldn't have scripted this any better.
Revenge is a dish best served at the ballot box.
The results from Tuesday's primary tell the whole story. Burt Jones led the field at 38.2%, Rick Jackson came in second at 33.8%, and Raffensperger? Somewhere behind both of them, staring at the ceiling and wondering where it all went wrong. According to The Gateway Pundit, "Dirty Brad Raffensperger went down in flames" — and that might actually be an understatement.
Let's rewind to January 2, 2021. That's the date of the now-infamous phone call between President Trump and Raffensperger — the one where Trump urged the Secretary of State to investigate election irregularities. Within 24 hours, that call was leaked to the Washington Post, and Raffensperger became the media's favorite Republican overnight. CNN loved him. MSNBC loved him. The New York Times probably sent flowers.
But here's the part the legacy media never wanted to touch. On February 21, 2023, The Gateway Pundit's Joe Hoft discovered that Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs had secretly recorded that phone call from Florida — a state with two-party consent laws for recordings. Meaning the recording that launched a thousand breathless media segments may have been made illegally. The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway later confirmed the reporting in 2024.
None of that mattered to the press, of course. Raffensperger was their guy. The "principled Republican" who "stood up to Trump." He rode that media halo for five years, apparently convinced it would translate into actual Republican votes in an actual Republican primary.
It did not.
Georgia Republicans have long memories, and they remember exactly what Raffensperger did — and what he refused to do — when it mattered most. You don't get to sandbag the sitting president, become a CNN prop, and then waltz back into the GOP primary expecting a standing ovation. That's not how any of this works.
Raffensperger tried to rebrand. He tried to run as a competent administrator, a steady hand, a serious man for serious times. Georgia voters looked at his record, looked at his 2020 performance, and said, "No thanks, Brad. We're good."
Third place. In the Peach State. The man who had every major media outlet in America carrying water for him couldn't even crack the top two in his own party's primary. If there's a more perfect political obituary, I haven't read it.
Somewhere tonight, President Trump is smiling. And Brad Raffensperger is learning what every Republican who crossed MAGA eventually learns — the voters don't forget, and they definitely don't forgive.
