Georgia election results: Trump foe Brian Kemp wins primary as Herschel Walker secures GOP Senate nom

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp looks set to survive his challenge from Trump-backed ex-senator David Perdue – and if he does, it will be with the help of none other than Mike Pence, who has been steadily cultivating a personal image of integrity by defending his decision not to try and overturn the 2020 election in Congress.

For some, the two men’s apparently successful link-up raises the prospect that Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party might not be quite as tight as it once seemed.

As The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes described it on MSNBC last night: “You have the party rallying around a very conservative Republican governor who is in no way a RINO, but has been targeted specifically and really solely because of his refusal to go along with the Big Lie. So this is a pure referendum on Donald Trump’s most important obsession, and he’s going to lose badly in a crucial state.”

Watch his remarks below.

Fresh off his appearance with Georgia’s Brian Kemp, a Trump target who looks set to survive, Mike Pence is continuing his campaign roadshow by stumping for North Carolina’s Tedd Budd, the GOP nominee for the state’s open Senate seat.

Unlike Mr Kemp, Mr Budd had Mr Trump’s backing over former governor Pat McCrory. The seat is crucial to Republicans’ efforts to retake the Senate.

Far-right Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the highest-profile Republicans facing a primary today, but her race has gotten little attention. That’s partly because none of her five challengers is particularly well known, but more because her incredible fundraising power (she’s raked in $9.2m this cycle) makes her the envy of candidates across the country.

Here’s a write-up of the race, such as it is, courtesy of The Hill.

As turnout in Georgia’s primary reportedly runs high, Donald Trump has blasted out an email reiterating his endorsement of David Perdue, whom the polls say is set to lose heavily in his challenge to incumbent Brian Kemp.

Here’s the former president’s message:

Herschel Walker looks set to be the Republican nominee to take on Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock in November, but many Republicans are worried about his habit of making odd statements in public that scramble his own and his party’s campaign narrative.

Among those is this resurfaced clip in which Mr Walker claims he has never heard Donald Trump say the 2020 election was stolen – the entire basis for the ex-president’s endorsement of David Perdue in the simultaneous governor’s race.

The Republican primaries in Alabama and Georgia are getting most of today’s attention, but as Eric Garcia writes, what’s going on on the Democratic side deserves attention too. Incumbent members of Congress are duking it out for the chance to represent redrawn districts, and simmering resentments over the non-passage of Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislation are spilling over into public rows.

Read his full analysis below.

Georgia’s primary elections represent a dual test for Donald Trump: On one hand, he is hoping to see Herschel Walker, his favoured US Senate candidate, prevail in the primary election to determine who will challenge Raphael Warnock in November.

On the other hand, he is also hoping for a victory by David Perdue in the governor’s race, an outcome that has grown increasingly unlikely as the Trump-endorsed candidate has slipped further behind incumbent Gov Brian Kemp in the polls.

As a result, Tuesday could be the first major example of Donald Trump failing to oust a state-level GOP official who broke with him during his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Herschel Walker, the three-time Heisman trophy winner, had far from your typical path to Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary in Georgia.

But he stands to advance to November’s general election regardless, thanks in no small part due to the endorsement of Donald Trump.

Learn more about the man likely to become the GOP’s next US Senate nominee in Georgia:

Rep Mo Brooks, who is surging in the polls and could be headed to victory or a runoff Tuesday in Alabama’s US Senate primary, battled with an MSNBC reporter over his participation in the January 6 committee’s investigation.

Speaking with the network’s Vaughn Hillyard as the primary concluded on Tuesday, Mr Brooks denied that he had been served with a subpoena by the committee and denounced it as an effort to “affect the 2022 election”.

Watch more, from MSNBC:

Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, the conspiracy-spewing congresswoman stripped of her committee memberships for comments about violence against Democrats, is up for renomination to the US House on Tuesday.

She faces a wide primary field in Georgia’s 14 district, which was recently redrawn to include more left-leaning areas of the state in Cobb County.

The district is one of the least-polled in the country, and therefore is hard to predict. But Ms Greene has a crucial incumbency advantage, and has avoided earning the ire of any members of Georgia’s congressional delegation, a lesson her fellow far-right House member Madison Cawthorn failed to heed in North Carolina.