The 12th Lieutenant Governor of Georgia: After years of scandal, a Republican leader has broken his snoozer and an ill-gotten campaign
The 12th Lieutenant Governor of Georgia is a Republican namedGeoff Duncan. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion articles on CNN.
The Democratic senator and Republican challenger will go head to head in a runoff on December 6th after neither candidate got the necessary 50% of the vote. The Georgia runoff is not expected to affect the race for Senate control, after CNN projected that Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto would win reelection in Nevada, ensuring that Democrats will hold at least 50 seats. Vice President Harris is able to break any ties.
Walker won the Senate primary because he was the one who won it. He was the winner because of his performance in football 40 years ago and because of his friendship with Donald Trump, but neither of those are guarantees anymore.
Walker denied the Daily Beast story that he paid for a woman’s abortion in 2009, after the two had conceived a child while they were dating. Walker was against abortion rights. He went so far as to threaten legal action against the publication as a recourse. But the impact in the court of public opinion was immediate and intense. It was thought to be a bad, by influential conservative personality ErickErickson.
Now, members of a nervous GOP infrastructure are waiting to see if Walker can weather the storm. Walker has faced a lot of serious allegations, such as domestic abuse, an exaggerated business career, and an erratic personality. So far, he has had a Trump-esque Teflon quality of surviving scandals that would sink mere mortals. Walker’s latest test is his most serious, not just by its nature, but in its October timing.
The Georgia governor’s race offers Republicans a better path forward, as a party. What was billed as a blockbuster re-match between the incumbent GOP Governor Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams has turned into a relative snoozer. Abrams has so far failed to re-capture the magic of her 2018 run when she raised nearly $28 million dollars and became a rising national Democratic star.
Her stock has taken a hit. She refused to concede her defeat. Just days ago, a federal judge tossed out her group’s lawsuit claiming the election was decided improperly. This summer, the State Ethics Commission dismissed an investigation of her practices that she faced in the past.
Kemp is breathing a bit easier this year with the help of factors other than Abrams’ flaws. He has his own record to fall back on, and it is one of accomplishments and results. Georgia has been named the best state to do business for nine years in a row. In a decision that has aged well over time, Kemp re-opened our state from the pandemic faster than many others, angering even then-President Trump. As more people and businesses have re-located to our state for our business-friendly climate, Georgia has taken meaningful strides toward becoming the technology capital of the East Coast.
The 2020 Florida Senate Runoff: Warnock, DeSantis, the American Rescue Plan, and the Inflation Reduction Act
Meanwhile, incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock has maintained a slim but steady lead over Walker. He has done so despite voting more than 96% of the time with President Joe Biden in a state where just 44% of voters approve of the President, compared to 53% who disapprove, according to a recent Quinnipiac University survey.
Those numbers are accurate. Our Senate race should be a referendum on Warnock’s blind rubber-stamping of Biden’s agenda. The American Rescue Plan act and the $750 billion Inflation Reduction act are two pieces of legislation that could have been stopped by an evenly divided upper chamber.
If we want the American public to take us seriously, we need to take the first step by nominating candidates they should take seriously. That process goes beyond celebrity or fame. It requires leaders to articulate a conservative vision and win elections.
“This should have been a huge red wave. Hogan, ineligible to run for a third term this year in Maryland, said the red wave should have been one of the biggest. Despite President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, the governor said his party “still didn’t perform.”
Hogan thinks commonsense conservatives won because they focused on issues that people cared about, like the economy and crime. “But people who tried to relitigate the 2020 election and focused on conspiracy theories … they were all almost universally rejected.”
Hogan said that the upcoming Senate runoff in Georgia would not be impacted by the upcoming special announcement by Trump.
The governor of Florida is one of the important voices for the party. DeSantis, who is projected to have comfortably won his bid for a second term last week, is seen as a potential 2024 contender for the GOP presidential contention.