Georgia gubernatorial candidate Burt Jones rallied supporters during a primary election night watch party, on Tuesday in Jackson.Mike Stewart/AP
On Tuesday, six states held primary elections to select which Republican and Democratic candidates will advance to the general election in November. The primaries were seen not only as contests within the states, but also as potential referendums on President Donald Trump’s staying power within the Republican party. By Wednesday morning, it was clear that Trump’s influence is as strong as ever.
In Kentucky, for example, a Trump-endorsed Republican challenger toppled incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie, a thorn in the president’s side who clashed with Trump over deficit spending and the administration’s handling of the Epstein files.
But the MAGA mandate was arguably even clearer in Georgia, in which a number of contests culminated in rebukes of Trump foes and support for his friends.
In the GOP primary for governor, the Trump-endorsed current lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, received roughly 40 percent of the votes—more than any of the other seven candidates. Because of Georgia’s unique primary rules, in which a candidate has to receive more than half of the vote to become their party’s nominee, Jones will have to compete in a June runoff against the Republican who placed second. He’ll face billionaire health care executive Rick Jackson, who supported Trump’s competitors in the 2024 election and donated money to Liz Cheney’s PAC after she voted to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 insurrection. Jackson’s foes used these donations to label him a “never-Trumper.”
Meanwhile, Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who famously refused to “find” 11,000 votes for Trump following the president’s 2020 loss, is out of the running for governor, having received just 15 percent of the vote despite national name recognition.
In the GOP primary for secretary of state, former top Raffensperger aide Gabriel Sterling fared about as poorly as his former boss. Despite having more experience running elections than any of his competitors, he received less than 12 percent of the vote. Sterling spent his campaign trying to persuade Georgia voters that Georgia had some of the safest elections in the country. The candidates who advanced to the GOP runoff, state representative Tim Fleming and former state representative Vernon Jones, largely did the opposite. Jones is the more extreme of the two, having said there were “many irregularities” in 2020 and that he “stand[s] with those who believe there was election fraud.”
In the competition to see which Republican will face incumbent Senator Jon Ossoff in November, Rep. Mike Collins performed best. A Trump loyalist, Collins once called for the Episcopal Bishop of the Washington diocese to be deported (despite being an American citizen) after she asked Trump to have sympathy for immigrants. The second-term congressman will face Derek Dooley—son of famous University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley—in the June runoff.
While technically non-partisan, the three seats up for grabs on Georgia’s Supreme Court also went Trump’s way. Former Democratic state lawmaker Jen Jordan and personal injury attorney Miracle Rankin failed to topple conservative incumbents in each of their races. Conservative Justice Benjamin Land was also re-elected, having run unopposed.
The majority ideology of the court would not have changed if Jordan and Rankin beat the incumbents, but the race gained outsized attention after a Supreme Court decision last month that enables states to weaken voting power among people of color in ways that will disproportionately improve Republicans’ odds at picking up seats. (Trump called it “the kind of ruling I like.”)
Following the decision, Governor Brian Kemp called a special legislative session for June so legislators can redraw congressional maps ahead of the 2028 election cycle. The Georgia Supreme Court will be asked to review these maps, so Republicans will presumably benefit from conservatives ruling the court.
The state supreme court races aside, most high-profile Georgia primary races will have question marks beside them until the June 16 runoffs. But one thing was fairly clear across the Peach State: Trump won up and down the ballot.
