What Went Down During The May 24 Primary Elections

Big Lie-believing candidates are so common in GOP primaries this year that asking about the 2020 election has become a common debate question. It happened earlier this month at a debate for the Republican candidates in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District (which, thanks to redistricting, is now deep red). Hosted by the Atlanta Press Club, all nine candidates were asked whether they “think the 2020 presidential election was stolen from President Trump.”

The responses included emphatic yeses (Eugene Yu, a business owner, said: “Absolutely the 2020 election was stolen,”) and less emphatic demurring (Byron Gatewood, a U.S. Army officer, said: “We’re never going to know what happened on election night,”) but none of the candidates rejected the Big Lie outright. Emergency physician Rich McCormick, considered one of the front-runners, not only embraced the Big Lie, but also blamed election fraud for his own loss in the 7th District in 2020. Another front-runner, former state ethics commission chair Jake Evans, said he believed there was “widespread fraud” in 2020, but stopped short of saying it was enough to change the outcome of the election.

And this is just one House race. Georgia is also the stage for two other major Big Lie battles tonight: the Republican primaries for governor and secretary of state. You may remember the current Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger making headlines for refusing to cave to pressure from then-President Trump to “find 11,780 votes,” which would have given Trump a win in the state. In response to Raffensperger’s defiance, Trump recruited a loyalist and Big Lie proponent, Representative Jody Hice, to primary him.

It’s a tight race that may go to a run-off, and the stakes are high: In Georgia (as is the case in most states) the secretary of state serves as the chief election official and has the authority to establish how elections are run and how rules are enforced. Having someone in that role who questions the outcome of a democratic election (an election that has repeatedly been proven to have been legitimate) is a troubling notion.

The race to be the GOP’s nominee for governor is less competitive, but has a similar dynamic — current Gov. Brian Kemp is facing a challenge from former Sen. David Perdue, who has been a vocal Big Lie proponent, saying in a recent debate that “the election in 2020 was rigged and stolen.” Kemp — who has raised some questions about the election but, ultimately, signed off on certifying the state’s results — seems likely to win that race.

But it’s not only Georgia: There are Big Lie candidates up and down the ballot in all the states with races tonight, and I’ll be keeping an eye on all of them. Here’s a look at the candidates who have either said the 2020 election was illegitimate or raised questions about its results who are running in tonight’s House, Senate, gubernatorial, attorney general and secretary of state races: