Ex-president Donald Trump wanted to dethrone Georgia's Republican governor Brian Kemp, who refused to play along with Trump's plot to overturn 2020's election results. In yesterday's primary election his man—David Purdue, a former Senator—was soundly thrashed by Republican voters happy with Kemp, who won 72% of the vote to Purdue's 22%. The BBC heads out out on a limb to report that Trump's grip on the party is slipping.
Mr Kemp, a staunch conservative, drew the former president's ire after he certified that his state had been won by Joe Biden in 2020. Mr Trump had alleged that there were 11,000 votes for him to be found which would reverse the result, but the governor disagreed. Georgia's top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who also refused Mr Trump's entreaties at the time, won his bid for re-election on Tuesday. Mr Trump's claims that the election had been "stolen" from him has become a divisive issue within the party, splitting "establishment" Republicans from Trump populists, even dividing the former president's own administration members.
Kemp will be challenged in November's general election by Stacey Abrams, who ran unopposed in the Democratic Party's primary.
