These Georgia Republicans Are Over Trump. Will They Vote for Him Anyway?
The New York Times
Donald Trump has a particularly fraught history with his party in Georgia. Some Republicans described their calculus in deciding whether to back him.
Jeremy Jones, a lifelong Republican in Georgia, has an unflinching assessment of Donald J. Trump: He describes the former president as a “cancer” harming his party, and Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in 2020 as “one of the worst things that happened to our country.”
Even so, in a state where next week’s election is widely expected to be decided by a microscopic margin, Mr. Trump has his vote.
“I fully recognize and appreciate the hypocrisy,” Mr. Jones, 50, said, adding that he had decided Mr. Trump was a stronger candidate than Vice President Kamala Harris. “I don’t think he’s best for the Republican Party, but that’s who we’re stuck with.”
As the candidates fight to the finish over Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, one of the more intriguing questions about the state’s closely divided electorate is how many Republicans like Mr. Jones, who harbor deep concerns about Mr. Trump, will reject him this time around.
The question applies to Republicans writ large, of course. But Mr. Trump has a particularly fraught history in Georgia. His efforts to overturn President Biden’s narrow win there in 2020 fractured the state Republican Party; all but ruined his relationship with the popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp; and led to the indictment of the former party chairman and a sitting Republican state senator, along with Mr. Trump and some of his other allies.
