Zach Montellaro for Politico:
As former President Donald Trump was trying to end Brad Raffensperger’s political career, connecting him to conspiracy theories befitting an outlandish spy thriller, the Georgia secretary of state took heart in a different type of film: “Dumb and Dumber.”
“A year ago, people said that we only had 10 percent support,” Raffensperger said in an interview. “I used to say, ‘10 percent, huh? So you say we got a chance,’” calling it a “gallows-type humor” paraphrase of Jim Carrey’s famous movie line.
Raffensperger capitalized on that chance Tuesday night, dispatching his Trump-backed challenger, GOP Rep. Jody Hice, with a comeback that took him from being ostracized by the state Republican Party to cleaning up in nearly every corner of the state. Trump has endorsed a slate of candidates for election offices who parrot his falsehoods about the 2020 election being stolen — and Raffensperger, who refused Trump’s entreaties to “find” more votes in 2020, just defeated the first one.
He did it by meeting skeptical voters head-on, appearing regularly on conservative media and touting his support for conservative election policies. Raffensperger spent long hours on the road to talk to basically any group that would have him — even when they wanted to relitigate the 2020 vote that Raffensperger has consistently defended as clean and fair.
And, spotting an opening at the end of a primary many assumed would go to a runoff, Raffensperger and an allied super PAC poured in resources when his challengers started to coast, pushing hard all the way through the election, which he won with 52 percent of the vote. Altogether, it added up to the biggest GOP rebuke of Trump since the day 10 House Republicans voted to impeach him…..
The secretary of state also had key help come in at the last moment from Americans Keeping Country First, a super PAC formed by allies of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), another Trump foe.
The group poured $1.4 million on advertising and mailers into Georgia to boost Raffensperger among a chunk of undecided primary voters, according to a memo from the group shared first with POLITICO. “Secretary Raffensperger never wavered after the 2020 elections and Georgia voters showed that standing for what is right still matters,” Brendan Buck, an AKCF board member who was a top aide in former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office, said in a statement.
Zach Hunter, the group’s executive director, said in an interview that getting to those late undecided Republican voters was key to the group’s strategy. But the super PAC pitched a message that went after prominent Democrats instead of Hice, which polling found had “virtually no name ID outside his congressional district,” Hunter said.
A mailer from the group obtained by POLITICO prominently featured Democrats, saying Raffensperger is “fighting back” against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams “and their far-left agenda,” a message repeated in TV ads….
And Raffensperger likely received a boost from Democratic voters who crossed over into the GOP primary. An early analysis from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that 7 percent of voters in this year’s Republican primary cast a ballot in the Democratic primary in 2020. Even assuming that the vast majority of those voters backed Raffensperger, it would have not been nearly enough to propel Raffensperger to victory — but it could have been the boost he needed to get to the majority mark to avoid a runoff.