As Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger (R) famously fought to protect the 2020 presidential election from Trump’s attempt to steal it. The events of December 2020 and January 2021, when Trump demanded the state “find” the votes he needed to win, prompted a host of Trump-aligned conspiracy theorists to attempt to seek Raffensperger’s office themselves.
On Tuesday, one of the most prominent of those candidates, Vernon Jones (R), lost to state Rep. Tim Fleming (R), a candidate who has towed the line between endorsing the basic tenets of democracy and pushing the kind of restrictive voting policies long pushed by Republicans.
Fleming beat Jones, a flamboyant former Democrat-turned-Republican election denier who switched parties after Trump’s 2020 loss, relatively easily. The AP called the race roughly an hour after polls closed. With 42% of the vote counted, Fleming had 65% and Jones had 35%.
As a Democrat, Jones often held more conservative views. He came under fire from his party in 2000 when he made public that he voted for former President George W. Bush. While a state representative in 2020, he again crossed party lines to endorse Donald Trump before making the party switch to Republican in 2021. Jones, who calls himself the “Black Donald Trump,” spoke at a Georgia “Stop the Steal” rally, and launched a failed bid to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in the 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary. He also had an unsuccessful run as a Republican for Congress.
Fleming is a conservative politician with ties to Kemp, who has also avoided endorsing Trump’s election lies. Fleming has at times flirted with conspiracy theorists in his party and has pushed to make it harder for Georgians to vote: he chaired a statehouse committee tasked with investigating Georgia’s election laws and pledged on his campaign website to “make it impossible for the Left to cheat in our elections.” As a state rep., he sponsored failed state legislation that would have banned absentee ballot drop-off and removed Georgia from a multi-state coalition designed to improve and monitor voter roll accuracy.
Despite all that, he has consistently stopped short of endorsing 2020 election theft conspiracy theories. While chairing the state election committee, Fleming stood his ground against activists who claimed former President Joe Biden lost the election.
“We are not here to litigate past elections but rather to prepare Georgia for the future,” Fleming said at the time.
One recommendation out of Fleming’s House committee, though, was to return to paper ballots ahead of November’s general election.
Jones, who calls himself the “Black Donald Trump,
It’s a wonder he’s never tried to strangle himself, a la Dr. Strangelove.
Copy editor PLEASE! He toed the line, he didn’t tow it, like a broken down vehicle.
For goodness sake, at least run your story through Grammarly. Yes, I know it’s AI, but I would hope it would catch something like this