A former Georgia Republican official who had to defend his state’s election administration after Donald Trump tried to overturn the results in 2020 has endorsed President Joe Biden and urged other Republicans to join him in an op-ed published Monday.
Former Georgia Lieutenant Gov. Geoff Duncan, who refused to give credence to Trump’s conspiracy theories about Georgia’s election results and opted not to run for reelection in 2022 due to his rift with the former president, is not an entirely surprising critic. He was drafted by No Labels to run as a third-party presidential candidate this year but ultimately decided against it, worried his candidacy would merely serve as a spoiler. Duncan also wrote a book in 2021 about resuscitating the Republican Party post-Trump.
“Unlike Trump, I’ve belonged to the GOP my entire life. This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass,” Duncan said in a Monday op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Duncan went on to critique certain Republicans by name who have been previously critical of the former president, but have relented in support of the “Republican ticket” in recent weeks, like former Trump administration Attorney General Bill Barr and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). He called that mentality “dead wrong.” An excerpt:
Yes, elections are a binary choice. Yes, serious questions linger about President Biden’s ability to serve until the age of 86. His progressive policies aren’t to conservatives’ liking.
But the GOP will never rebuild until we move on from the Trump era, leaving conservative (but not angry) Republicans like me no choice but to pull the lever for Biden. At the same time, we should work to elect GOP congressional majorities to block his second-term legislative agenda and provide a check and balance.
The alternative is another term of Trump, a man who has disqualified himself through his conduct and his character. The headlines are ablaze with his hush-money trial over allegations of improper record-keeping for payments to conceal an affair with an adult-film star.
Most important, Trump fanned the flames of unfounded conspiracy theories that led to the horrific events of Jan. 6, 2021. He refuses to admit he lost the last election and has hinted he might do so again after the next one.
While Duncan is hardly a surprising Trump critic, the decision to endorse Biden instead is, as he himself points out, a rare move as many elected, supposedly never Trump Republicans struggle to criticize Trump and also make a decision about how to vote in November.
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