Georgia Republican lieutenant governor turned Democratic candidate Geoff Duncan is warning voters in his former party that there “will be nothing left” of the GOP after President Donald Trump. Duncan is running in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for governor in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat as governor since 2002.
“First and foremost, the Republican party has sailed their ship over the horizon, it’s gone,” Duncan said, according to The Guardian.
“There will be nothing left when Donald Trump’s done with it,” he added, saying that some of Trump’s “minions” might “try to hold the pieces together.”
And he is warning Georgia about Trump today.
“Look, there’s no stability at the federal government, there’s no friends of ours in the federal government. Donald Trump certainly doesn’t care about Georgia, he only cares about a status for himself in the mirror or using a sock puppet called Burt Jones,” he said, referring to a Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate.
Duncan is betting there are enough Republicans frustrated with Trump to make the switch and vote for a Democrat.
“I think the audience of receptive Republicans is a lot bigger than what most folks would think in the Republican party,” Duncan said. “It’s not fun to have to defend Donald Trump.”
Even in rural Georgia, having to defend Trump is growing increasingly difficult.
“These farmers in these legislative districts have absolutely got a knife in the back from Trump,” Duncan said. “A lot of them voted for Trump in 24, yet now they might lose their farms because of these stupid tariffs that nobody can explain.”
After the 2020 election that Trump lost, Duncan encouraged him to move on and focus on the Georgia U.S. Senate races.
In return, Trump put Duncan on his “enemies list,” The Guardian noted.
“Our family received death threats virtually every time Donald Trump went to Twitter and lied about me,” Duncan said in congressional testimony. “We were harassed by MAGA disciples almost everywhere we went out in public. Our kids got picked on in school. The list goes on and on and on, all because I was telling the truth.”
The Georgia GOP “has meticulously excommunicated Duncan, so much so that it barred him from attending Republican events or even entering property owned by the party,” The Guardian reports.
Duncan has shrugged off his former policies, including on abortion and Medicaid. On the former, he says he was “wrong to think a room full of legislators knew better than millions of women on the issue.”
“They don’t,” he added. “I’ve certainly come to realize in a very real way that women have complicated medical scenarios and deep personal situations that a legislator would never totally ever be able to understand.”
He also supports Medicaid expansion. And, in another switch from Trump and the GOP, he would support diversity in government hiring practices.
Image by Jeremy Harwell – Harwell Photography via Wikimedia Commons and a Creative Commons license