EP. 21 — THE GEORGIA MELTDOWN

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Weston Wamp: I'm Weston Wamp, and this is Swamp Stories, presented by Issue One.

Weston Wamp: Since we left you at the end of season one, three months ago, we witnessed the transfer of power in America yet again. It's a hallmark of our experiment in self-government. It was peaceful by the time we got to the inauguration, but it came in the aftermath of a violent assault on the US Capitol that was frankly inspired by months and months of widely and pretty easily debunked claims of election fraud by many prominent Republicans, including the former president. 

Weston Wamp: The state of Georgia was ground zero in 2020 politics. It was a swing state in the defeat of the incumbent president, and it flipped the Senate with the defeat of two Republican senators.

What transpired in Georgia from Election Day in November through the Senate runoffs in January serves as a cautionary tale for anyone who ever seeks to undermine confidence in American elections for political gain, especially without proof of wrongdoing.

Former President Donald Trump: There's no way we lost Georgia. There's no way. That was a rigged election but we're still fighting it, and you'll see what's going to happen.

Weston Wamp: Not only might you end up in legal trouble yourself, but there's a chance you'll lose the political power you so craved.

Weston Wamp: Here is the inside story of what happened that exposed the farce about election fraud and reveals how Republicans lost those two Senate seats in Georgia, in part because they couldn't stop attacking our elections.

This is Episode 21, The Georgia Meltdown.

Weston Wamp: Only a decade ago, Georgia's Republican Senator Johnny Isakson was reelected in a landslide by nearly 20 points. Not exactly a state where you would have expected a Democratic takeover anywhere on the horizon. But fast forward to the 2018 midterms and then Secretary of State Brian Kemp, won the governorship by just 1.4% over Stacey Abrams. Kemp's candidacy led to a four-way GOP primary to replace him as Secretary of State. His replacement is now a household name because of the relentless attacks by President Trump on Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger.

Erick Erickson: First of all, what they went through was appalling. And there are a whole lot of people who need to repent. Brad Raffensperger went through it to a degree because he had no support within the Republican party to begin with. Raffensperger, when he ran for secretary of state, basically bought the race and I don't mean that disparagingly. He just was nobody anyone had ever heard of and he spent a ton of money. The House Republicans had rallied to a guy who was not Brad Raffensperger, even though he was in the House. The Senate Republicans had rallied to a guy in the Senate, but Raffensperger out spent them all. And he won, but he never really was perceived as a team player. So, it was easy to make him the bad guy when the election turned around, but he actually did nothing wrong.

Weston Wamp: Erick Erickson, who you just heard, is a syndicated, conservative talk host based in Georgia. He's been a regular face on Fox News and CNN over the years as the founder of the blog Red State, which he eventually left as part of his own personal journey away from toxic partisan politics. Erick agreed to hop on the phone with me to give me the backstory that led to all that we just witnessed in Georgia, going all the way back to the 2016 GOP presidential primary through Governor Kemp's runoff for the Republican primary for governor in 2018.

Erick Erickson: Brian Kemp won the early vote three to one, which no one has won the early vote three to one without winning the election. So, when Donald Trump came in Thursday night before the last day of early voting and endorsed Brian Kemp, the writing was already on the wall, he was going to win. Now, Kemp will give the president some credit. The president takes all the credit saying, "I'm the guy who caused him to win." It's simply not true. Kemp was going to win anyway, he just won at a higher margin.

Erick Erickson: But what happened was, that then alienated a lot of suburban voters who didn't like Donald Trump, Republicans in Atlanta. If you look at Fulton County, it's a weirdly shaped county, it's a merger of a couple of counties and it's like two triangles, almost. Every county around Fulton County and Fulton County itself in the Republican primary in 2016 went for Marco Rubio. The rest of the state went for Donald Trump, but the Atlanta core and the northern suburbs of Atlanta, they were Marco Rubio territory. They never liked Donald Trump. So when Kemp got Trump's endorsement and was perceived as being a Trump guy, he ran hard on immigration, for example, they turned against him and they went with Stacey Abrams. And Kemp built up a base outside of Atlanta that helped him tremendously.

Weston Wamp: Now fast forward to early November 2020. Before all the votes had even been counted. The Trump campaign and legal team had descended on Georgia claiming a fraudulent election. One of the problems with their case was that the state is run by Republicans. A Republican governor, and a Republican secretary of state, both staunch Trump supporters, but they weren't interested in being party to the president's attack on Georgia's election integrity. Both Governor Kemp and Secretary Raffensperger made their own way in Georgia politics as you heard, despite the president taking credit for both. When it came time for the secretary of state to do his job, he oversaw the usual recounts for a close election and eventually certified the results. Governor Kemp was steadfast in his refusal to intervene on the president's behalf, insisting that the election results were accurate. This created an unimaginable sort of circular firing squad in Georgia Republican politics. Kelly Loeffler, appointed to the Senate by Governor Kemp against Trump's wishes sided with Trump claiming there was fraud.

Weston Wamp: Senator David Perdue, cousin of Trump's secretary of agriculture, did the same. Both threw Republican Brad Raffensperger right under the bus, calling for his resignation. And then of course, both faced runoff elections on January 5th. As that date approached, it got really bad. So bad, in fact, that in December, President Trump retweeted his attorney Lin Wood, when he said that Governor Kemp would, "Soon be going to jail." Death threats followed against Raffensperger and other top Georgia election officials. The whole situation got so bizarre and so crazy that some of the rallies to support President Trump ended in calls to not even vote for the Republican Senate candidates claiming that Republicans weren't doing enough to defend the president. This is not exactly the kind of messaging that gives confidence to voters amid a historic runoff election for the US Senate, especially runoff elections with competitive Democratic candidates, where turnout amongst Republicans would determine if the two incumbents would keep their seats.

Erick Erickson: Well for two months, from November 3rd and January 5th, you had the chairman of the Republican party, the Congresswoman from North Georgia who was a QAnon advocate, and President Trump all over the state saying, "November was stolen. It was going to be stolen again. Brian Kemp’s to blame, Brad Raffensperger's to blame. There's this kraken coming, it's going to reveal all.” Well, kraken never came and the Republicans lost the runoff. Now why did they lose the runoff? Well, in north Georgia, 75,000 Republicans didn't show up. Jon Ossoff won by 50,000 votes against David Perdue. A combined 500,000 people didn't show up in the runoff. Over 300,000 of those were Republicans who had voted in November. The Republicans talked themselves out of winning.

Weston Wamp: If you want to trace the two Senate losses back to someone specific other than the president himself, might I point you to QAnon's own congressperson.

Former President Donald Trump: Marjorie Taylor Greene, I love Marjorie Taylor Greene. Don't mess with her. Don't mess with her.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: I am so fired up to hear Senator Kelly Loeffler. She's going to object on January 6th. Yeah.

Weston Wamp: Honestly, with friends like that, who needs enemies? Her district spans much of north Georgia. It's one of the key parts of the state that Erickson references where turnout took a nose-dive from November to January. It seems like some of her constituents took her at her word. They believed the lie that the election had been rigged. So, why would they show up a second time?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: We know that this has really been a stolen election. I've seen the evidence and that's why I intend to object on January 6th.

Weston Wamp: Taylor Greene is, of course, referring to the day that 8 senators and 139 representatives objected to the election results in one or more states when Congress convened to count the electoral votes — and that was the day of the Capitol insurrection.

Weston Wamp: Georgia had become ground zero for outlandish conspiracy theories ranging from Dominion voting machines mysteriously changing votes to briefcases full of Biden ballots, supposedly just showing up out of nowhere.

Erick Erickson: We had a massive hand count in the state of Georgia. The error rate between the hand count and the machine was 0.0001. So, either the machines were somehow changing people's ballots and they just didn't look at them or it wasn't stolen. And I'm more likely to go with it wasn't stolen.

Weston Wamp: At the heart of these attacks in Georgia were claims by the president that signatures weren't matched on absentee ballots. That claim is simply false, but it didn't seem to matter. The results of a hand count in Georgia almost had the effect of making things worse, causing some of Trump's supporters to double down on even wilder conspiracy theories. Erickson had little patience with the nonsense.

Erick Erickson: I was an elections lawyer in Georgia for a number of years, there was no fraud in Georgia. And you don't have to believe me. When the President's team filed their lawsuit in Georgia, they never alleged voter fraud. In fact, in the 60 some odd lawsuits around the country, the President alleged fraud in exactly zero cases. There was no fraud in Georgia, the Democrats just outplayed the Republicans. And by the way, they actually lost everything other than Donald Trump's seat until Republicans sabotaged themselves in the run off. 

Weston Wamp: There's another problem with the claims of fraud in Georgia. If the President did, in fact, win Georgia by a mile, as he proclaimed. A second election in which Republicans certainly would be paying closer attention to any potential irregularities than ever before, would show Republican candidates winning easily, right? Sensing that his window was quickly closing, and that the Georgia runoff would disprove all of his theories of fraud, President Trump made a last ditch effort. He got Brad Raffensperger on the phone to simply ask the secretary to find more votes for his campaign. The Georgia secretary of state may have seen what was coming from a mile away. Because that conversation was being recorded.

Former President Donald Trump: I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. We have that in spades already.

Weston Wamp: Raffensperger stood his ground. Two days later, the incumbent Republicans performed worse than Trump had in November. And it cost the Republican party the US Senate. As it turns out, there wasn't fraud. But if you convince your supporters that there was fraud, some of them may not bother showing up the next time around. Long before the Georgia Republican party had split itself into a feud over whether there was fraud in the election, Erick Erickson saw the writing on the wall. He was prophetic in this way. He believed Trump spelled trouble for conservatives and for the country. And he decided that he wasn't going to be afraid to say so.

Erick Erickson: I finally realized that I'd invested all of my time in a cause that I thought was worthwhile, the conservative movement, and a lot of those guys were willing to hitch a wagon for power, even as the power was abating the principal. And I just decided, one, I've got to be more focused on things that aren't political. And I think more people should be. Two, my faith matters way more than my partisanship and three, someone's got to be willing, and I guess it would have to be me, to call balls and strikes in the conservative movement. We believe in these principles and our side, for years, we were all willing to call it out, and now suddenly we can't and I couldn't understand them. To this day, I don't understand. Why could I write critically of George W. Bush when so much of the conservative movement went to bat for him, but they were fine with me criticizing them. Why can't I not level the same criticisms against Donald Trump, who was not part of our movement for so long? And I just decided, you know what, I'm going to be that guy. And if I got to be the turd in my own party's punchbowl, I will be, but somebody's got to do this.

Weston Wamp: Erickson himself had taken a good long look in the mirror before Trump showed up on the scene in Republican politics. It's the kind of introspection that I hope more of my fellow Republicans will consider in the months ahead. 

On the next episode of Swamp Stories, we'll take a similar look at another state where President Trump’s campaign lawyers launched an attack on our elections, Pennsylvania. Our guide through the chaos that unfolded when Rudy Giuliani landed in Philadelphia, is none other than the former Republican governor of Pennsylvania and former secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge.

Weston Wamp: Thanks for listening to Swamp Stories, presented by Issue One, the country's leading political reform organization that unites Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to fix our broken political system. Please subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends. Even better, rate and review it on iTunes to help us reach more listeners. You can find out more at swampstories.org. I'm your host Weston Wamp. A special thank you to executive producer, Ethan Rome, senior producer Evan Ottenfeld, producer Sydney Richards, and editor Parker from ParkerPodcasting.com. Swamp Stories was recorded in Tennessee, edited in Texas and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

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