In his campaign for Georgia governor, Mr. Raffensperger found that G.O.P. voters still blamed him for Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.
Soon after the 2020 presidential race, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, was given a “Democracy Action Hero” award by Arnold Schwarzenegger for standing up to President Trump’s efforts to pressure him into overturning the election results.
“You’ve proven to be a public servant, not a party servant,” Mr. Schwarzenegger, the former California governor and Hollywood star, told Mr. Raffensperger as he bestowed the honor.
Mr. Raffensperger’s steadfastness in the face of Mr. Trump’s arm-twisting — including a now-infamous January 2021 phone call in which the president told Mr. Raffensperger to “find” enough votes for him to win — transformed the mild-mannered politician into a darling of liberals and anti-Trump conservatives around the country. But Georgia’s Republican voters have for years considered Mr. Raffensperger a villain who enabled Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.
That, more than anything, explains why Mr. Raffensperger was soundly defeated on Tuesday in the Republican primary for Georgia governor. His third-place finish brings to a close, for now, a turbulent political career that saw prominent outsiders laud him as a “profile in courage,” even as he infuriated Mr. Trump’s base, whose support he needed to stay in the political game.
Mr. Raffensperger, 71, a longtime conservative, was careful not to overtly criticize Mr. Trump during his run for governor. But it mattered little, as Mr. Raffensperger finished behind two solidly pro-Trump candidates, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Rick Jackson, a billionaire health care executive.
Mr. Raffensperger’s loss adds to a growing number of Republicans who have faced a political reckoning for crossing Mr. Trump during his 10-year reign over Republican politics. It also underscores the still-powerful thrum of the 2020 election and its aftermath. One of Mr. Jackson’s first ads called Mr. Raffensperger “Judas.” That echoed Mr. Trump’s previous line of attack, in which he called Mr. Raffensperger an “enemy of the people” for failing to act on unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.