Gabriel Sterling made national headlines by defending the results of the 2020 election. Now, he’s running in a primary against Republican rivals who’ve turned his defense into a campaign talking point.
The 2026 contest to replace outgoing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will shape how Georgia oversees elections. Voters will determine whether his successor will be a candidate who sides with defenders of the 2020 election or one who still has questions.
Sterling entered the race saying he will fight to keep the state’s elections the “safest in the nation.” He’s one of Raffensperger’s former election officials and a leading defender of the state’s voting system.
Sterling also famously urged President Donald Trump to speak out against threats made against election workers after the 2020 election.
The lifelong Republican is a close ally of Raffensperger’s, who drew the ire of many in the party after he refused Trump’s demands to “find” enough votes to reverse the 2020 election results.
The outcome of the 2020 election in Georgia was the subject of three vote counts and multiple investigations. But many Trump supporters continue to make unproven allegations of fraud. Getting enough support from that portion of the GOP base will be a tall order for Sterling.
Those voters may be drawn to his Republican rivals, who are using their campaigns to criticize Sterling and question the state’s elections.
Among those candidates is Kelvin King, a former U.S. Senate candidate. He is married to Janelle King, one of the three Trump-praised State Election Board members who pushed for election rule changes before the 2024 election that the Georgia Supreme Court later rejected.
At the time, Raffensperger and Sterling warned against the last-minute election changes. Sterling said even minor rule changes close to an election could cause “unintended consequences.”
So far, Kelvin King has made Sterling a frequent target of criticism.
At his campaign kickoff event last week, he accused Sterling of insulting Republican voters and equating election activists from both parties as equally problematic.
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
King told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that the fact his wife is a member of the State Election Board, which has a role in developing rules around elections, would not constitute a conflict of interest if he were elected.
“If the public desires that Janelle not serve on the State Elections Board while I’m serving as secretary of state, then she’ll step down,” he said.
There is no state law requiring Janelle King to step down or recuse herself from election cases involving the secretary of state while her husband runs for the state’s top election official.
King isn’t the only candidate who’s leaning into criticizing Sterling.
Days after launching his campaign, Vernon Jones accused Sterling of “demonizing” Trump and voters who question the state’s elections.
Credit: Olivia Bowdoin
Credit: Olivia Bowdoin
At a Wednesday news conference, Jones stopped short of saying the election was stolen, but said, “There were too many prominent irregularities not to question the elections.”
Jones, a former Democratic state representative, is a vocal Trump supporter who became a Republican before running for Congress in 2022. He earned Trump’s endorsement but lost in the primary to Mike Collins.
In his recent campaign announcement, Jones again aligned himself with the president.
“I never wavered, and I never will. My loyalty is to the people of Georgia and to President Trump’s America First movement,” he said in a statement.
The first Republican to enter the secretary of state’s race was state Rep. Tim Fleming, a former top aide to Gov. Brian Kemp and a Trump supporter. He filed paperwork for his run two weeks before the first meeting of a House committee tasked with proposing changes to election laws, which he chairs.
It’s given the Covington Republican a platform to voice his thoughts and concerns on elections. Fleming made it clear he had no intention of revisiting the 2020 election during the committee’s first meeting in July.
He said the committee’s purpose is to “take a comprehensive, nonpartisan, data-driven look at how elections are conducted across the state of Georgia.”
Since the inaugural meeting, Fleming and other committee members have traveled the state listening to election experts, officials, party leaders, activists and others.
Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC
Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC
At a meeting in August, he expressed frustrations with the State Election Board.
“We’ve seen grandstanding, bombastic rhetoric and public disputes that have done little to serve voters and have at times undermined the confidence in the system itself,” Fleming said.
Last legislative session, he sponsored a bill that would have banned absentee ballot drop-off the weekend before Election Day and withdrawn Georgia from a multistate voter registration accuracy organization distrusted by election skeptics.
On the Democratic side, two candidates are in the race: political newcomer Adrian Consonery Jr. and former Fulton County State Court Judge Penny Brown Reynolds.
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