Georgia’s 2026 races keep coming back to Trump
Georgia candidates keep talking about jobs, taxes and the rising cost of living. But one reality keeps intruding on every marquee race on the May 19 ballot: Donald Trump still dominates the conversation.
Call it another Trump primary in Georgia. And as early voting begins Monday, the president looms over everything.
Top Republicans are competing over who can best champion his MAGA movement. Democrats are jockeying over who can most effectively confront him.
What that means is a campaign season framed by affordability and healthcare but still shaped by the polarizing figure who has towered over Georgia politics for the past decade.
Trump’s middling approval ratings have given Democrats hope they can win even as Republicans are still counting on the president’s enduring grip on the GOP base.
Consider the race for governor, where Lt. Gov. Burt Jones once figured to steamroll his GOP competition with Trump’s blessing. Now he’s obsessively working to remind voters of Trump’s endorsement to fend off billionaire healthcare magnate Rick Jackson.
“When we were trying to get the president reelected, I didn’t ever see these guys at rallies or anything else,” he told an audience at a Buckhead tennis club.
Jackson, meanwhile, is trying to reconcile his pledge to be Trump’s “favorite governor” with his past donations to prominent Trump critics. In Watkinsville, Jackson said he was “late to the Trump train but nobody supports him more than I do now.” And at a Banks County GOP gathering, he told activists he settled the matter with Trump during a visit to his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“He’s forgiven me for doing this,” Jackson said. “So, I think if he can forgive me, hopefully you can.”
The crowded Democratic race for governor is a mirror image contest, where candidates outline ambitious plans while simultaneously promising an all-out fight against Trump.
Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who leads in the polls, rails against Trump-driven “chaos and failed policies.” And former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, one of Bottoms’ top rivals, considers his switch to the Democratic Party as a badge of honor.
“Doing the right thing will never be the wrong thing,” he said of his family’s mantra at a Union City forum. “And doing the right thing was standing up to Donald Trump.”
The race for U.S. Senate is unfolding on similar terrain, where Sen. Jon Ossoff says the only way to counter Trump’s “unconstrained abuse of executive power” is to decisively win the midterms against any of a trio of the president’s “puppets” battling for the GOP nod.
“Republicans pull me aside, or they call me on the phone, and they tell me they’re afraid of where this president is taking us,” he told activists at the party’s downtown Atlanta gala. “They want checks and balances. They’re voting for a Democrat for the first time in their lives, and we welcome them to our coalition.”
And while the three Republicans scrambling to take him on trade blows — U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter hit U.S. Rep. Mike Collins last week with an attack ad invoking an ethics complaint — former football coach Derek Dooley argues the party needs a different formula.
“You better have a candidate who not only can energize and mobilize the Trump Republican voters,” he told supporters in Canton. “But you better have somebody that can connect with voters that don’t always vote Republican.”
A lasting impact
Trump’s imprint on Georgia politics is nothing new. Over the past decade, he has reordered the state GOP, stamped out the old Never Trump wing and pushed even longtime skeptics to adapt.
He has won Georgia, lost Georgia and won it again. He has feuded with GOP leaders, declared war on the Republican establishment and tried to leave his mark on even obscure down-ballot contests.
And as a sign of his enduring pull, his former targets have made peace with him. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has been battered by Trump since famously denying his plea to overturn his 2020 election defeat, has nonetheless pledged to support his agenda.
And Kemp, once one of Trump’s favorite punching bags, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in Cartersville the two now speak regularly.
“Look, I want you to be successful. We want to try to work with you and be part of the winning team from a policy standpoint,” Kemp said of his message to the White House.
That realignment is visible everywhere in this primary. Republicans echo Trump’s sharpest attack lines, accusing Democrats of plotting to defund police, weaken border security and embrace woke policies.
Democrats, meanwhile, are no longer skittering away from nationalizing the race. They blame Trump for pain at the pump, roller coaster-like tariffs, healthcare cuts and the ongoing war in Iran. Chaos is their favorite word.
But the eventual nominees will face a different electorate in November. Georgia’s last four statewide contests have been decided by swing voters and ticket-splitters, including those who helped reelect both Kemp and Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock in 2022.
And two years ago, Trump reclaimed Georgia by about 115,000 votes, showcasing both the strength of his comeback bid and the competitive nature of Georgia.
That creates a tricky balance. Any winning Democratic coalition will need to peel away wavering Trump voters and independents. Any winning Republican coalition will need to keep Trump loyalists energized without alienating the same middle-of-the-road voters who decide close Georgia races.
‘Worried’
That tension is already visible down the ticket. Debates over abortion and transgender rights that dominated past legislative sessions were largely on the back burner this year as Republicans veered from more culture clashes.
“They were trying to make themselves seen like they were moderate. They were trying to disassociate themselves from the policies of Donald Trump,” said state Rep. Saira Draper, an Atlanta Democrat. “It is not something they would be doing if they didn’t see what a liability he was for their party, and if they weren’t worried about their future.”
Some Republicans aren’t distancing themselves from Trump so much as trying to offer voters an escape hatch from the most bruising Trump-tinged fights.
Attorney General Chris Carr, lagging Jones and Jackson in polls, has cast himself as the steadier alternative for Republicans exhausted by an ugly fight between two wealthy front-runners.
“There’s one really rich guy that’s trying to buy this election, and there’s one really rich guy’s dad who’s trying to buy this election,” he said after a Smyrna forum. “And then there’s one guy that’s trying to earn it. And that’s me.”
Democrats, of course, have squandered promising openings before amid criticism of opposing Trumpism without offering a broader vision of their own.
This year, the party’s top candidates are trying to change that dynamic. They are pitching agendas that go beyond expanding Georgia’s Medicaid program, including plans to curb maternal mortality, lower prescription drug costs, cut taxes for struggling Georgians and invest surplus funds in housing and education.
But Trump remains the central foil. At a debate in Atlanta this month, former state Sen. Jason Esteves was blunt about his pledge to “sue the hell out of the Trump administration” and fight immigration crackdowns.
“I’m going to make sure that I speak up and fight the Trump administration and its efforts to divide and to drive fear in our immigrant communities.”
Ossoff has made his own bare-knuckled calculation. In Augusta, he cast his reelection campaign as a direct check on Trump’s power, mocking the president’s social media posts while reviving a familiar anti-corruption playbook that helped him win in 2021.
“The faithless president depicts himself as Christ while he plunges the nation into wars of choice,” Ossoff said, “while he and his family rake in billions from foreign princes, while he plunders our healthcare to cut taxes for the rich.”
Complicating matters for Republicans, many of the party’s most reliable voters still demand unwavering loyalty to Trump.
“Trump matters,” said Pete Dumpis, a retired engineer who attended his first political event since 1978 during a Dooley campaign stop in Cherokee County. “Not everyone agrees with Trump, but he’s doing all the right things this time around. And I want someone who can back him.”
And that is the dilemma. Trump may be the GOP’s biggest risk in November, but he remains the most powerful force in Georgia’s May primaries.
But the warning signs are growing clearer to others, especially after Republicans lost two Public Service Commission seats last year and eked out a relatively narrow special election victory in former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s deep-red district.
“If you’re seeing a deep, deep red district in Georgia with Republicans not turning out to vote because they’re angry, that’s going to have a huge impact in the statewide races,” Greene told the “Politically Georgia” podcast.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do to try to get Republican voters out to vote,” she said.
About the Author
Greg Bluestein is the Atlanta Journal Constitution's chief political reporter. He is also an author, TV analyst and co-host of the Politically Georgia podcast.
