Fani Willis, who has led Fulton County’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump, easily won reelection on Tuesday, securing a second four-year term as district attorney.
The veteran prosecutor defeated Republican Courtney Kramer, an attorney and former Trump White House intern who accused Willis of using her office for “political lawfare.” The Associated Press called the race roughly 90 minutes after the polls closed.
The contest was almost among the most expensive prosecutorial races in Georgia history. Willis was able to capitalize off her high name recognition and national platform to raise large sums of money, not only in Atlanta but in cities from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
Willis raised $2.5 million for her reelection effort, according to campaign finance records, a staggering amount for a county-level contest.
Kramer’s fundraising haul was also notably large for a challenger. She collected nearly $373,000 from donors, including former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler and David Shafer, the former head of the Georgia GOP who was indicted as part of the Trump case.
Notably, as of 10 p.m. on Tuesday Willis was underperforming compared to fellow Democrat Kamala Harris among Fulton voters by about 23,000 votes.
Willis, 53, became one of the country’s most famous prosecutors after spearheading a pair of high-profile racketeering cases that ensnared a former president and a Grammy Award-winning rapper.
Her 2020 election interference case, which led to criminal charges against Trump and more than a dozen others, is largely on ice as an appeals court mulls whether to remove the Democrat due to her onetime romantic relationship with her former deputy.
Meanwhile, the RICO case her office brought against the alleged street gang Young Slime Life became the longest trial in Georgia history. It is entering a dynamic new phase now that prosecutors reached a plea with its alleged leader, the rapper Young Thug.
Willis became Fulton DA in January 2021. Despite her office’s splashy cases, Willis on the campaign trail emphasized declining violent crime rates and the school outreach and pre-indictment diversion programs she launched.
Kramer, 31, aided in election-related litigation for Trump’s legal team following the 2020 election and watched on as a group of 16 GOP activists cast votes in the Georgia Capitol claiming to be the state’s “duly qualified” presidential electors, even though Democrat Joe Biden had won the state. Several of the people she worked for or alongside, including attorney Ray Smith and Shafer, the former Georgia GOP head, were charged as part of the election interference case.
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