In the wake of President Trump’s failed violent insurrection on January 6, 2021, a major target of his fury was Geoff Duncan. As the lieutenant governor of Georgia, Duncan was one of the few Republicans in the country who resisted Trump’s corrupt scheme to steal the 2020 election, which ultimately led MAGA forces to hound Duncan—who left office in 2023—out of the GOP for good.
Now Duncan is running to be the governor of Georgia as a Democrat, having formally joined the party this summer. And in one of his first interviews since entering the race, Duncan told The New Republic that as governor of Georgia, he would oppose efforts by Trump to send the National Guard into the state’s cities.
“There’s no reason to send the National Guard into Atlanta—absolutely zero reason,” Duncan said. “If Trump wanted to really solve crime in cities, he would be partnering with mayors and governors. Instead he’s just showing up with National Guard members without any coordination.”
That’s a striking position for a former Republican who will need backing from at least some GOP voters to win a statewide general election. Duncan gained national renown after joining with GOP Governor Brian Kemp to resist Trump’s corrupt pressure on them to help steal the 2020 election in the state.
Now Duncan—who will face one of several Republicans vying to succeed Kemp—is attempting an intriguing experiment: He’s running in this highly contested swing state in part by emphasizing his willingness to take on Trump’s lawlessness, as a former Republican. The idea is that at least some Republican voters are “disgusted” by Trump, as he put it.
Indeed, Duncan blasted Trump for suggesting that political violence from the radical right is justified in response to left-wing extremism, and he condemned Trump’s threats to unleash investigations of liberal groups.
“For Trump to point only to one side is wrong,” Duncan told me. “It’s going to continue to incite the very thing that we need to stop in this country.” He added: “Trump needs to stand up as the head of his MAGA movement and push back on anybody who’s being hateful.”
What’s more, when asked how he’d respond as governor to Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, Duncan condemned them.
“To use law enforcement, which is playing out coast to coast, as shock-and-awe for ICE raids is the peak of inhumane,” Duncan said, though he added that state law enforcement assistance to ICE might be acceptable under narrow circumstances if it’s genuinely collaborative and targets serious lawbreakers.
“To watch ICE come in [with] assault rifles to commandeer a law-abiding noncitizen who is going to work and being a strong member of the community is not the right path forward for us as a country,” Duncan said.
ICE controversy recently flared up big-time in Georgia after the agency arrested around 500 workers at a Hyundai battery plant near Savannah owned by South Korean manufacturers. The raid was widely condemned as overkill, given that South Korea is investing massively in the United States, many of the workers (mostly South Korean citizens) merely had the wrong visas, and their special plant-construction skills were needed.
“Hyundai invests billions of dollars in Georgia, and they were raided with what appears to be a clerical error on the majority of the folks that were detained,” Duncan said. “This is not putting our best economic foot forward.”
On that score, Duncan also said he’d opt Georgia into the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. “There’s no reason why millions of people in Georgia can’t go to the doctor for fear of bankrupting themselves or not having insurance,” Duncan said, adding that the failure to expand Medicaid was harming the state’s rural hospitals. Georgia is one of just 10 states that haven’t accepted the expansion.
Duncan faces a tough Democratic primary against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and former state Senator Jason Esteves. Duncan said he would appeal to Democratic voters by emphasizing government investments in day care for single working moms and affordable housing, ideas that are also anathema to many Republicans.
In response, Bottoms accused Duncan of flip-flopping on the Medicaid expansion and of being a political opportunist. “I look forward to proudly continuing the longstanding fight for these Democratic values on behalf of the people of Georgia, just as I have my entire adult life,” she said in a statement.
Duncan advisers believe that should he win the primary, his path in a general election turns on winning the Democratic base (as a convert to the party and opponent of Trump) while overperforming in moderate suburbs and keeping Trump’s rural margins down (both due to his former GOP status).
But Ducan also stressed that he will not run as an independent in the general if he loses the primary. “I’m a proud Democrat,” he said. “No chance.”
So, to sum up: Duncan opposed Trump’s effort to steal a presidential election. He doesn’t believe Trump is above the law. He gets that Trump’s militarization of cities isn’t actually about fighting crime. He rejects Trump’s absolution of right-wing political violence. He believes it’s foolish to execute massive ICE raids on companies investing heavily in the U.S. and inhumane to unleash hyper-militarized law enforcement on immigrant day laborers and grandmothers. And he wouldn’t turn away billions of dollars in federal money to fund health coverage for his own state’s fellow residents.
No wonder MAGA forced him out of the GOP.
The post Trump-MAGA Fury Drove a Georgia GOPer Into Exile. He Just Struck Back. appeared first on New Republic.
