NEWSWEEK
Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan has announced that he is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency.
Duncan, a lifelong Republican who had previously said he would be voting for President Joe Biden over Donald Trump in November, confirmed his support for the new presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee on social media and in an interview the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Politically Georgia podcast.
The endorsement from the GOP figure will be seen as another boost for Harris’ election hopes. Georgia is one of the key swing states where Harris will be hoping to defeat the former president in November.
“I’m committed to beating Donald Trump. The only vehicle left for me to do that with is the Democratic Party. If that requires me to vote for, speak for, or endorse Kamala Harris then count me in,” Duncan posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.
Duncan was in office during the 2020 election and had pushed back on Trump’s claims of fraud in Georgia. “The mountains of misinformation are not helping the process; they are only hurting it,” Duncan told CNN in December 2020. “I voted for President Trump. I campaigned for him. And, unfortunately, he did not win the state of Georgia.”
During his appearance on Politically Georgia, which was broadcast on Wednesday, Duncan said that Harris must try win over undecided and swing voters in Georgia and elsewhere if she has any chance of winning November’s race.
“If Donald Trump wins the hearts and minds of the majority of the 10 percent in the middle and Kamala Harris doesn’t, then he’s going to be the next president,” Duncan said. “And then we’ve got real issues on our hands as Republicans.”
Duncan also said Biden did the “right thing” by ending his 2024 campaign in the wake of his stumbling CNN debate performance and allowing a new candidate to become the Democratic Party’s nominee.
Newsweek has contacted Harris’ office and the Trump campaign via email.
In May, Duncan wrote in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion piece that he would be voting for Biden in November, and that other Republican figures should also reject Trump.
“Unlike Trump, I’ve belonged to the GOP my entire life. This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass,” Duncan said.
“The GOP will never rebuild until we move on from the Trump era, leaving conservative (but not angry) Republicans like me no choice but to pull the lever for Biden.”
Duncan had also previously blamed Trump’s endorsed candidates for the GOP’s underwhelming November 2022 midterm performance, which saw the party fail to win control of the Senate and only manage a slim majority in the House instead of the predicted “red wave” of victories.
“The only way to explain this is candidate quality,” Duncan told CNN after Senator Raphael Warnock defeated the Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker in the runoff election for the Georgia Senate seat.
“If we don’t take our medicine here, it’s our fault,” Duncan said. “Every Republican in this country ought to hold Donald Trump accountable for this.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
