Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirmed that he will be running for reelection next year.
โI still enjoy the job and, yes, Iโm running again,โ Raffensperger said on Tuesday during a speech before the Rotary Club of Gwinnett County, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
He will have to contend with another primary challenger, Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
Raffensperger faces disapproval from the GOP over his handling of the presidential election and a call with Trump that was leaked to the press.
During the Jan. 2 call, Trump told Raffensperger in reference to the election: โI just want to find 11,780 votes.โ
President Joe Biden won the state by the narrow abovementioned margin. Trump also maintained in the phone call that โWe won by hundreds of thousands of votesโโwhich was challenged repeatedly by Raffenspergerโs team, drawing discontent from Trump.
Raffensperger then suggested that the call was leaked to The Washington Post from his office.
โIt was a private conversation. [Trump] broke privacy when he put out a tweet, but then his tweet was false,โ Raffensperger told WXIA at the time.
โIf President Trump hadnโt have tweeted out anything and wouldโve stayed silent, we wouldโve stayed silent as well. And that wouldโve just been a conversation between him and I, man to man, and that wouldโve been just fine with us. But heโs the one that had to put it out on Twitter,โ he said.
Trumpโs lawyer Kurt Hilbert condemned the leak, saying โwe are disappointed that the secretary of state and his staff secretly recorded and released a confidential settlement discussion.โ
The fullย transcript of the callย that later emerged showed thatย before Trump said he wanted to โfindโ theย 11,780 votes, he had askedย electionย officials to look into a number of specific claims of election irregularitiesโsomething he had been saying publicly for weeks, prior to the call.
BYย SAMUEL ALLEGRI