Hours after Donald Trump captured New Hampshire’s primary, three of the Georgia Republican Party’s top officials called on former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to drop out of the GOP race and fall in line with the former president.
It was the latest in a series of steps by the Georgia GOP, which is ostensibly neutral, to align with Trump. And it sparked criticism from some Republicans who say the party should stay out of the messy nominating contest.
“The Georgia GOP’s role is to support our party’s nominees, not try to decide them,” said Cody Hall, a top adviser to Gov. Brian Kemp. “One would think they should have learned that lesson in 2022.”
Kemp and many of his mainstream Republican allies split with the state party and championed his own political network after then-Chair David Shafer promoted Trump-backed challengers in races against the governor and other GOP incumbents.
Shafer was later charged in Fulton County’s racketeering case against Trump, and the state party is helping to pay legal fees for him and two other officials indicted on charges involving election interference.
The state GOP also hosted Trump at its annual convention last year in Columbus, an event that Kemp and several other high-ranking Georgia Republicans boycotted. Delegates during the two-day event elected a slate of pro-Trump activists to top posts.
And Georgia election officials criticized the state party in November for including several candidates on the March 12 GOP presidential primary ballot who had already suspended their campaigns. A more crowded ballot could aid Trump, by far the best known candidate in the field.
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
The statement early Wednesday, however, marked the Georgia GOP’s most open embrace of Trump. Republican Party Chair Josh McKoon and the state’s two Republican National Committee members, Jason Thompson and Ginger Howard, pressed Haley to end her campaign.
“As we look at the map and the path going forward, it is difficult to see how Ambassador Haley can secure the nomination,” they said in the statement. “Republican voters have sent a clear message — they want to see the GOP unite around our eventual nominee, which is going to be President Donald Trump.”
It’s part of a greater rush by Trump allies to pressure Haley to bow out. State Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, who recently endorsed the former president, added his voice to the chorus after the New Hampshire primary.
“It’s time for Republicans to unify behind Donald Trump and turn our focus on defeating Joe Biden in November,” Gooch said.
Haley, a former South Carolina governor, vowed to stay in the race through the Feb. 24 primary in her home state. At a Wednesday rally in North Charleston, she said she raised $1 million in the first full day after her New Hampshire defeat.
McKoon, a former state senator who was elected last year to succeed Shafer, has worked to mend fences between hard-line pro-Trump activists who dominate the party’s apparatus and the establishment leaders they often malign.
Jay Morgan, who served as the Georgia GOP’s executive director during the 1980s, said the party is now obsessed with the “rearview mirror” in cozying up to Trump. And Buzz Brockway, a former Republican state legislator, said party leaders should stay neutral until there’s a nominee.
“With all due respect to Iowa and New Hampshire, there are more registered voters in Gwinnett County than have voted in the GOP primary thus far,” Brockway said.
“It’s very early in this process,” he said, “and the voters should decide who earns Georgia’s Republican delegates — not the GOP establishment.”
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