by Ty Tagami | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Geoff Duncan, Georgia’s former Republican lieutenant governor, is running for governor as a Democrat, putting financial security and political moderation at the center of his campaign.
Duncan says in a brief YouTube video that he wants “to make Georgia the front line of Democracy and a backstop against extremism.”
He puts President Donald Trump in the extremist camp.
Duncan has been jabbing at Trump for years, attracting the president’s ire by rejecting his assertions that he had won the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
In 2021, Duncan published the book, “GOP 2.0,” which urged a pivot from Trump’s brand of politics.
Since then, he has shared his anti-Trump message as a commentator on CNN and as a columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In January, after he had endorsed Kamala Harris’ failed campaign for president, the Georgia Republican Party expelled him.
“By his pattern of conduct, Duncan has forfeited any claim to being even a nominal ‘Republican,’ ” the state GOP’s executive committee wrote in a resolution that was passed unanimously by its members.
In his YouTube announcement, which appeared on the platform Monday, Duncan welcomes attacks from Trump, calling them “a badge of honor.”
Duncan also focuses on family finances. He says he wants to help moms who cannot return to work because of skyrocketing child care costs and families that must choose between paying for medicine and food.
He will be contesting three leading Democrats for that party’s nomination: Jason Esteves, who announced last week that he was stepping down from his Atlanta-based state senate seat to focus on his campaign; former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; and Michael Thurmond, who has been elected statewide as labor commissioner, has served in the General Assembly, and recently ended his second four-year term as the elected CEO of DeKalb County.
Whoever emerges from the Democratic primary will face the winner of the Republican nomination, where state Attorney General Chris Carr is campaigning against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was recently endorsed by Trump.
