Oconee county ga election results 2023

Republican voters in Georgia on Tuesday showed there are limits to how seriously the party will entertain former President Donald Trump’s grievances.

Election deniers endorsed by Trump were trounced in a series of primaries against Republican officials who had rejected the former President lies about the 2020 election being stolen — but had otherwise enacted conservative policies popular with GOP voters.

Tuesday’s primaries in Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas and primary runoffs in Texas were overshadowed by the deadly shooting at an elementary school in Texas.

But the results could have implications across the Republican Party — forcing Trump to recalculate his involvement in intra-party contests, giving candidates who aren’t endorsed by the former President a roadmap to winning without his support, and offering, if only briefly, a glimpse at a party in which Trump’s fights aren’t the only things that matter.

Here are key takeaways from Tuesday’s elections:

Georgia Republicans reject Trump’s bids for vengeance

Trump spent more than a year vowing payback and promising to recruit and support primary challengers, after Georgia Republican state officials rejected his lies about fraud costing him the 2020 election there.

On Tuesday, those Republicans targeted by the former President didn’t just win — they crushed their Trump-backed opponents.

Gov. Brian Kemp beat his challenger, former Sen. David Perdue, by 50 percentage points. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger fended off a stronger challenge from Rep. Jody Hice. And Attorney General Chris Carr easily dispatched attorney John Gordon.

It was the most embarrassing primary showing for Trump yet, and demonstrated that while Trump remains the GOP’s dominant figure, capable of steering outcomes in some open-seat races, there are limits to his influence — and many Republican voters are willing to ignore the former President’s wishes.

“Conservatives across our state didn’t listen to the noise,” Kemp said at his victory party at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta on Tuesday night. “They didn’t get distracted. They knew our record of fighting and winning for hard-working Georgians.”

Georgia to be the center of the political universe once again

A hotly contested gubernatorial rematch and a star-studded Senate showdown: Tuesday’s primaries made clear that, much like in 2020, Georgia will be the center of the political universe in 2022.

Kemp is set for a rematch against Stacey Abrams, the former state legislative leader who rose to national prominence during and after her near-miss against Kemp in the 2018 governor’s race.

The pressure is on Abrams, who now must prove that her strong showing in 2018, in a favorable year for Democrats, was not the high-water mark of her political career. She surprised some with her strength four years ago —something that won’t happen this November after four years on the national scene — but her political operation is more developed, too.

Meanwhile, now that former football star Herschel Walker is officially the Republican Senate nominee in Georgia, he’ll square off against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, whose election in an early 2021 runoff helped give Democrats their thinnest of Senate majorities.

The race will be expensive — Warnock has turned into a fundraising powerhouse and Republicans have shown they are willing to spend millions on Walker — but will go a long way to determining which party controls the Senate for the next two years.

Alabama Senate race advances to runoff

The Alabama Senate candidate that Trump backed away from is advancing to a runoff.

In the Republican primary to replace retiring Sen. Richard Shelby, former Shelby chief of staff and Alabama Business Council chief executive Katie Britt led the pack, but fell short of the 50% required to avoid a runoff.

In second place, and set to square off with Britt in the runoff, is Rep. Mo Brooks – the staunch conservative congressman whom Trump had previously endorsed. But when Brooks dropped in the polls months before the primary, Trump rescinded his endorsement.

Trump claimed he had withdrawn his support for Brooks because he had gone “woke” by suggesting Republicans should look forward to 2022 and 2024, rather than focusing on Trump’s grievances about the 2020 election. However, anti-abortion rights organizations and other Republicans, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, stuck with the Alabama congressman.

The winner of the June 21 runoff is all but certain to win in November in the deep-red state.

Read more takeaways below:

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger talks with supporters during an election night party Tuesday evening, May 24, in Peachtree Corners, Georgia.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will overcome a Republican primary challenge from Rep. Jody Hice, a Donald Trump ally whose campaign was centered on false claims about the 2020 election, CNN projects.

Raffensperger’s victory caps a Georgia primary election in which Republican voters roundly rejected Trump’s attempts at retribution against the state officials who refused to back his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

In the early hours after polls closed in Georgia on Tuesday, Raffensperger was the only one of the former President’s targets in Georgia facing any doubt about his reelection bid. He held a clear lead over Hice, but the presence of two other Republican candidates threatened to keep the incumbent’s total support below the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

The Democratic primary to take on Raffensperger will head to a runoff, with state Rep. Bee Nguyen advancing and several candidates battling for the second spot as ballots continued to be counted.

Raffensperger emerged as a national figure in the aftermath of the 2020 election, following the revelation of an early 2021 call with Trump in which the then-President urged Georgia’s chief elections officer to “find” enough votes to overturn the state’s election results after Joe Biden had defeated Trump by nearly 12,000 votes. That call now is part of a special grand jury investigation into whether Trump or his allies committed any crimes in their quest to overturn the election results.

Read more about this race here.

CNN’s Fredreka Schouten and Kelly Mena contributed reporting to this post.

Katie Britt, left, and Rep. Mo Brooks, right.

Rep. Mo Brooks will face Katie Britt in a runoff for the Republican Senate primary in Alabama, CNN projects.

The race is headed to a runoff after none of the candidates hoping to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Richard Shelby were able to win more than 50% of the vote. Brooks and Britt, a former Shelby aide who later led the Business Council of Alabama, both finished ahead of Army veteran Mike Durant.

Making the runoff caps a topsy-turvy few months for Brooks, who initially won former President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the race, only to lose it after he said it was time to look ahead to the 2022 and 2024 elections, and not at Trump’s 2020 presidential loss.

“Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, ‘Put that behind you, put that behind you,’” Trump said in a March statement, rescinding his endorsement.

But Brooks benefited from campaigning in obscurity, which allowed him to earn a burst of momentum in the final days of the campaign.

“Just call me a modern-day Lazarus,” Brooks told CNN’s Gabby Orr on Sunday, joking that his late-stage surge “makes me kind of wonder if Donald Trump was planning it from the beginning.”

Still, Brooks will finish significantly behind Britt in Tuesday’s first round, signaling the congressman has work to do in the runoff.

What Trump does next will also be of interest. Since un-endorsing Brooks, the former President has not publicly weighed in on the race.

Despite losing Trump’s endorsement, Brooks continued his campaign with the support of the Club for Growth and prominent conservative backers such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who vouched for the congressman’s conservative bona fides at a campaign rally on Monday.

Read more about this race here.

CNN’s Maeve Reston contributed reporting to this post.

Katie Britt talks with the media during a watch party on Tuesday, May 24, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Katie Britt will advance to a runoff in the Alabama Republican primary for Senate, CNN projects, but who she’ll face isn’t yet known.

If no candidate in a race in the state gets 50%+1 vote, the top two finishers advance to a runoff on June 21.

More on the race: Sen. Richard Shelby announced in early 2021 he would retire at the end of the term, setting up a Republican primary that will likely determine who the next Alabama senator will be.

Shelby endorsed his former chief of staff, Britt, early in the race, at one point setting up a proxy battle with former President Donald Trump who had endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks.

However, Trump withdrew his support in March after Brooks struggled to take command of the race. The former President had yet to weigh in further on the race, but he met with both Britt and retired Army pilot Mike Durant before announcing he would take back his endorsement. Durant’s Army story of being taken hostage in 1993 was depicted in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down”. 

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey talks with the media after voting at the Cleveland Avenue YMCA polling place in Montgomery, Alabama, on May 24.

Incumbent Kay Ivey will win the Republican primary in the Alabama governor’s race, CNN projects.

Ivey was facing off against several primary challengers. One of the most well-known was Lindy Blanchard, the former US ambassador to Slovenia during the Trump administration.

A former top campaign aide to Donald Trump says the former President will need to recalculate his 2022 strategy after incumbent Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp soundly defeated his Trump-backed challenger David Perdue on Tuesday in Georgia’s GOP gubernatorial primary. 

“The same formula can’t be applied to each state. His record is still really good, but I don’t think he’ll stick his neck out for the remaining big races this primary [season] unless there are clear front runners,” the ex-Trump aide said. 

Trump has “to look at races from a local and state level, not just 40,000 feet,” this person added. “Going after an incumbent in a southern state like Georgia is fraught with danger. Local politics matter and dominate.” 

The same former Trump aide said the former President may have miscalculated in thinking his influence over GOP voters in Georgia would be enough to propel insurgent candidates to victory over their popular incumbent opponents.

“Some states are so insular politically that voters take exception to anyone trying to come into their state and tell them what to do,” the aide said.

Meanwhile, the former head of Trump’s 2016 Georgia campaign operation had some choice words for MAGA candidates who centered their campaigns around the former President instead of local and statewide issues. 

“So come to find out, running an issueless campaign … isn’t a winning strategy,” tweeted Seth Weathers, a Georgia Republican strategist who oversaw Trump’s field effort in Georgia during his first presidential run. 

Weathers also criticized Rep. Jody Hice, who is running against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and closely aligned himself with Trump in the race. Raffensperger is currently leading his opponent in the vote count.

“He seemed to take the same bad strategy, just not as bad as Perdue,” Weathers said, adding that Raffensperger “also ran nonstop ads trashing [Hice] and I didn’t see him respond in kind.” 

Trump boasted about “record turnout” in Georgia earlier Tuesday on his Truth Social website, but has not yet commented on Perdue’s loss or the win by Herschel Walker, another candidate backed by the former President, in his Senate primary. 

Georgia state Representative Bee Nguyen speaks to volunteers at Adams Park prior to canvassing in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 21.

Bee Nguyen is advancing to a runoff in Georgia’s Democratic Secretary of State race, CNN projects. The second candidate is too early to call.

If no candidate in a Georgia race gets 50%+1 vote, the top two finishers advance to a runoff on June 21.

Nguyen has helped lead the fight against Republican efforts to restrict voting in this presidential battleground.

More on this race: The battle to become Georgia’s next secretary of state and preside over the 2024 presidential election here has emerged as one of the most hotly contested fights for election chiefs this year.

The job has taken on new weight after repeated attempts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 loss in the state. In the aftermath of that election, the Republican-controlled legislature passed sweeping changes to voting rules — actions that critics say are aimed at dampening the record turnout from 2020 that helped President Joe Biden become the first Democratic presidential contender in nearly 30 years to win the Peach State.

Republicans are facing a contentious primary of their own on Tuesday, with the incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, who famously rebuffed Trump’s request to “find” votes, facing several challengers including Rep. Jody Hice. Hice, one of the 147 House Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s win on January 6, 2021, won Trump’s backing in the race as the former President seeks to exact revenge on Raffensperger and other Republicans he views as disloyal.

CNN’s Fredreka Schouten contributed reporting to this post.

Gov. Brian Kemp speaks to supporters during an election night watch party on May 24 in Atlanta.

Gov. Brian Kemp may have had plenty of reasons to gloat tonight as he scored a resounding triumph in his Republican primary for a second term, but he made no mention of former President Donald Trump and looked ahead to his rematch with his Democratic rival, Stacey Abrams.

“Even in the middle of a tough primary, conservatives across our state didn’t listen to the noise,” Kemp said. “They didn’t get distracted, they knew our record of fighting and winning for hard-working Georgians.”

As he has done throughout his campaign, Kemp ignored Trump – making only a passing reference to the “noise” from the extraordinary GOP primary campaign that the former President orchestrated by recruiting former Sen. David Perdue into the race. Kemp struck a modest tone, considering his wide margin of victory.

In the speech to supporters at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta, Kemp thanked Perdue for a gracious concession call and his pledge to work together to keep the governor’s office in Republican hands.

Kemp devoted the majority of his victory speech to assailing Abrams.

It was a theme Kemp repeated again and again as he implored Georgia voters to stop Abrams’ political rise. He also sought to tie her to the political challenges facing President Biden and other Democrats.

“She has embraced the disastrous Biden agenda,” Kemp said, adding that her “far-left campaign for governor is only a warm-up for her presidential run in 2024.”

Former Sen. Saxby Chambliss told CNN at Kemp’s party in Atlanta that he’s “not surprised at all” by Kemp’s victory over David Perdue in the primary.

Chambliss, a Republican, said the results of the primary show that GOP voters appreciate Kemp’s accomplishments in his first term. He also said the results demonstrate the limits of Trump’s ability to influence GOP voters as he backed Perdue in the race.

“Georgia Republicans have spoken about how they feel about Trump,” said Chambliss, who served two terms in the Senate. Perdue was elected to succeed Chambliss in 2014 and served one term in the Senate before losing reelection in a 2021 runoff to Democrat Jon Ossoff.

Rep. Lucy McBath participates in a news conference in 2021.

Rep. Lucy McBath will win the Democratic primary for Georgia’s 7th Congressional District, CNN projects.

McBath became active in the gun control movement after her son was fatally shot in 2012 and since being elected, she’s become one of her caucus’ foremost voices on the issue.

Georgia hosted the first Democratic member vs. member primary with McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux running in the new 7th Congressional District. Both Democrats flipped suburban districts in their respective first elections (McBath in 2018 and Bourdeaux in 2020). While most of the new congressional district includes residents Bourdeaux represented, McBath has been able to outraise and outspend the first-term member.

Herschel Walker speaks to supporters during an election night watch party on Tuesday, May 24, in Atlanta, Georgia.

In his victory speech tonight, Georgia GOP Senate nominee Herschel Walker, who was backed by former President Donald Trump, criticized Sen. Raphael Warnock’s voting record in the Senate, calling him a “rubber stamp” for President Joe Biden’s policies.

CNN projects Walker will win Georgia’s Republican primary for Senate and face Warnock in November.

“I’m sure he’s a nice guy. It’s ok to like him, but you don’t have to put up with his politics,” said Walker. “Reverend Warnock and Joe Biden have dragged us down the path of skyrocketing inflation, violence in our streets, chaos at the border, fentanyl killing our people, and school poisoning our kids’ minds.”

Walker noted that the country took a wrong turn when the “radical left” came up with “a bunch of lies to divide us.”

He pivoted, “Run with me, on a much better road, a road to the American dream. It’s a big, beautiful road that is open to anyone. It doesn’t matter where you came from or what color you are. It’s a road where everyone has the freedom to speak their mind, freedom to keep their hard earned money, freedom to practice their faith and make their own medical decisions, free to protect your family and yourself.”

Walker ended his speech by leading the crowd in a call and response chant: “No weapon formed against me shall prosper.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders talks to supporters after winning the Republican primary for Arkansas governor on Tuesday, May 24, in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former White House press secretary under former President Donald Trump, will win the Republican primary for Arkansas governor, CNN projects.

Sanders defeated Doc Washburn, a former talk radio host who said he was fired last year for refusing to get the Covid-19 vaccine.

The 39-year-old was on a glide path toward securing the nomination after clearing the field of two other heavyweights.

A return to the governor’s mansion would be a homecoming for Sanders after she spent her teenage years in that residence as the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee — a pastor who led the state for more than 10 years. 

As the Republican nominee, she is the favorite to win in November in a state that former President Donald Trump carried by nearly 28 points in 2020.

Sanders left the Trump White House in 2019 as a controversial figure on the national stage after two-and-a-half years serving as one of the former President’s most trusted and unwavering defenders. During the campaign, she’s pointed to that tenure as testament to her unwillingness to back down, presenting herself as a firewall against the “radical left” while heaping scorn on the national media.

Former Sen. Saxby Chambliss said he’s “not surprised at all” by Brian Kemp’s victory over former Sen. David Perdue in the primary.

Chambliss, a Republican, told CNN at Kemp’s party in Atlanta that the results of the primary show that Republican voters appreciate Kemp’s accomplishments in his first term.

He also said they demonstrate the limits of the ability of former President Donald Trump, who backed Perdue, to influence GOP voters. 

“Georgia Republicans have spoken about how they feel about Trump,” said Chambliss, who served two terms in the Senate. Perdue was elected to succeed Chambliss in 2014 and served one term in the Senate before losing reelection in a 2021 runoff to Democrat Jon Ossoff.

Ken Paxton speaks to the crowd in Dallas, Texas, in 2021.

Ken Paxton will win his attorney general runoff election against current Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, CNN projects.

Paxton, who has been beset by criminal probes and is under indictment, led the March 1 primary but failed to clinch the race with a majority in a four-way race, triggering the run-off with Bush, whose defeat on Tuesday marks another blow to his family’s once-mighty political dynasty.

During the campaign, Bush and Paxton’s other initial challengers, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, warned that Paxton’s legal issues could come back to bite Republicans in a general election. 

“This campaign is about good government — making sure we don’t have indicted felons serving at the top of the chain of command of our law enforcement officials here in Texas,” Bush told Texas Public Radio ahead of the runoff.

But Paxton has already won reelection once, in 2018, despite being under indictment for securities fraud, in a case that goes back to 2015. He also enjoyed the support of former President Donald Trump – and, even as a two-term incumbent, sought to portray himself as a political outsider. 

“I guess what I’d say is, clearly, to the establishment: they got what they wanted,” Paxton told supporters in a speech after the March vote. “They got me in a runoff.”

It’s 9 p.m. ET and polls are now closing across Texas and Minnesota.

Texas voters cast their ballots in runoff elections on Tuesday amid news of a shooting at an elementary school. At least 18 children and one adult were killed in the shooting, according to Sgt. Erick Estrada of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Ken Paxton, left, and George P. Bush, right.

Key races we are tracking in both states: There are a number of primary runoff elections in Texas. Controversial state Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton, who is seeking a third term, faces off against Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, the grandson of former President George H. W. Bush. Paxton finished ahead of Bush, 43% to 23%, in the first round in March.

In South Texas, moderate Rep. Henry Cuellar, whose home and campaign office were searched by the FBI in January, was forced into a runoff by progressive immigration lawyer Jessica Cisneros, whom he narrowly defeated in a 2020 primary. Abortion rights have become a key issue in the race, with Cuellar as the only House Democrat to vote against legislation that would codify abortion rights into federal law.

In Minnesota, there’s a special primary election to fill the seat of the late Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn. The crowded field of candidates looking to serve the remainder of Hagedorn’s term include his widow and former chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, Jennifer Carnahan.

Read more about today’s primaries here.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene talks with members of the media during a primary election watch party on May 24 in Rome, Georgia.

Icumbent Marjorie Taylor Greene will win the Republican primary for her House seat in Georgia, CNN projects.

Greene, a fervent acolyte of former President Donald Trump and purveyor of lies about the 2020 election, bested five primary opponents to win the Republican nomination, including Jennifer Strahan, a first-time candidate and her most formidable opponent on Tuesday.

Greene is now all but certain to win the congressional seat. The district in Northwest Georgia is one of the most conservative in the country, with more than 73% of voters backing Trump.

Unlike North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, an equally conservative and controversial member of the House who lost his primary last week after significant Republicans lined up against him, there was little opposition to Greene from top Republicans.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who CNN has projected will win the GOP governor’s race in Georgia, will not address supporters in Atlanta tonight until President Biden finishes addressing the nation from the White House on the Texas school shooting, an official tells CNN.

People participate in a moment of silence for the victims of a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, at the primary night election event for Republican gubernatorial candidate Gov. Brian Kemp.

Shortly after CNN called Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial primary for incumbent Brian Kemp, conservative radio host Erick Erickson took the stage at the Kemp election night party.

Erickson said the crowd would be celebrating a “victory” for Kemp over his main primary opponent, David Perdue, but first led the audience in a moment of silence and short prayer for the victims of today’s deadly school shooting in Texas.

Kemp is waiting to address the crowd in Atlanta after remarks from President Joe Biden, Erickson said.

Kemp’s win comes following more than a year of vocal criticism from former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Perdue after urging the former US senator to get into the race.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp walks onstage for a campaign event attended by former US Vice President Mike Pence at the Cobb County International Airport on May 23 in Kennesaw, Georgia.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp will win the state’s GOP gubernatorial nomination, CNN projects, defeating Trump-backed candidate David Perdue.

The governor moves on to a rematch with Democrat Stacey Abrams, the former state legislative leader whom he narrowly defeated in 2018 and who was unopposed in her primary Tuesday.

The outcome represents a blow for Trump, who had made Kemp his top target for more than a year after the governor rejected Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud in 2020 and refused to overturn the presidential result in his state.

Trump had urged Perdue to run and supported him throughout the race. But Kemp — who was broadly backed by other prominent Republicans and campaigned on the eve of the election with Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence — managed to maintain the support of many Trump supporters in Georgia despite the former President’s efforts.

In backing Kemp, Georgia Republican primary voters demonstrated that while Trump remains the dominant figure within the GOP, there are limits to his influence.

Trump’s endorsements have shaped open-seat races this cycle, catapulting venture capitalist and author J.D. Vance to a win in Ohio’s Senate primary. But Trump-backed candidates have lost a series of races in recent weeks as well: North Carolina voters ousted US Rep. Madison Cawthorn despite Trump’s pleas to give him a “second chance,” while in Nebraska, it was outgoing Gov. Pete Ricketts’ support that carried more weight, with his endorsed candidate besting Trump’s pick in the Republican gubernatorial primary.

Kemp, aside from his clash with Trump, has a record that makes him popular with GOP voters in Georgia. He reopened the state early during the coronavirus pandemic – a move that even then-President Trump said was “too soon.” He signed into law a restrictive new voting measure that placed limits on mail-in voting. He helped impose a gas tax holiday. He also took conservatives’ side in brewing cultural battles over schools.

Kemp is also a proven winner, having defeated Abrams in one of the nation’s most closely watched governor’s races in 2018. Perdue, meanwhile, lost his Senate seat in a runoff to Democrat Jon Ossoff last year.

W.J. Monagle votes in the Arkansas primary election in Little Rock on Tuesday, May 24.

It’s 8:30 p.m. ET and polls are now closing in Arkansas.

Key races we are tracking: Former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is expected to win the GOP nomination for governor and would be a big favorite in November to win the office previously held by her father, Mike Huckabee.

The state’s senior senator, Republican John Boozman, also faces several primary challengers Tuesday.

Voters arrive to cast ballots at a polling location in Huntsville, Alabama, on May 24.

It’s 8 p.m ET and polls are now closing in Alabama.

Key races we are tracking: There’s a three-way race in the GOP primary to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. Trump previously endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks but rescinded that endorsement in March.

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey faces several primary challengers in her bid for a second full term.

Read more about today’s primaries here.

Herschel Walker speaks at a primary watch party on May 23 in Athens, Georgia.

Herschel Walker will win Georgia’s Republican primary for Senate, CNN projects.

He will face Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in November.

Walker, 60, who was urged to run by former President Donald Trump, is a political newcomer — but a celebrity in the state where he won the 1982 Heisman Trophy as one of college football’s greatest running backs of all time at the University of Georgia. 

His Senate run has shined light on a series of personal scandals, including allegations of domestic violence and threats against former romantic partners. 

Still, Walker breezed through the primary, skipping debates and forums that would have forced him to take clear policy positions and answer tough questions. His primary competitor was Gary Black, the state’s long-time agriculture commissioner, but Black did not raise enough money to run a serious television advertising campaign that would have exploited Walker’s vulnerabilities. 

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp issued a written statement about the deadly school shooting in Texas shortly before polls closed Tuesday in the state.

“For children and innocent adults, including a school teacher to be taken from this world in such a depraved, violent way, it is incomprehensible,” Kemp said in his statement. “We are lifting up the families of these victims, the first responders on the scene, and the entire community in prayer.”

The statement is expected to be Kemp’s only comment on the shooting Tuesday, although the Kemp campaign plans to hold a moment of silence before his remarks at the election night party.

The party, which is being held at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, began just as polls closed at 7 p.m. ET.

Attendees are slowly entering the venue, where the campaign is serving burgers and barbecue while they await the results, which are displayed on two screens on either side of the main room. Kemp is favored to win renomination, though the question remains whether he will get more than 50% of the vote over his challenger, David Perdue, and avoid a runoff.

Sen. Raphael Warnock speaks at the Gwinnett County Democratic Party fundraiser on May 21 in Norcross, Georgia.

Incumbent Raphael Warnock will win the Democratic primary for his Senate reelection bid in Georgia, CNN projects.

Stacey Abrams talks to the media during Georgia's primary election on Tuesday, May 24 in Atlanta.

Stacey Abrams will win Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, CNN projects.

Abrams was uncontested in the primary and will become the Democratic nominee for governor in the Peach State for the second time, though her status has changed since her name was last on the ballot in 2018.

An underdog with little following outside of Georgia four years ago, the former state House minority leader is now one of the most popular Democrats in the country. Abrams is now a political star and some in the party want her to run for president. She is also seen as a key figure in helping turn the state blue for Joe Biden in 2020 and electing Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock, who is on the ballot again this year, and Jon Ossoff in subsequent runoffs.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Georgia Stacey Abrams has expressed her support for the families of those killed in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

“To the families of Uvalde, we weep with you in your grief and ask for God’s solace for your unfathomable pain. May your angels be lifted up to spite the darkness that took them. And may the light of reason and compassion save the lives of others in their namesake. #Uvalde,” Abrams wrote in a tweet. 

Abrams, who is running unopposed in the Tuesday Democratic primary, has made gun safety a key pillar of her campaign. She’s routinely called out Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for signing a bill into law allowing most residents to carry a concealed gun without a license.

Kemp signed the bill earlier this year. Supporters of the law refer to it as “constitutional carry.”

A person works the voting machines earlier in the day during Georgia's primary election on May 24 in Atlanta.

It’s 7 p.m. ET and polls are now closing in Georgia. Some polls are also closing in parts of Alabama.

Key races we are tracking: Incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp faces a primary challenge from former US Sen. David Perdue. Former President Donald Trump, angry at Kemp’s role in certifying the 2020 election in the Peach State, is supporting Perdue, but recent polling has shown Kemp with a big lead.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who also earned Trump’s ire for defending the 2020 election results, faces several challengers, including Trump-backed US Rep. Jody Hice.

Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker, a former football star, are expected to win their primaries Tuesday to face off in a key Senate contest this fall.

Read more about today’s primaries here.

A person votes in the Georgia's primary election on Tuesday, May 24, in Atlanta.

In Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota and Texas, primary and runoff elections will be decided today.  

But with so many races, it’s hard to know what to focus on. Which is where I come in! Below is a handy-dandy viewer’s guide to tonight’s voting. (All times eastern.)

7 p.m.: Polls close in Georgia. Former NFL player Herschel Walker and Sen. Raphael Warnock are heavy favorites in the Senate primaries. Gov. Brian Kemp is expected to beat former Sen. David Perdue easily in the GOP gubernatorial primary. The winner there will face Stacey Abrams, who is running unopposed in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, in the general election. The real race to watch is for the GOP nod for secretary of state, where incumbent Brad Raffensperger faces a serious challenge from Rep. Jody Hice. A June runoff for the state’s top election official is likely. (Candidates in Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas need to win more than 50% of the vote Tuesday to avoid a runoff.) 

8 p.m.: Final polls close in Alabama and Texas’ 28th District. Everyone in the Yellowhammer State assumed Rep. Mo Brooks’ Senate candidacy was done for when former President Donald Trump rescinded his endorsement in March. But as GOP primary opponents Katie Boyd Britt and Mike Durant have bashed one another, Brooks has shown signs of life. It would be an AMAZING story if he wound up winning the Republican Senate nomination. (And would Trump still try to take credit for it?)

In Texas, moderate Rep. Henry Cuellar is desperately trying to hang on against progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros in a Democratic primary runoff election. Cisneros has been endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, as well as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

8:30 p.m.: Polls close in Arkansas. There isn’t much to watch in the state, other than to see how many votes former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders gets in her run for the GOP governor’s nomination. She will likely win in a romp – and should win the general election this fall almost as easily.

9 p.m.: Final polls close in Texas and Minnesota. Keep an eye on the Republican primary runoff for attorney general, where incumbent Ken Paxton is a strong favorite over George P. Bush, who is the son of Jeb Bush. And in Minnesota, voters will choose nominees for the special election to replace the late Rep. Jim Hagedorn in a Republican-leaning district. 

The Point: The Georgia governor’s race is the biggest election of the night. But the Georgia secretary of state contest may be the most important one.

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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp speaks at a rally in Watkinsville, Georgia, on Saturday.

Brian Kemp isn’t exactly declaring an early victory ahead of Tuesday’s Republican primary as he bids for a second term as Georgia governor. He’s even downplaying recent polls showing him with a commanding lead over his opponent, former US Sen. David Perdue.

“Don’t believe the polling,” Kemp told a crowd Saturday near his hometown of Athens.

But behind the mask of caution, Kemp and his team are brimming with confidence. The latest Fox News poll found that 60% of likely GOP primary voters preferred Kemp compared with 28% for Perdue. On the stump, the governor has stopped even mentioning Perdue, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Instead, he has shifted his focus to the presumptive Democratic nominee, Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost to Kemp in 2018 and is unopposed in her primary Tuesday.

“Be excited about the momentum, but use that to encourage you even more to leave no doubt on Tuesday. And then on Wednesday, we will all unite on the mission to make sure that Stacey Abrams is not going to be our governor or our next president,” Kemp said in a short speech that name-checked Abrams half a dozen times.

The question, Republican operatives around the state say, is not whether Kemp can best Perdue on Tuesday but by how much. If Kemp can win an outright majority, he’ll avoid being forced into a runoff next month. And defeating Perdue decisively on Tuesday would also provide a moral victory for Kemp, who earned Trump’s contempt for resisting the former President’s pressure to overturn the 2020 election results.

Erick Erickson, a Georgia-based conservative talk radio host, said he thinks Kemp is headed for a big win over Perdue — a result that would indicate the limits of Trump’s obsession with 2020 among Republican voters.

Trump’s vendetta against Kemp has led the former President to stretch the limits of plausibility with GOP voters. Trump has called Kemp the “worst governor in America” and a “disaster.” At a rally last fall in Georgia, he even suggested — to the bewilderment of Republicans in the crowd and around the state — that he would prefer Abrams to Kemp in the governor’s mansion.

Carol Williams, a realtor in Athens who supports Kemp, dismissed Trump’s insults.

“Those comments are about himself, actually, not about the governor,” Williams told CNN on Saturday. “I think that the former President has no skin in the game in Georgia. He does not understand what’s best for our state.”

Keep reading here.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has leaned into the more controversial chapters of her time in the Trump White House during her Arkansas gubernatorial campaign, is on a glide path toward securing the Republican nomination on Tuesday long after clearing the field of two other heavyweights. 

The 39-year-old former White House press secretary is expected to easily dispatch GOP opponent Doc Washburn, a former talk radio host who said he was fired last year for refusing to get the Covid-19 vaccine.

A return to the governor’s mansion would be a homecoming for Sanders after she spent her teenage years in that residence as the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee — a pastor who led the state for more than 10 years. She’d be favored to win in November in a state that former President Donald Trump carried by nearly 28 points in 2020.

“The only thing that could stop Sarah Sanders from being governor of Arkansas is a Martian invasion,” Arkansas Republican strategist Bill Vickery said as he listed the elements that have turned Sanders’ campaign into a fundraising juggernaut over the past year-and-a-half. 

Sanders left the White House in 2019 as a controversial figure on the national stage after two-and-a-half years serving as one of Trump’s most trusted and unwavering defenders. During the campaign, she’s pointed to that tenure as testament to her unwillingness to back down, presenting herself as a firewall against the “radical left” while heaping scorn on the national media.

With her deep political connections in Arkansas, her experience as a seasoned political operative and the national following that she built as press secretary and later as a Fox contributor, she quickly established herself as the candidate to beat after entering the race in January of 2021.

But at the core of her connection to voters, Vickery said, is the fact that she has been in the public eye since her pre-teen years, starting with her father’s 1992 US Senate run, followed by his stint as lieutenant governor, then his tenure as governor. 

“She sort of grew up in front of everyone in Arkansas. Then as the spokesman for President Trump,” Vickery said, “the vast majority of Arkansas voters, who are Republican, saw what they felt like was a significant mistreatment of her from the national press corps, and pop culture figures — they saw her withstand that.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders during the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Nov. 6, 2021.

At the time of her exit from the White House, when Trump was lionizing her as a “warrior” and nudging her toward a run for governor, her critics were calling her a liar, arguing that her credibility and her legacy had been irrevocably tarnished. 

Sanders came under fire personally when then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report was released. It revealed that as deputy press secretary, she had provided baseless information to reporters when she claimed in May of 2017, after the President had terminated FBI Director James Comey, that “countless” FBI agents had lost confidence in Comey. Sanders acknowledged to investigators that her comments were “not founded on anything,” the Mueller report said. 

But back home, many Arkansans viewed her treatment in Washington as rough.

“The stories of the personal attacks, the being thrown out of restaurants,” Vickery said, alluding to a 2018 incident when Sanders said the owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, asked her to leave because she worked for Trump. “There’s a bit of an element of the people of Arkansas taking that personally — because of the favorite daughter status. A big part of her public persona here is the fortitude, the grit and the determination that she showed in pushing back,” he added.

Sanders’ critics in Washington would offer a different account of her years navigating the nadir of White House-press relations. To mockery, Sanders at one point used her time at the podium to read a laudatory letter from 9-year-old child nicknamed “Pickle” to the President. She was often criticized for being evasive, for valuing loyalty to Trump above all else and for eventually phasing out the daily White House briefing.

Though she entered the White House with warm relationships with many reporters, the tensions quickly escalated. In a notable example of how strained the relationship had become, Sanders defended Trump’s declaration that the press was an “enemy of the people” during a 2018 exchange with CNN’s Jim Acosta. By January of 2019, Trump tweeted that the reason Sanders did not go to the podium “much anymore is that the press covers her so rudely & inaccurately,” adding, “I told her not to bother.”  

A voter checks his printed ballot at the Park Tavern polling location on May 24 in Atlanta, Georgia.

It’s Election Day in Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas and Minnesota (well, at least in the latter’s 1st Congressional District).

The Republican primaries for governor and Senate in Georgia have captured national attention, with former President Donald Trump flexing his endorsement muscle for former US Sen. David Perdue, who is challenging incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, and for former football star Herschel Walker, who is the front-runner for the GOP Senate nomination.

The Republican primary for the open Senate seat in Alabama is likely heading to a June runoff, with none of the leading candidates expected to secure a majority of the primary vote today. In March, Trump rescinded his endorsement of US Rep. Mo Brooks in that race. The state’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, is favored to win her primary in her bid for a second full term, potentially without a runoff. 

Arkansas GOP Sen. John Boozman, who has Trump’s backing as he seeks a third term, will be hoping to avoid a runoff in today’s primary that features three challengers. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as press secretary in the Trump White House, is favored to win the Republican primary for Arkansas governor, an office her father, Mike Huckabee, held from 1996 to 2007. 

There are also key US House primaries taking place today, especially in Georgia and Texas, where the top two vote-getters from the Lone Star State’s March 1 primaries face off in runoffs. There are also competitive primaries for seats seen as safe for either party, where the winners will be overwhelming favorites in November. And in Minnesota, voters in the 1st Congressional District will pick their nominees in the special election for the seat of the late Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn. 

House elections are taking place under new congressional lines that were redrawn in redistricting following the 2020 census. Republicans drew the new maps in Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas. The special election in Minnesota — which is for the term that ends in January 2023 — is taking place under the existing boundaries.

Here’s a look at the House races we’re watching today:

Georgia’s 2nd District

Longtime Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop is running for a 16th term representing this southwestern Georgia district that became slightly less Democratic in redistricting but still would have backed Joe Biden by 10 points. Republicans are targeting the seat this cycle, and their fundraising leader in the primary is Army veteran Jeremy Hunt, a West Point graduate who was recently recognized as an “on the radar” candidate by the National Republican Congressional Committee. Hunt is among several Black Republicans running for Congress this year in competitive seats. 

Georgia’s 6th District

Two-term Democratic incumbent Lucy McBath opted to run in the neighboring 7th District after redistricting transformed her suburban Atlanta seat from one that backed Biden by 11 points to one that Trump would have won by 15 points. The winner of the nine-way Republican primary will be the favorite for the general election, but it remains to be seen if a candidate will be able to win without a runoff. Emergency room doctor and Marine veteran Rich McCormick, who narrowly lost a bid for the 7th District in 2020, and Trump-endorsed attorney Jake Evans, the former chairman of Georgia’s State Ethics Commission, are seen as the front-runners on the GOP side. Other Republicans running include former state Rep. Meagan Hanson and self-described “Maga Mom” Mallory Staples. 

Georgia’s 7th District

Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux was the only Democrat to flip a competitive US House seat in 2020. Biden carried her suburban Atlanta district under its current lines by 6 points, but he would have won the new version of the seat by by 26 points. McBath’s decision to run for the redrawn seat sets up an incumbent-versus-incumbent primary with Bourdeaux. McBath, who has a national profile as an advocate for gun violence prevention, raised $4.4 million through May 4, compared with $3.2 million for Bourdeaux. The presence of state Rep. Donna McLeod in the primary could mean this race heads to a runoff. 

Georgia’s 10th District

With GOP Rep. Jody Hice running for Georgia secretary of state, several Republicans are looking to succeed him in this district east of Atlanta that stretches to the South Carolina border. The primary will offer a test of Trump’s endorsement power — former Democratic state Rep. Vernon Jones, who switched parties in 2021, ended his bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in February and switched to the 10th District race with Trump’s backing. But Jones has lagged in fundraising, bringing in $337,000 through May 4. Businessman Mike Collins, the son of the late Georgia GOP Rep. Mac Collins, is the fundraising leader, raising $1.1 million through May 4, including a $531,000 personal loan. This is Collins’ second bid for the seat after losing in a primary runoff to Hice in 2014. Other Republicans seeking the party nod include former state Revenue Commissioner David Curry and businessman Marc McMain, both of whom have partly self-funded their campaigns, and former US Rep. Paul Broun, who held this seat before Hice. The winner of the GOP primary would be favored for November in a seat Trump would have carried by 23 points in 2020.

Read more here.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, left, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, right, greet the crowd during a Get Out the Vote Rally, on Monday, May 23.

A day before Georgia’s primary election, former Vice President Mike Pence had a forward-looking message of support for renominating Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.

“When you say yes to Governor Brian Kemp tomorrow, you will send a deafening message all across America that the Republican Party is the party of the future,” Pence said Monday as he spoke to a crowd in an airport hangar north of Atlanta.

Pence’s appearance was an implicit rebuke of his former running-mate Donald Trump, who has endorsed Kemp’s primary opponent, David Perdue. Pence did not make a direct mention of Trump nor respond to the relentless attacks the former President has leveled against Kemp. But his mere appearance at the election eve rally spoke volumes.

“When Brian Kemp called me and asked me to come out here and be with all of you, I said yes in a heartbeat,” Pence said.

Pence’s trip to Georgia is the latest of several appearances in the midterm cycle on behalf of Republican candidates. Marc Short, a top Pence aide, told CNN the former vice president would travel on Tuesday to appear North Carolina Senate nominee Ted Budd, who won his Republican primary last week the help of an endorsement from Trump.

In Kennesaw, neither Pence nor Kemp mentioned Perdue directly, choosing instead to aim their rhetorical fire at the presumptive Democratic nominee, Stacey Abrams. Kemp narrowly defeated Abrams in his first bid for governor in 2018.

“I’m here because Brian Kemp is the only candidate in tomorrow’s primary who has already defeated Stacey Abrams, whether she knows it or not,” Pence said. “And I’m here because Stacey Abrams can never be governor of the great state of Georgia.”

Multiple times during the rally, the audience broke out in a chant of “four more years,” with Pence leading one such chant near the end of his speech.

People attend a rally for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp ahead of the state's primary election in Kennesaw, Georgia, on May 23.

Before Pence came on stage, Kemp delivered brief remarks, touting his conservative accomplishments in his first term and going after Abrams for recent comments she made during a local Democratic party event in which she referred to Georgia as the “worst state in the country to live.”

“I don’t know about y’all, but I’m glad we’re the number-one state in the country for business,” Kemp said. “And Marty and the girls and I know that we are the best state in the country to live, work and raise our families in.”

Kemp has been leading in recent public polls, but Tuesday’s election will proceed to a runoff if no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote.

People vote early at the Tim. D. Lee Senior Center in East Cobb County in Georgia on May 2.

Early voting has surged in the Georgia primary, with a record-number ballots cast ahead of Tuesday’s contests.

While Republicans have claimed victory after more than a year of Democrats and others saying the vote was being restricted under new laws in the Peach State, voting activists say the surge is not showing the larger picture of the obstacles voters are enduring to get their vote counted this year.

As of May 21, nearly 800,000 were cast, according to GOP Secreaty of State Brad Raffensperger, during the three-week early voting period. He said it was a record and touted SB 202, the voting law from 2021, as the reason for the success.

“The incredible turnout we have seen demonstrates once and for all that Georgia’s Election Integrity Act struck a good balance between the guardrails of access and security,” Raffensperger said in a statement announcing the turnout numbers.

What the law did: SB 202 added new voter identification requirements for absentee ballots, empowered state officials to take over local elections boards, limited the use of ballot drop boxes and made it a crime to approach voters in line to give them food or water.

Activists say it’s their work that has brought about the so-called success. Several voting rights organizations across the state like Black Voter Matter and LWV have been educating voters on the new rules. The work has included setting up hotlines to starting grassroots educational networks to holding voter turnout events on weekends.

Cliff Albright, executive director of Black Voters Matter, noted that the turnout rate is not indicative of Black voters who have been discouraged by the new rules. Activists had warned that the new laws would hurt Black voter turnout who make up roughly a third of the state’s population.

In 2020, a record 1.3 million Georgians voted absentee. Absentee voting rules have since changed. While anyone in Georgia can vote by mail without needing an excuse, voters now must provide their Georgia driver’s license number or state ID along with other identifying information like birth date when applying for a mail-in-ballot application. Those lacking the required ID forms can use other paperwork like a utility bill or bank statement.

What remains to be seen is how many voters opted to vote by mail this time around, and whether the surge in early voting will balance that out. Election officials in Georgia won’t start counting mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day and voters have until three days after to fix any problems with their ballot so it can be counted.

“Now, the bigger question is this: How many people decided not to shift from vote-by-mail to early voting. … We’re so frustrated, discouraged that they didn’t do either one,” Albright told CNN.

Some voting rights groups say that the early voting numbers show that voters are taking the safer route to casting a ballot.

Read the full story here.

Rep. Henry Cuellar talks to a member of the media during a campaign event on May 4 in San Antonio, Texas.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, the long-time Laredo congressman backed by House leaders despite his status as the last Democratic opponent of abortion rights in the House, faces progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros for the third time Tuesday in a primary runoff in South Texas.

Cisneros, who turns 29 on Tuesday, nearly defeated Cuellar in 2020. This year, backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a long list of leading progressive organizations, Democratic women’s groups and labor unions, she again came close, finishing less than two percentage points behind Cuellar in the March primary. Since neither candidate topped 50%, they advanced to Tuesday’s head-to-head runoff to represent Texas’ 28th Congressional District.

The race is the clearest test to date of whether the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade will motivate voters and push abortion rights to the forefront of the 2022 midterm election.

But it’s also playing out in South Texas, in a district that stretches from San Antonio, a liberal area that makes up Cisneros’ base, to more moderate Laredo and its surrounding Rio Grande Valley counties, where support for Cuellar runs deep.

Democratic voters there are largely Latino and historically more culturally conservative — a reality that partially explains Cuellar’s success there. It’s also a region where Republicans made major gains with Latino voters in the 2020 election, offering a window into a trend that could carry major implications across the national political map if it continues.

Another complicating factor is the FBI search of Cuellar’s home in January, weeks before the March primary. Cuellar has insisted he has done nothing wrong, and his attorney said Cuellar is not the target of the FBI investigation.

Still, Cisneros — an immigration attorney who interned in Cuellar’s Washington office as a college student — has used it to make the case that Cuellar isn’t focused on the interests of his district.

Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigns for Jessica Cisneros at a rally on May 20 in San Antonio, Texas.

“It took me having to be in Congressman Cuellar’s office to find out that was anti-labor, to find out he was anti-choice, to find out he had lobbyist after lobbyist after lobbyist go through his office, and never really hosted families that looked like mine,” she said at a rally Friday with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The runoff also marks the latest in a series of increasingly expensive clashes — following last week’s primaries in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Oregon — between progressive and moderate forces within the Democratic Party.

Read the full story here.

A person receives a sticker after voting on primary election day in Athens, Georgia, on Tuesday, May 24. 

Proponents of Donald Trump’s discredited lie about rampant fraud in 2020 are running for positions of authority over election administration in virtually every state expected to decide the 2024 presidential race, an explosive trend dramatically underscored by Tuesday’s bitterly contested Georgia Republican primary.

In Georgia, Trump may achieve, at best, only mixed success Tuesday with the slate of election-denier candidates he has endorsed in primaries against Republicans, led by Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who certified President Joe Bide’s narrow 2020 win in the state.

But even losses for some of Trump’s candidates in Georgia — and that seems much more likely in the governor than secretary of state race — wouldn’t reverse the larger trend: Republicans across the country are steadily nominating candidates echoing Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election in contests for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

“What we’re seeing right now is unprecedented,” says Joanna Lydgate, co-founder and CEO of States United Action, a bipartisan group tracking threats to election integrity across the country. “To see candidates running on a platform of lies and conspiracy theories about our elections as a campaign position, to see a former president getting involved in endorsing in down-ballot races at the primary level, and certainly to see this kind of systemic attacks on our elections, this spreading of disinformation about our elections — we’ve never seen anything like this before as a country.”

Republican candidates echoing Trump’s disproven claims of fraud about 2020 have already been nominated, or are seeking nominations, for positions with control over election machinery in all five of the states that flipped from supporting Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020 — Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Republican candidates touting similar arguments are also in strong positions to win GOP nominations for key election positions in states just outside that inner circle of most competitive contests, including secretary of state races in Nevada, Minnesota and Colorado.

And even as these candidates are advancing, Republican legislators are moving a flurry of bills to change the rules for both voter access and election administration. Down one track, as has been widely reported, 19 Republican-controlled states approved bills in 2021 making it more difficult to vote. Less widely discussed has been a second track: an exhaustive study released last week by three election reform groups found that 13 states have already approved laws allowing for more partisan control of election administration, imposing greater penalties on election administrators for alleged violations, or requiring highly partisan audits of the 2020 results, with another 229 bills still pending in 33 states.

“Taken separately, each of these bills would chip away at the system of free and fair elections that Americans have sustained, and worked to improve, for generations,” the groups concluded. “Taken together, they could lead to an election in which the voters’ choices are disregarded and the election sabotaged.”

This two-front offensive revolving around efforts to both change the election laws and who administers those laws could reconfigure the fundamental landscape for the 2024 election much more than most Americans, or even many political leaders, seem aware. It could also thrust the nation into incendiary turmoil about the legitimacy of the next presidential result, no matter who wins.

“It’s all connected,” says Lydgate. “The playbook is to try to change the rules and change the referees, so you can change the results.”

Republicans echoing Trump’s claims and disputing the 2020 outcome include gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, secretary of state aspirants in 18 and attorneys general hopefuls in 14, according to tracking by States United. That means election deniers are seeking nominations in about two-thirds of the states choosing governors and secretaries of state this year, and in about half of those selecting attorneys general.

“In the leadup to the 2020 election, those who warned of a potential crisis were dismissed as alarmists by far too many Americans who should have seen the writing on the wall,” Jessica Marsden, counsel at Protect Democracy, another bipartisan group tracking threats to future elections, wrote in an email. “Almost two years later, after an attempted coup and a violent insurrection on our Capitol, election conspiracy theorists — including those who actually participated in Jan. 6 — are being nominated by the GOP to hold the most consequential offices for overseeing the 2024 election.”

Read more here.

Campaign signs line a roadside in Roswell, Georgia, on May 14.

Georgia has emerged in recent years as one of the nation’s most important political battlegrounds. Demographic changes have turned what had long been a reliably red state into a competitive one. Democrats’ two victories in Senate runoffs here in January 2021 gave the party full control of Congress.

It’s also ground zero in former President Trump’s vendetta against Republicans who did not support his lies about election fraud. Trump helped recruit and clear the field for David Perdue, the former senator who lost in one of those runoffs last year.

He is also backing Rep. Jody Hice in his bid to oust Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who became a national figure after Trump’s phone call in early January 2021 urging him to “find” enough votes to reverse Georgia’s results and deliver its 16 electoral college votes to Trump.

But not all voters are interested in relitigating that election.

“I wish he’d stay out of our elections,” Chuck Horton, a retired police officer and Oconee County commissioner, said after a Gov. Brian Kemp rally Saturday. “I did vote for him in 2020. There’s no option on the other side. But I think he’s wrong. I don’t think the election was stolen, and he’s not supporting the right man.”

Georgia is set for a series of competitive races in November. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is facing election for a full six-year term and likely to face the Trump-backed former football star Herschel Walker, who is favored to win Tuesday’s Republican primary. In the governor’s race, Democrats will nominate Stacey Abrams, who’s running unopposed, for a second consecutive time after her narrow loss to Kemp in 2018.

Some Republican voters say they would rather stick with the governor who won that close 2018 election than follow a former President who they view as at least partly responsible for the party’s 2020 losses in Georgia. Some pointed to Trump’s constant criticism of mail-in ballots, arguing that he hurt his own chances and depressed Republican turnout in Senate runoffs.

“We wouldn’t be in this mess, in my opinion, as far as our senators and representatives, had he done one thing: If he had stayed off his Twitter for three days out of the seven — just stayed off — then he wouldn’t have alienated his own supporters because of the things that he was saying, and we wouldn’t be looking for 11,000 votes,” said Eddie Drinkard, a land real estate broker in Oconee County, referencing President Biden’s 2020 margin of victory. “But he didn’t have sense enough to do that.”

Kemp has positioned himself for a win Tuesday by carefully avoiding any criticism of Trump on policy matters, and making sure not to say anything that would enrage Trump loyalists.

He’s been joined on the campaign trail by a raft of Republican governors, including Arizona’s Doug Ducey, Ricketts and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Pence will appear with Kemp at an election eve rally Monday.

At his campaign stops, Kemp has leaned into an argument that he’s the strongest alternative to Abrams, and one whom Republican voters will rally around once the race is narrowed to a head-to-head choice.

“I think Stacey Abrams is a great unifier. I think every Republican in Georgia will be unified after Tuesday,” Kemp told reporters Saturday afternoon.

Kemp and his supporters have spent more than $12 million on television ads headed into Tuesday’s primaries, nearly doubling Perdue’s side.

People wait in line to vote in Georgia's primary election in Atlanta on Tuesday, May 24.

Primaries on Tuesday across the South could represent the clearest chance for Republican voters to break with former President Donald Trump.

In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp looks poised to hand Trump his biggest ballot box rejection yet since the former President’s own loss in 2020, with polls showing the incumbent Republican far ahead of former Sen. David Perdue. Trump made the Republican governor his top target of 2022. A Kemp victory would set up a rematch between the Republican governor and Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is poised to win her party’s nomination.

Meanwhile, in Alabama, Trump’s unendorsement of Rep. Mo Books will be tested. Trump initially had backed Brooks’ Senate campaign, but took back the endorsement in March when the congressman suggested it was time for Republicans to stop looking back to 2020. Alabama voters will now decide if Brooks was right.

On the Democratic side, a Texas congressional runoff will test whether there is still space for anti-abortion Democrats. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a congressman whose reelection bid was complicated in January when the FBI raided his home, is once again facing Jessica Cisneros, a progressive activist who has made Cuellar’s anti-abortion stance central to her campaign following the leaking earlier this month of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Here’s what to watch in Tuesday’s elections in Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas and Minnesota:

Georgia tests limits of Trump’s 2020 grievances: Trump turned Georgia into the centerpiece of his effort to punish Republicans who rejected his lies about widespread election fraud costing him the 2020 presidential race. He pushed Perdue — who lost his seat in the same election cycle that Trump became the first Republican presidential nominee since Bob Dole in 1996 to lose Georgia — to run in the primary.

But polls show most Georgia Republicans are ignoring Trump’s mission against Kemp, and that the first-term governor is poised to win easily.

That’s in part because Perdue was a one-note candidate focused on relitigating 2020’s election, while Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, aside from his clash with Trump, has a record that makes him popular with GOP voters. He reopened Georgia so early in the coronavirus pandemic that even then-President Trump said it was “too soon.” He signed into law a restrictive new voting measure that placed limits on mail-in voting. He imposed a gas tax holiday. He took conservatives’ side in brewing cultural battles over schools.

And perhaps most importantly, Kemp — unlike Perdue — is a proven winner. He defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams in one of the nation’s most hard-fought governor’s races in 2018. Four years later, Republicans who watched the party lose the presidential race and both of Georgia’s Senate seats in the 2020 election are focused on electability, and the winner of Tuesday’s primary will once again face Abrams.

“I think Stacey Abrams is a great unifier. I think every Republican in Georgia will be unified after Tuesday,” Kemp told reporters over the weekend.

Another race will further test Republicans’ eagerness to entertain Trump’s grievances: Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who became a national figure after Trump pressured him in early 2021 to overturn Georgia’s election results, faces several primary challengers, including Trump-backed Rep. Jody Hice.

Can a Republican candidate Trump spurned win a primary? When Rep. Mo Brooks was looking to describe his campaign two days before his Republican Senate primary against Army veteran Mike Durant and former Alabama Business Council president Katie Britt, he went biblical.

“Just call me a modern-day Lazarus,” Brooks told CNN’s Gabby Orr on Sunday, using a resurrection to describe his campaign — one where Trump pulled his endorsement two months ago because Brooks argued it was time to look ahead to the 2022 and 2024 elections, and not at Trump’s 2020 presidential loss.

The primary in Alabama is yet another test of whether Trump’s sway — or in this case, Trump’s antipathy — is enough to sink a candidate. If no candidate receives over 50% of the vote in the primary, the race between Brooks, Britt and Durant will head to a runoff next month, something Brooks admitted was “very little” to happen.

Alabama is also host to a gubernatorial primary in which incumbent Republican Gov. Kay Ivey is fending of challenges from the right centered on her decision to use her office to push Alabamians to get vaccinated in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Like the Senate race, it is possible that Ivey will be forced into a runoff.

Keep reading here.

US Rep. Mo Brooks waves during a campaign appearance with US Sen. Ted Cruz on Monday.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pleaded with Alabama voters at a campaign stop with Mo Brooks in Huntsville on Monday to show up and vote for the “principled conservative” against his two leading opponents on Tuesday. 

“There are distressingly few principled conservatives in the Senate. It matters if Alabama sends a principled conservative who knows what he believes and who is not afraid of the fight,” Cruz said at a mid-afternoon rally. 

Hoping to propel Brooks to a second-place finish in Tuesday’s primary, Cruz sought to reaffirm his conservative bona fides after former President Trump withdrew his endorsement from Brooks in March. 

“If you look at these candidates, it’s not even close which candidate has the strongest conservative record in the Alabama primary,” he told the audience.  

The Texas senator also noted Brooks’ apparent momentum in the closing days of the primary contest amid recent polling that shows him running neck-and-neck against Durant. The race is likely to lead to a June 21 runoff between Britt and one of the two men. 

“Just a few weeks ago, our friends in the media described Mo Brooks as dead,” Cruz said. “But as Mark Twain famously said, ‘Rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated’ and the people of Alabama are looking at this race and they are asking a very simple question: which candidate has the record?”  

Brooks and Cruz were due to attend a private fundraiser shortly after the rally concluded on Monday afternoon. 

Voters take a sticker after casting their ballots in the Georgia primary election at the Metropolitan Library polling location in Atlanta on May 24.

On Tuesday, five states will hold primary elections. But it’s Georgia that will be at the center of the spotlight, hosting high-profile races up and down the ballot.

Here are key numbers shaping the contours of next week’s battles in Georgia:

• 50% +1: This is perhaps the most important figure to keep in mind heading into May 24. If no candidate in a Georgia primary garners more than 50% of the vote, the top two candidates in the race will advance to a runoff on June 21.
• 72%: The marquee race in Georgia Tuesday is between GOP Gov. Brian Kemp and primary challenger David Perdue, the former senator who is backed by former President Donald Trump. Despite repeatedly drawing fire from Trump for not supporting his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, Kemp has remained a popular figure in the party. A recent Fox poll found that 72% of Republican voters view Kemp favorably, compared to 56% for Perdue. The survey also showed Kemp leading Perdue 60%-28% — putting the incumbent above the runoff threshold.
• $12.3 million: One reason Kemp has built such a formidable lead: he’s enjoyed a major advantage on the airwaves. According to an analysis of AdImpact data from CNN’s David Wright, pro-Kemp forces have spent $12.3 million on ads for the primary. That’s nearly double the $6.4 million pro-Perdue forces have spent. And Perdue’s campaign booked $0 in ads for the final week of the campaign.
• 1: There is no drama on the other side of the gubernatorial race: Stacey Abrams is the one and only candidate on the Democratic primary ballot. If Kemp wins the GOP primary, it would set up a rematch of the contentious 2018 governor’s race in the state — and would be one of the most hotly contested races of the 2022 midterms.
• 66%: Speaking of hotly contested races, Georgia will be right at the top of the list in the battle for control of the US Senate as well. On the Republican side, Herschel Walker — with the support of Trump and Senate GOP leaders — looks like he will cruise to victory Tuesday. In the latest Fox poll, he was at 66% in the primary race, up 58 points over his closest competitor. That would set up a clash with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who won the seat in the January 2021 runoff elections.
• 3: A primary for secretary of state would usually fly well below the national radar. But not in Georgia. Trump has his sights on the incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, who refused to go along with the then-President’s push to “find” votes to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. Raffensperger faces three Republican primary challengers on Tuesday, one of whom, Rep. Jody Hice, is endorsed by Trump.
• 9: Few states have drawn more attention from Trump this primary season than Georgia as he seeks to exert his influence over the GOP. The former President has issued endorsements in nine GOP primaries, intervening in three House races and six statewide races — including for the post of insurance and safety fire commissioner, as part of his feud with Kemp.
• 710,137: That’s how many people had voted early in the state through last Thursday, which is a record, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office. It marks a 180% increase from the same point in the early voting period in 2018 and a 149% increase compared to 2020. Early voting in Georgia ended Friday.

The Point: Georgia’s primaries will shed further light on the direction the Republican Party wants to go in — and set up critical general election contests in the battleground state.

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Democratic congressional candidate Rochelle Garza, center, holds a conversation at a backyard house party in Brownsville, Texas, in September 2021.

Six weeks postpartum, Rochelle Garza was on the frontlines of an abortion rights rally in Dallas.

Abortion rights had already been top of mind for Texas Democrats during the state’s March 1 primary elections, as Democratic candidates and political operatives pointed to the Lone Star State’s controversial six-week abortion ban as a warning sign for what life could look like in a post-Roe America.

But, two months later, the issue became much more pressing: a Supreme Court draft majority opinion that would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision had been leaked.

“I know that everyone is angry. We should be angry because this is an attack on our health care. Because abortion is health care. Reproductive freedom is a human right,” Garza said on May 3.

In the weeks since then, abortion rights has become even more central to two key Texas runoff primaries. Voting will end in those races on Tuesday.

In the runoff for the Democratic nomination for state attorney general, Garza, a civil rights attorney who previously won a case granting a detained 17-year-old immigrant the right to an abortion, is facing off against former Galveston mayor and trial attorney Joe Jaworski, who is also pro-abortion rights but lacks the same backing of abortion rights groups that Garza has.

“Women and all people who care about equal rights, even if they’re not women, should be angry, alarmed and motivated,” Jaworski said in an interview with CNN Friday. “Reproductive choice, at least protected by the federal constitution, is over, and this ought to be a wake-up call, a motivating call for voters, whether you’re a woman or not.”

The issue has also come to the forefront of the blockbuster Democratic primary runoff for Texas’s 28th Congressional District, where Jessica Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration attorney, is facing Rep. Henry Cuellar. Cuellar, a political institution in South Texas, is the last remaining anti-abortion rights House Democrat and was the only member of his party in the lower chamber last fall to vote against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify abortion rights even if the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade.

Jamarr Brown, co-executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, told CNN that after the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion, the party will be “following the primary runoff results to see if there are any indicators of this issue moving the electorate.”

“This issue is a reminder of what is at stake in this election — that we must fight extremism by Republicans in Texas and across the country when they attack our fundamental freedoms,” Brown said.

Read more about what the candidates have said on this issue here.

One of the most high-profile primaries today is in Georgia’s Republican race for governor. The top contenders are Gov. Brian Kemp, who is running for reelection to a second term, and his challenger, former Sen. David Perdue.

Kemp, an otherwise conservative governor, has found himself the target of former President Donald Trump’s ire because of Kemp’s refusal to help overturn the 2020 election. Trump endorsed Perdue as soon as the former US senator got into the race in December, but since then, his backing from major political figures or groups has been almost non-existent. Meanwhile, Kemp has racked up endorsements from figures all around state and country. 

Here’s a look at their endorsements:

Brian Kemp:

• Former Vice President Mike Pence
• The Republican Governors Association
• Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey 
• Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts 
• Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan
• Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey
• US Rep. Drew Ferguson
• US Rep. Rick Allen
• US Rep. Barry Loudermilk
• US Rep. Austin Scott
• Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan
• 30 Georgia state senators
• At least 90 Georgia state representatives

David Perdue:

• Former President Donald Trump
• Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska
• US House candidate Vernon Jones

Stacey Abrams during a news conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 24.

At an Election Day news conference outside of a polling precinct at the Israel Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia’s Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams brushed aside comments from Republican gubernatorial candidate David Perdue that Abrams should “go back to where she came from.”

“I have listened to Republicans for the last six months attack me, but they’ve done nothing to attack the challenges facing Georgia. They’ve done nothing to articulate their plans for the future of Georgia,” said Abrams, who did not mention Perdue by name. 

Perdue and incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp have seized on comments Abrams made over the weekend when she said she was “tired of hearing about being the best state in the country to do business when we are the worst state in the country to live.” 

It was part of a larger argument Abrams is making in her second bid for governor, which is that Kemp has not done enough to reach all Georgians, especially the most marginalized. “The governor is happy to tout the successes for the few who have flourished but he’s done very little for thousands of Georgians,” she said in a CNN interview earlier this week. 

At the news conference, she conceded her remarks made at a fundraiser Saturday were an “inelegant delivery.”

Abrams is running unopposed in today’s Democratic primary.

Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks in Columbus, Georgia, on Saturday.

Last summer, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell was nervous about Herschel Walker, seeing stories about the rookie candidate’s turbulent past and fearful that an unvetted and untested Republican could implode in the heat of the biggest Senate race in the country.

But not long after he suggested to allies that former Georgia Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler should consider running, McConnell heard a different story — from Walker himself. Over the course of multiple conversations, Walker and McConnell talked about the campaign, the candidate’s life story and the GOP leader’s view of running in a race like this, according to people familiar with the calls.

“I think this guy is the real deal,” McConnell said to Sen. Lindsey Graham last fall, according to the South Carolina Republican, who had been lobbying the GOP leader to get behind Walker, a football legend with the support of former President Donald Trump.

Since then, Walker has had a cakewalk of a primary, skipping a handful of debates or forums, avoiding getting pinned down on policy positions and mostly limiting press appearances to the safe spaces of conservative media. In mid-May, a Fox News poll showed Walker with 66% support from Georgia Republican primary voters — unchanged since March.

But after his expected blowout victory in Tuesday’s primary, the scrutiny is only bound to intensify. Democrats are privately planning an aggressive campaign spotlighting Walker’s vulnerabilities, business record, policy views and dirty laundry about the candidate’s past, including his violent behavior with his ex-wife, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Walker has said he has dissociative identity disorder, which was previously known as multiple personality disorder, and has sought to advise people with mental health problems.

In 2008, his ex-wife claimed that he threatened her life, pointing a gun to her head a handful of times and a straight razor to her throat; Walker said in an interview that year that he didn’t remember being violent toward her, but he didn’t deny it and noted that one of the symptoms of his disorder was blackouts.

In 2012, an ex-girlfriend told authorities that Walker had also threatened to kill her and “blow her head off” and then “blow his head off.” After the allegation was reported last year, Walker’s spokesman said the candidate “emphatically denies these false claims.”

And a third woman also said Walker threatened and stalked her in 2002. Walker’s campaign previously declined to respond to the woman’s allegations or discuss the police report.

Top Democrats believe that Walker will collapse as the fight between freshman Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Walker intensifies.

Read more about Walker and his campaign here.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, left, shakes hands with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp during a rally in Watkinsville, Georgia, on Saturday.

The Republican Governors Association has invested $5 million in running pro-Brian Kemp ads. Multiple current and former governors — Chris Christie of New Jersey, Doug Ducey of Arizona and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska — have traveled to Georgia to campaign alongside Kemp in the final days of the Republican primary race as he bids for a second term as Georgia governor.

“My message to you today is conservative leadership matters,” Ricketts told the crowd here in Watkinsville on Saturday, reciting a litany of accomplishments in Kemp’s first term, from a massive income tax cut to laws expanding gun carry rights and restricting abortion.

And headlining Kemp’s final pre-primary rally Monday night was former Vice President Mike Pence, himself the former governor of Indiana. The result is a show of force from non-Trump Republican leaders and an implicit rebuke of the former President, who issued a statement calling Christie, Ducey and Ricketts a trio of “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only.

But the outside help has reinforced Kemp’s general election pivot to focusing on the Democratic Party.

“Brian Kemp is the only thing standing in between Georgia and having Stacey Abrams as your governor,” Christie said at a rally in Alpharetta, Georgia, on May 17. “We don’t want that, do we?”

Despite Trump’s and former Sen. David Perdue’s insistence that Kemp cannot win in November without the support of the “MAGA base,” the governor is confident that opposition to an Abrams win will be plenty to get out the GOP vote this fall.

“I think Stacey Abrams is a great unifier. I think every Republican in Georgia will be unified after Tuesday,” Kemp told reporters Saturday.

Read more about Georgia’s gubernatorial race here.

Faith and community leaders pause for a prayer in the parking lot of Breakthrough Deliverance Church before setting off for the polls in Griffin, Georgia, on May 14.

Rev. Zachary Holmes used to spend his Sundays conducting voting efforts, assembling people to head to the polls, as early voting on that day was popular for Black churchgoers.

But since the Spalding County election board in Georgia eliminated the option to vote on Sundays, Holmes has been focused on Saturdays ahead of Tuesday’s primaries. But the church parking lot looks a lot less crowded than it normally would have been on Sundays.

Spalding is one of seven Georgia counties that had Sunday early voting in the 2020 election but will not have the option available for the midterms.

Critics of Sunday early voting argue that the option is costly. Spalding’s new election board chair, Ben Johnson, was appointed last year by the county commissioner, James Dutton. He had argued against Sunday voting, saying that plenty of other options exist, including mail-in voting and the ability to cast ballots on two Saturdays during Georgia’s 17-day early voting window. but Spalding County community leaders don’t buy that argument. They pushed back, arguing the change seemed racially motivated.

“That’s the strongest day for Black people. And I think this is something that is racial, and this is a way to control our numbers at the poll,” said Michael Lawrence, the pastor at Griffin’s Breakthrough Deliverance Church, from which organizers led a convoy of about 12 cars, complete with a police escort, to the local polling location.

The decision by the board to get rid of Sunday voting has brought concerns about voter suppression to the forefront for community members in Spalding.

“It’s clear that Republicans are engaged in an effort to chill the right to vote in this state. It’s so in your face. They’re not even trying to hide it,” said Dexter Wimbish, an attorney who participated in last Saturday’s convoy to a Spalding County polling location.

Wimbish sees Spalding County and the others that have eliminated Sunday voting as “ground zero” for a Republican strategy to hold on to power in a diversifying area.

“You have people who, you know, historically have been able to control the power structure in these communities, and they’re not willing to give up that power without a struggle,” he said.

In a show of resistance against the change in weekend voting options, Holmes, along with other community leaders in the county, held a so-called “Souls to the Polls” event last Saturday.

“We’re doing this mainly because we felt like the Sunday voting issue — it was a success. It got people out to vote and that should be our ultimate goal,” said Holmes, a member of the school board running for reelection in this town of about 23,000 people an hour south of Atlanta.

“No matter what party affiliation you have, we should want to increase participation in the voting process. And that was something that Sunday voting had done,” Holmes said.

Critics of Sunday early voting argue that the option is costly, but Spalding County community leaders don’t buy that argument. They pushed back, arguing the change seemed racially motivated.

“That’s the strongest day for Black people. And I think this is something that is racial, and this is a way to control our numbers at the poll,” said Michael Lawrence, the pastor at Griffin’s Breakthrough Deliverance Church, from which organizers led a convoy of about 12 cars, complete with a police escort, to the local polling location.

Before setting out, a group of about 10 people formed a circle in the sunny church parking lot and bowed their heads in prayer before breaking out into “We Shall Overcome.”

Keep reading here.

Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District will hold a special primary election to fill the seat left vacant after Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn died in February.

The winners of the primary will advance to the special general election on Aug. 9. Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, in the southern part of the state, favors Republican but could be competitive.

Hagedorn flipped the seat for Republicans in 2018, and the party is hoping to hold it in the special election and eventual regular election this cycle.

Poll times: Polls opened at 8 a.m. ET and close at 9 p.m. ET. Minnesota is on central time.

Voter eligibility: The deadline to register to vote was May 3, but voters in Minnesota can also register when they go to vote early in person or at the polls on Election Day. All voters are eligible to vote by mail and can apply for a ballot up until Election Day. Mail ballots must be received by Election Day and there’s a 3 p.m. deadline for ballots returned by hand.  Minnesota voters can also vote early in person. That was available between April 9 and May 23. 

There are no voter ID requirements for registered voters. If a person registers to vote at their polling location on Election Day, they must bring either a valid driver’s license, learner’s permit or tribal ID that has their name, photo and address, or a photo ID and a proof of residency. Minnesota also does not have political party registration so any registered voter in Minnesota’ 1st Congressional District can choose which party’s primary they want to participate in. 

Ballot count: Counties can begin processing mail ballots in advance of election day. The order of results reported will vary by county.

See how redistricting has shifted voting power in the state:

Rep. Lucy McBath, left, and Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, right.

A competitive primary for a Georgia House seat has locked two Democratic members of Congress — Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux — in a tough fight for reelection.

The matchup comes after Georgia’s Republican-controlled state legislature redrew congressional maps. Now, two Democrats viewed by many in the party as rising stars with promising political futures are facing off in a contentious race.

The Democratic primary will take place on Tuesday for Georgia’s newly redrawn 7th Congressional District.

“We expect that the race is going to be close, and, by close, we anticipate single digit margins,” Emory University political scientist Andra Gillespie said in an interview. “These are two known, incumbent candidates who hold office so we expect that they are going to hold their own against each other.”

Adding to the competition: Georgia State Rep. Donna McLeod is also running in the Democratic primary.

“I think the question is, is McLeod going to be enough of a spoiler to force a runoff?” Gillespie asked.

McBath and Bourdeaux both made a name for themselves in Georgia by flipping a House seat from red to blue to win election to Congress.

McBath was elected in 2018 to represent the state’s 6th District, which had previously been held by Republican Karen Handel. Bourdeaux won an election in 2020 in the 7th District and succeeded Republican Rob Woodall in the seat.

Interactive: Georgia redistricting 2022: Congressional maps by district

The two Democrats are now in a showdown after the GOP legislators redrew the 6th District to favor Republicans. Whichever Democrat wins the primary for the new 7th District will likely win the general election for the seat in November.

Read the full report on this competitive race and read about redistricting in the state here.

CNN’s Alex Rogers contributed reporting to this post.

Texas is the site of the first primary runoffs of the 2022 cycle for races where no one won a majority in the March 1 primary.

Key races include, the Republican primary runoff for attorney general and the Democratic race for Texas’ 28th Congressional District.

Here’s what to know about the contests:

Ken Paxton, left, and George P. Bush, right.

Race: Attorney General (GOP)

• Key candidates: Ken Paxton and George P. Bush 
• Snapshot: While current Attorney General Ken Paxton was the vote leader after the initial March 1 primary – he led with 42.7% of the vote – he was unable to hit the 50% threshold necessary to stave off a runoff between himself and current Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. Bush won about 22.8% of the vote in the initial primary. Paxton is considered the favorite going into election night and has former President Trump’s support despite his ongoing legal issues.  

Jessica Cisneros, left, and Rep. Henry Cuellar, right.

Race: Texas 28th Congressional District (Democratic)

• Candidates: Rep. Henry Cuellar and Jessica Cisneros 
• Snapshot: Rep. Henry Cuellar and progressive activist Jessica Cisneros came within nearly two percentage points of each other on the March 1 primary with Cuellar leading with 48.7% of the vote to Cisneros’ 46.6% of the vote. Cuellar’s reelection bid was complicated in January when the FBI raided his home. Cuellar has not been charged with any crime. The congressman is also facing headwinds from his party for being out-of-touch with the Democratic Party for his pro-life views, especially in light of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion on Roe v. Wade. Cisneros has been endorsed by many Democratic incumbents such as Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley. But much of the Democratic caucus hasn’t turned on Cuellar. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn campaigned for Cuellar and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called him a “valued member of our caucus.”

Poll times: Polls will close at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET. Most of Texas is on central time, but the western tip of the state around El Paso is on mountain time.

Voter eligibility: The deadline to register to vote was April 25. Any voter in Texas can vote early in person. The first day of early in-person voting was May 16, and early voting in-person ended on May 20. To vote early by mail, a person must meet one of five criteria.  Vote by mail applications must have been received by the early voting clerk by May 13, and ballots postmarked by 7 p.m. on May 24 can be received by May 25 at 5 p.m. 

Ballot count: Counties can begin processing mail ballots before election day. The first results released will generally be mail and in-person early votes.

See how redistricting has shifted voting power in the state:

Candidate Jennifer Strahan listens during an interview in Rome, Georgia, on May 12. Strahan is running to take Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's congressional seat in Georgia's 14th District.

Jennifer Strahan, a first-time candidate, is the most formidable of incumbent Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s five primary opponents.

Strahan has the backing of the Republican Jewish Coalition PAC and the PACs of some major local and national businesses, including UPS and International Paper. VIEW PAC — the leading organization dedicated to recruiting and electing Republican women to Congress — is opposing an incumbent for the first time by endorsing Strahan against Greene.

The controversial Greene is often mentioned in the same breath as other Donald Trump acolytes in the US House, such as North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who lost his primary earlier this week. But unlike Cawthorn, Greene hasn’t encountered the same level of organized opposition or spending against her.

VIEW PAC’s independent expenditure arm has been mostly alone in making small investments in mail and digital advertising. Some Republicans in Congress have been helpful to Strahan behind the scenes, but few will go public.

And even many of the GOP voters whom CNN met in the 14th Congressional District who had qualms about Greene — “I like her politics but not her demeanor” was a frequent refrain — hadn’t heard of the Republicans running against her for this northwest Georgia seat.

Lorrie Heiken, 54, of Rome, says she’s a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

“As long as there’s a Republican in that spot, I’m OK,” said Lorrie Heiken, a 54-year-old self-described “MAGA” supporter who does not believe President Joe Biden won the 2020 election but also thinks the QAnon conspiracy theory — and Greene’s promotion of it — goes too far.

The owner of a health care consulting company, Strahan often introduces herself to voters as the mom of a son, two dogs and a tortoise. At a recent tele-town hall, she told participants the district needs someone who’s not a “social media celebrity,” a not-so-subtle jab at the congresswoman.

Josh Brown, 39, from Rockmart, Georgia, recognized Strahan at a local coffee shop and stopped her to say hello. He is enthusiastic about Strahan’s candidacy, calling her “mature and resolved,” and thinks she’ll work well with others.

Read more about the incumbent and the challenger here.

Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson is term-limited, and former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the favorite to win the Republican nomination and the general election.

In the Senate, Republican John Boozman is facing conservative primary challengers. 

These are the races to watch:

Sen. John Boozman, Jan Morgan and Jake Bequette.

Race: Senate (GOP)

• Key candidates: Sen. John Boozman , Jake Bequette and Jan Morgan
• Snapshot: Two-term Arkansas Sen. John Boozman is looking to fend off a primary challenge from former NFL player Jake Bequette who is being supported by conservative businessman Richard Uihlein. Uihelin has gifted at least $1 million in the effort to take down Boozman, by contributing to a Super PAC that has called Boozman a “liberal” and “weak”. Bequette, who was a reserve player for the New England Patriots, also served in the Army in Iraq and describes himself as an “all-American conservative”. Boozman, was first elected to the Senate in 2010, has campaigned on his endorsement from Trump. Also in the running is commentator and indoor gun range owner Jan Morgan, who’s been endorsed by Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.

Poll times: Polls opened at 8:30 a.m. ET and close at 8:30 p.m. ET on Election Day. Arkansas is on central time. 

Voter eligibility: The deadline to register to vote was April 25. Any registered voter can vote early in-person. Early in-person voting ran from May 9 to May 23. Only voters with a valid excuse are able to vote by mail. Voters had to apply for a mail ballot in person by May 20 or by mail or electronic means by May 17. The ballot must be returned in person by close of business on May 20 or by mail by close of polls on May 24. Arkansas voters can choose to vote in either party’s primary. 

Ballot count: If no candidate in a race gets 50%+1 vote the top two finishers advance to a runoff on June 21. Arkansas election officials can begin processing mail ballots ahead of election day. On election night, counties will report early in-person votes first, followed by absentee votes by mail and Election Day votes.

See how redistricting has shifted voting power in the state:

Republican voters in Georgia’s primary on Tuesday could move the party — at least temporarily — out from under former President Donald Trump’s shadow.

Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican whom Trump has targeted over his refusal to embrace the lie that widespread fraud cost the former President the 2020 election, is expected to easily fend off a challenge from Trump-backed former Sen. David Perdue. A Kemp victory would showcase the limits of Trump’s influence in a state that will be home to some of the 2022 midterm election’s most important contests.

“You’re going to have a lot of very strong Trump supporters who are going to vote for Brian Kemp,” said Martha Zoller, a talk radio host in Georgia who previously worked for both Perdue and Kemp.

The problem for Trump — and for the candidates he is backing here — is that in the lead-up to Tuesday’s primary, Georgia Republicans have largely not seemed interested in fighting the former President’s backward-looking battles. And the steady stream of governors hitting the trail with Kemp — plus former Vice President Mike Pence — suggests some in the national GOP aren’t either.

Zoller said when Perdue was considering running for governor, she advised him to find meaningful ways to differentiate himself as a candidate, beyond airing Trump’s grievances. She said she told Perdue that “it couldn’t just be about the 2020 election.”

That never happened, and Perdue enters Tuesday’s primary outspent and trailing badly in the polls.

Georgia could offer the clearest indication yet of the limits of Trump’s influence during a stretch of primaries that has underscored the extent to which he remains the center of the Republican Party as most GOP candidates, even those who don’t receive his backing, profess their loyalty to him.

His endorsement has proven decisive in some GOP primaries, such as Ohio’s Senate race, where a late Trump endorsement catapulted venture capitalist and author J.D. Vance to victory. And in West Virginia, his support lifted Rep. Alex Mooney in a race against Rep. David McKinley as the two faced off for a single congressional seat after the state lost one following the 2020 Census.

And his falsehoods about election fraud have paved the way for restrictive new voting laws in states such as Georgia, Florida, Texas and Iowa, and have led to the party nominating candidates such as state Sen. Doug Mastriano, an election denier, for Pennsylvania governor, positioning them to potentially take over the election machinery of key swing states if they win in November.

But Trump has also racked up a series of losses. Flawed candidates, such as the scandal-plagued North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn and Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, who faced allegations of sexual misconduct, have lost despite Trump’s support. In Nebraska, the endorsement of outgoing Gov. Pete Ricketts proved more consequential than Trump’s, with Ricketts’ candidate winning earlier this month.

In Pennsylvania’s Senate primary, the Trump-backed celebrity heart surgeon Mehmet Oz is in a razor-tight race with former hedge fund executive David McCormick, with ballots still being counted and a recount possible.

Read the full story below:

Alabama has two notable Republican primaries today. GOP Gov. Kay Ivey is facing challengers from her right, and there’s a crowded field to replace retiring Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. 

These are the races to watch:

Rep. Mo Brooks, Katie Britt and Mike Durant.

Race: Senate (GOP)

• Key candidates: Rep. Mo Brooks, Katie Britt and Mike Durant
• Snapshot: Sen. Richard Shelby announced in early 2021 he would retire at the end of the term, setting up a Republican primary that will likely determine who the next Alabama senator will be. Shelby endorsed his former chief of staff, Katie Britt, early in the race, at one point setting up a proxy battle with former President Trump who had endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks. However, Trump withdrew his support in March after Brooks struggled to take command of the race. The former President has yet to weigh in further on the race, but he met with both Britt and retired Army pilot Mike Durant before announcing he would take back his endorsement. Durant’s Army story of being taken hostage in 1993 was depicted in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down”. With Alabama’s majority-vote requirement, it’s possible the race could head to a June 21 runoff. 

Lindy Blanchard, Tim James and Gov. Kay Ivey.

Race: Governor (GOP)

• Key candidates: Gov. Kay Ivey, Lindy Blanchard and Tim James
• Snapshot: Gov. Kay Ivey is running for her second full term in November but will first have to fend off several primary challengers. One of the most well-known is Lindy Blanchard, the former US ambassador to Slovenia during the Trump administration. Ivey is favored to win the primary, and Trump has not endorsed his former appointee. Blanchard initially campaigned for the open Alabama Senate seat before deciding to run for governor instead in December. Also expected to be a contender is Tim James, a businessman who is the son of a former governor who lost previous primaries for the office in 2002 and 2010. James has campaigned on lowering taxes and on cultural issues, including supporting a ban on same-sex marriage. There is reportedly some lingering tension between Ivey and Trump because Trump blames her for the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park Commission’s decision to not allow the former president from holding a rally on the battleship. 

Poll times: Alabama is in the central time zone, but some areas of eastern Alabama will close their polls at 7 p.m. ET rather than 7 p.m. CT. While the state may report votes as polls close, CNN won’t make projections until the entire state closes at 8 p.m. ET (7 p.m. CT). The state’s practice is to release all votes at 8 p.m. ET. 

Voter eligibility: The deadline to register to vote was May 9. Voters in Alabama can only cast a mail ballot if they have a qualifying excuse. Alabama voters had until May 17 to apply for a mail-in ballot by mail, or until May 19 to apply for one in person. Ballots must be received by hand-delivery by May 23 or must be received by mail by noon on May 24.  Alabama doesn’t offer in-person early voting to the general public, but voters who are eligible to vote by mail can vote in person if they choose. The state also does not have political party registration and voters can choose which party primary they want to participate in. 

Ballot count: If no candidate in a race gets 50%+1 vote the top two finishers advance to a runoff on June 21. Alabama election officials can begin processing mail ballots on Election Day. Reporting order varies by county. 

See how redistricting has shifted voting power in the state:

Three states – Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia – will hold primaries Tuesday, while Texas will hold primary runoffs and Minnesota will hold a special primary for the state’s 1st Congressional District.

Here’s when polls close today:

• Georgia: 7 p.m. ET
• Alabama: 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. ET
• Arkansas: 8:30 p.m. ET
• Texas: 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET
• Minnesota: 9 p.m. ET

Georgia will host competitive senate and governor elections in November, but the most competitive primaries will be Republican contests for governor and secretary of state and the Democratic primary in the 7th Congressional District.

The Republican primary for Georgia governor is one of the most high-profile races testing the power of former President Trump’s endorsement.

These are the races to watch:

Gov. Brian Kemp, left, and former Sen. David Perdue, right.

Race: Governor (GOP)

• Key candidates: Gov. Brian Kemp and former Sen. David Perdue
• Snapshot: Gov. Brian Kemp became one of Trump’s top targets this election cycle after Kemp certified President Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia. Trump endorsed former Sen. David Perdue in February, and Perdue has blamed his 2021 Senate runoff loss to now-Sen. Jon Ossoff on Kemp. Recent polling has shown Kemp with a significant lead over his challengers. The winner of the Republican primary will face Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is uncontested in her primary and who lost the 2018 governor’s race to Kemp by less than 2 percentage points. 

Brad Raffensperger, left, and Rep. Jody Hice, right.

Race: Secretary of State (GOP)

• Key candidates: Brian Raffensperger and Rep. Jody Hice
• Snapshot: Current Georgia Secretary of State Brian Raffensperger became a national name when he refused Trump’s demand to “find” votes to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. He’s being challenged by Trump-endorsed Rep. Jody Hice who has embraced the former president’s lies about the election results. The 2020 election has been one of the biggest issues in the secretary of state campaign. At a May debate, Raffensperger said Hice has “been spreading misinformation” while Hice said Raffensperger opened “the door for election fraud in this state.” 

Rep. Lucy McBath, left, and Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, right.

Race: Georgia’s 7th Congressional District (Democratic)

• Key candidates: Rep. Lucy McBath and Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux
• Snapshot: Georgia will host the first Democratic member vs. member primary with Reps. Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux running in the new 7th Congressional District. Both Democrats flipped suburban districts in their respective first elections (McBath in 2018 and Bourdeaux in 2020). While most of the new congressional district includes residents Bourdeaux represented, McBath has been able to outraise and outspend the first-term member. McBath became active in the gun control movement after her son was fatally shot in 2012 and since being elected, she’s become one of her caucus’s foremost voices on the issue. Prior to her election, Bourdeaux was a professor at Georgia State University and was the director for the Georgia state Senate Budget and Evaluation Office between 2007 and 2010.

Poll times: Polls opened at 7 a.m. ET and close at 7 p.m. ET. 

Voter eligibility: The deadline to register to vote was April 25. Any registered voter can vote by mail or vote early in person. Voters had to submit their mail-in ballot request by May 13 and must return their ballot to the county board of elections by the close of polls on Election Day. Early in-person voting ran May 2 to May 20. Georgia doesn’t have party registration, so registered voters can choose which primary to vote in. 

Ballot count: If no candidate in a race gets 50%+1 vote the top two finishers advance to a runoff on June 21. Georgia election officials can begin counting early ballots on Election Day before polls close. Mail ballots and early in-person ballots can be processed prior to Election Day. Each county determines whether it will report Election Day or early votes first.

See how redistricting has shifted voting power in the state: