Vernon Jones, Georgia Dem-turned-Republican, to challenge Kemp for governor's seat
From WWW.FOXNEWS.COM
A former Democratic state lawmaker in Georgia, who switched to the GOP after backing then-President Trump’s reelection bid, on Friday announced a 2022 Republican primary challenge against Gov. Brian Kemp, who sits high atop the former president’s list of political targets.
The former lawmaker, Vernon Jones, tweeted Thursday evening, "The time has come. Georgia is ready!" He announced that he would hold a press conference Friday morning outside the Georgia state capitol building, in downtown Atlanta, to announce his candidacy.
As he formally launched his gubernatorial bid outside the state capitol, Jones called his campaign the "beginning of a movement whose time has come."
And he said that "for those of you who feel the incumbent governor didn't fight for you, a new day has dawned."
Trump has vowed to return to Georgia to campaign against Kemp when he’s up for reelection next year, to punish his onetime ally for refusing to help the then-president’s efforts last year to overturn the election results in Georgia. President Biden edged Trump in Georgia by less than 12,000 votes, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state in the White House race in over a quarter-century.
The ballots in Georgia were counted three times — the original Election Day count, a mandatory hand recount and a recount requested by the president's campaign.
Trump refused to concede to Biden and claimed for two months that there was massive voter fraud in Georgia and five other states where Biden narrowly won. Dozens of legal challenges by Trump and his allies were shot down, and then-Attorney General William Barr said his Justice Department had not seen fraud on the kind of scale that could flip the election. Trump repeatedly attacked Kemp for refusing to aid his attempts to reverse Biden's victory.
At a rally in Georgia on the eve of the state’s twin Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections, Trump pledged, "I'll be here in about a year and a half campaigning against your governor."
While it’s unclear if Trump will endorse Jones, the candidate on Wednesday tweeted out a video of himself standing in a crowd last week with... (Read more)
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