Not long ago, Geoff Duncan was seen as a rising star in Republican politics. Now, Georgia’s former lieutenant governor says he will vote for President Joe Biden in 2024 and urges other Republicans to do the same.
“Unlike Trump, I have belonged to the Republican Party my entire life. This November, I will vote for a decent person with whom I disagree on politics, rather than a criminal defendant with no moral compass,” Duncan wrote in an opinion piece published on Monday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia was a breaking point for Duncan, who along with other state GOP officials such as Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, defended the integrity of the state. elections and condemned Trump’s actions and rhetoric as false and undemocratic.
This break with Trump led Duncan to decide not to run for re-election in 2022 and to write a book about reinventing the Republican Party without Trump.
Duncan, who is also a former professional baseball player and state legislator, was recruited to join the centrist third-party presidential ticket backed by No Labels earlier this year, but he ultimately declined.
The wealthy Washington group announced in March that it was abandoning its presidential ambitions for 2024 after failing to find a credible candidate. Duncan appears to be closer to securing a top candidate, although No Labels has kept much of its work under wraps.
Duncan has since said in interviews that he seriously considered the No Labels ticket, but was not confident that any third-party candidate would have a real path to victory in November and feared he would just be a spoiler.
With Trump now back at the top of the Republican Party and on track to be its nominee in November, Duncan criticized other longtime GOP skeptics of Trump for following the former president instead of supporting the current Democrat.
“[T]The Republican Party will never rebuild itself until we move on from the Trump era, leaving conservative (but not angry) Republicans like me no choice but to pull the lever for Biden,” Duncan wrote in his new op-ed.
“The alternative is another Trump term, a man who has disqualified himself through his conduct and his character,” he continued. “Headlines are ablaze with his secret trial over allegations of inadequate payment record keeping to hide an affair. with an adult film star.”
Duncan went on to write that he disagrees with Biden’s policies and that Republicans supporting Biden should simultaneously “work to elect GOP congressional majorities to block his second-term legislative agenda and provide a check and balance.”
Anti-Trump Republicans were a key part of the coalition that helped Biden unseat the former president in 2020, when Democrats highlighted the support of Republican officials in ads and speeches at the Democratic National Convention.
But some of those same pro-Biden Republicans said the president’s reach has been weak since then, warning that his campaign needs to do more to win over so-called soft Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.
Democrats closely following this year’s GOP primaries also saw potential Biden supporters among the segment of voters won over by former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, a moderate and Trump critic.
Biden’s team has yet to make a major public effort specifically targeting these voters, but Democrats They say the time for such a measure will come closer to the elections. However, they believe Trump and his campaign will continue to denigrate Haley and her supporters rather than try to win them back.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
