AP Photo/John Bazemore
- GOP Lt. Gov. Duncan remains incensed by efforts to overturn the presidential election results, per a new book.
- Duncan has been highly critical of former President Trump’s debunked election fraud claims.
- The lieutenant governor is focusing on a “GOP 2.0” movement to make the party more inclusive.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan of Georgia, who backed the validity of the 2020 presidential election when many members of his party were pushing unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, said that he was “still angry” over attempts by GOP lawmakers to “invalidate their own constituents’ votes.”
Duncan, who was seen as a rising star in state politics when he was first elected in 2018 alongside Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, has been a staunch opponent of former President Donald Trump’s crusade against the Georgia election results, which saw the incumbent narrowly lose the state to now-President Joe Biden last fall.
In his newly-released book, “GOP 2.0,” the lieutenant governor presented a case for a more independent and inclusive party, while also stressing the consequences of Republican mistrust in voting systems, which he says included the loss of two GOP Senate seats formerly held by David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the January runoff elections.
Duncan, referencing former US Senator and 1996 GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole, said that the World War II veteran always kept a notecard of the 10th Amendment in his pocket.
The amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The lieutenant governor said that elections fall squarely under the powers granted by the amendment and chafed at the fact that Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, with the backing of Trump, 17 GOP attorneys general, and over 100 GOP members of Congress, sued Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin over their election laws.
Duncan was highly critical of how Perdue and Loeffler, along with seven GOP members of Congress from Georgia and 28 GOP state lawmakers, supported the lawsuits.
“They wanted to invalidate their own constituents’ votes and strip their own state of its sovereignty!” he wrote.
After the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case, Duncan said he believed that the fight against Biden’s victory and states’ rights was over, but was mistaken.
“Seven Republican senators and 138 House members continued fanning the flames of misinformation and assaulting the principle of states’ rights by objecting to the Electoral College count on January 6, 2021,” he wrote. “They overtly tried to claim principle while covertly taking sledgehammers to democracy’s pillars. Some pointed to the doubt existing among the public.”
He emphasized: “Hearing that, I almost shouted into the television: ‘You created the doubt in the first place!'”
The lieutenant governor went on to explain how some GOP lawmakers were fundraising off of their desire to overturn the election, which he said was rooted in deception.
“These elected leaders continued propagating lies and baseless doubt,” he wrote. “Several US Senators sent fundraising solicitations to Georgians, promising to fight fraud in Georgia from afar if good Georgians could just send them $10, $50, $100, or more. This band of senators and representatives essentially voted to discount more than 10 million ballots legally cast by Americans citizens in elections fairly run by sovereign states dutifully exercising their responsibilities under the Tenth Amendment.”
He added: “Outsiders, and unfortunately Georgia officials, too, tried to deceive my nearly 11 million statewide constituents, take their money, and scrap their votes. I wasn’t having it. I am still furious.”
Duncan announced earlier this year that he would not run for reelection in 2022 and would instead focus on the GOP 2.0 independent movement to broaden the Republican coalition.
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