Georgia Republican primary voters will have only one name to choose from in the 2020 primary next March: Incumbent President Donald Trump.
The state party’s executive committee on Monday submitted only Trump’s name for consideration on the March 24, 2020 ballot.
Georgia would be one of several states to exclude the names of other Republicans from primary ballots.
According to a release issued by Georgia GOP, state party chairman David Shafer said the vote was unanimous and that “Trump was the only candidate with any significant level of support among Republican voters in Georgia who ‘unambiguously’ pledged to support the Republican nominee for President.”
Five candidates were considered by the state party, including former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh, now a talk show host, and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, the 2016 vice presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party.
The others were California businessman Roque De La Fuente and Fred Boddie-Yahshua of Atlanta, whose campaign is known as “President R19 Boddie.”
In a Twitter response on Monday, Walsh said:
“GaRepublicans just chose Trump over Georgians. Trump is a vulnerable criminal. Is the
#GAGOP so scared they have to protect him from the ‘significant support’ they say he’d have in a contested primary?”
Weld chimed in similarly on his Twitter account:
“Apparently Trump’s bromance with Putin extends to emulating the Russian’s approach to elections. The
#GAGOP just decided the Georgia Republican Presidential Primary ballot will have only one candidate on it: Donald Trump. What is DJT afraid of?”
According to The Hill, a political publication in Washington, the Minnesota GOP also has put only Trump’s name forward for its primary, while state Republican parties in Kansas, Alaska, South Carolina, Arizona and Nevada have cancelled their 2020 primaries or caucuses.
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Does Georgia allow write-ins on their primary ballots? If so, all the other R candidates should encourage everyone, not just their supporters, to write-in someone other than Trump as a protest against the procedure.
While I don’t think I approve of making that kind of decision so early in the game, I /know/ I don’t approve of candidates also wanting to get on there using unproven allegations (most of which happened outside the political arena, before he was even considering running) as slurs against a hopeful opponent.
Trump is not a vulnerable criminal … and saying that makes me wonder what else Walsh would do if elected. Weld’s “bromance” statement, and the insinuation that Trump bought his way onto the ballot as the sole person running, is in the same category. What they each are proposing to do better – and how – would be a lot more productive. Slamming an opponent helps nothing and no one.