The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Embattled Georgia GOP chair won’t run for another term
Shafer moves on after losses, backlash for Trump support.
Georgia GOP Chair David Shafer told Republican officials he’s not running for another term amid backlash over the party’s performance during the past two election cycles and scrutiny from prosecutors for his role in promoting Donald Trump’s lies claiming election fraud.
Shafer, a former state senator, informed members of the state GOP committee Friday he won’t seek a third term when the party votes this summer, according to three senior Republican officials who shared an email he sent to activists.
“I have felt for some time that I should refocus on my family which would include, at least for the short term, scaling back on my volunteer activities,” Shafer wrote in the email, which endorsed former state Sen. Josh McKoon as his successor.
Shafer announced his plans amid a brewing revolt from activists. He already faced a challenge from Rebecca Yardley, the 9th District GOP chair who entered the race with a pledge to energize the party’s grassroots. Others could soon announce their candidacies.
Shafer led the party during devastating losses in the 2020 election cycle that cost Republicans control of the U.S. Senate and helped tank Trump’s bid for a second term as president, then blamed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for the defeats.
He was a key promoter of Trump’s election fraud lies, and his role as a “fake” elector has potentially put him in the crosshairs of state and federal investigators weighing whether to file criminal charges against the former president and his allies on allegations they tried to illegally overturn the election.
Shafer alienated many of the state’s most powerful Republicans for picking the pro-Trump losing side in party primaries. Among them is Gov. Brian Kemp, the state’s most popular Republican, who has used his leadership committee to circumvent Shafer.
His supporters have touted his organizational efforts. Georgia GOP Executive Director Ryan Caudelle — a former Trump staffer — said Shafer’s leadership enabled “record-breaking” outreach in 2022, with more than 5.2 million doors knocked and 2.5 million calls made.
“The Georgia Republican Party’s efforts translated into winning every nonfederal statewide office, reelecting our legislative majorities and picking up a seat in Congress,” Caudelle said. “And we did it without going into debt.”
Republicans won every statewide contest last year but one: the U.S. Senate runoff between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, the former football star who was closely allied with Shafer and the Trump wing of the party.
Shafer was first elected to the position in 2019 after he was narrowly defeated by Geoff Duncan in the GOP runoff for lieutenant governor. He won a second term two years later with Trump’s endorsement.
In his note to the party’s leaders, Shafer depicted 2022 as “an incredibly dark environment in which the organs of law enforcement have been weaponized against Republicans.”
He wrote that he’s been subpoenaed by the U.S. House’s Jan. 6 committee, visited by federal agents and listed as a “target” for potential criminal prosecution by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as part of her probe of Trump’s effort to overturn the election.
He praised the state GOP’s executive committee for voting to pay the legal expenses of the slate of fake Trump electors who could also face criminal charges.
“I have raised the money to honor that commitment so that none of them have had to pay a penny out of pocket,” he wrote.