Georgia Republicans get another Trump-Pence showdown as 2024 presidential contenders barnstorm the state convention
- Georgia Republicans are holding their state party convention in early June.
- Former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence are speaking on different days.
2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump and likely contender Mike Pence will resume their tug-of-war for the hearts and minds of Georgia Republicans next week as the estranged former running mates and other GOP hopefuls make their respective cases to local officials.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the embattled former president and the yet-to-declare former vice president have already locked down speaking slots for the two-day GOP convention, kicking off June 9. Pence is expected to chat up party delegates that Friday, while Trump closes out the gathering that Saturday.
Fellow 2024 challengers Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson are also scheduled to address attendees, while the AJC says former Trump administration alumna Nikki Haley is expected to fundraise in the area.
Aides to recent entrant Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is hopscotching across Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina this week to build support in those early primary states, declined to comment on whether he would participate in the Georgia GOP meeting.
A perennial battleground state, Georgians have been caught in the Trump-Pence crossfire for several years.
The vengeance-seeking former president soured on Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger after the GOP officials refused to go along with Trump's baseless claims of election fraud and "find" the votes he would have needed to negate President Joe Biden's lawful victory.
Trump convinced newly ousted Sen. David Perdue to return to the campaign trail in 2022 to try and primary Kemp, whom Pence wholly supported.
Pence, who split from Trump following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, told Georgians it was up to them to help shape the future of the GOP, while an aggrieved Trump blamed everyone but himself for losing the White House.
That short-lived proxy war ended with Kemp pummeling Perdue by 50 points — a not-so-shocking loss that Trump tried to pin on Perdue.
Trump took another reputational hit in Georgia that fall after backing scandal-plagued, first-time candidate Herschel Walker against incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. Warnock won that high-stakes, Senate-majority deciding runoff by 3 points.
Kemp, who won a second term in November 2022, is skipping the GOP convention altogether.