Raffensperger campaign says threatening ‘manifesto’ received before Macon scare

Raffensperger has faced years of backlash from President Donald Trump’s supporters since he refused the president’s demand to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.

The Macon event early Tuesday was disrupted by what Raffensperger called an “active threat.” Authorities said a K-9 alerted deputies to an object inside a vending machine in a secure area of Middle Georgia Regional Airport before Raffensperger arrived, Bibb County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Sgt. Chris Williams said.

The object was removed and examined, and officials determined it was not hazardous. Williams said no one was inside the airport at the time.

Raffensperger went forward with the event in Macon and spoke in the airport’s parking lot, framing the incident as part of the cost of standing by his values.

“When you stand on principle, when you do the right thing, when you put people ahead of politics, not everyone will like it. In fact, some people may try to intimidate you or do you harm,” Raffensperger said.

Credit: Greg Bluestein

Credit: Greg Bluestein

Security stepped up precautions at all six of Raffensperger’s stops Tuesday. At his final stop in Atlanta, he told the AJC his candidacy seems to provoke people who “don’t want you to do the right thing no matter what.”

Raffensperger and his staffers have faced threats before, particularly during the tumult around the 2020 election as pro-Trump conspiracists blamed him and his staffers for the president’s defeat.

Raffensperger’s wife, Tricia, received an anonymous text in April 2021 saying: “You and your family will be killed very slowly.” She canceled regular weekly visits in her home with two of her grandchildren, and intruders broke into the home of her widowed daughter-in-law.

The threats against election workers during that period prompted Gabe Sterling, then a Raffensperger deputy, to issue a dramatic appeal for the president to “stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.”

“Someone’s going to get hurt,” Sterling, now a candidate to succeed Raffensperger, said at the Georgia Capitol in 2020. “Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed.”

The episode in Macon injects a volatile new element into the final days of the Republican primary race for governor, where Raffensperger is trying to claw his way into contention against billionaire health care executive Rick Jackson and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones.

Raffensperger has sought to carve out a lane in the Tuesday vote as a more traditional conservative who supports much of Trump’s agenda but rejects the president’s false claims of widespread election fraud.

His campaign is built around an appeal to mainstream Republicans, swing voters and old-school conservatives who see his defiance of Trump in 2020 as a mark of independence rather than betrayal.

But that stance has made him a pariah among many GOP activists. The Georgia Republican Party passed a resolution last year seeking to block Raffensperger from qualifying for office, a symbolic move that underscored the lingering anger toward him inside the party.

It did not stop him from entering the race.

Rather than holding large rallies or stumping at party gatherings, Raffensperger has largely campaigned through Rotary clubs and other civic venues, pitching himself as a steady hand focused on affordability and public safety while his GOP rivals feud with each other.

“They all have been talking about each other and running each other down,” he said at his Atlanta stop. “No one’s talking about the most important person. And that’s our fellow Georgians, the taxpayers, the people that actually do the voting in this race.”