Raffensperger Addresses Forsyth Rotary Club on Election Integrity, Governor's Race

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made his case for the governor's mansion Thursday at the FoCAL Center, addressing the Rotary Club of Forsyth County in a community that is more than a campaign stop for him. His engineering and construction firm, Tendon Systems LLC, operates a manufacturing plant in Forsyth County, giving the visit a layer of personal stakes that most statewide candidates cannot claim.

The appearance was one stop on a sustained Rotary tour Raffensperger has used to sidestep the expensive television air war dominating the Republican gubernatorial primary. While rivals flood Georgia airwaves, Raffensperger has taken his pitch directly to civic and business club audiences, including a stop at Oconee County's Rotary on March 31 and the North Fulton club in Alpharetta earlier this spring.

Before the Forsyth Rotarians, Raffensperger leaned on his record as the state's top election official, citing a University of Georgia survey showing 92% of Georgia voters trust the results of recent elections and pointing to Georgia's No. 1 ranking for election integrity from the Heritage Foundation. He has touted specific operational improvements under his tenure: photo identification requirements across all voting methods, average Election Day wait times reduced to roughly two minutes, and same-night reporting of early and absentee ballot totals.

Those claims land in contested political territory. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who served as a fake Republican elector in 2020 and carries former President Donald Trump's endorsement, has framed Raffensperger as part of "Team Never Trump." Forsyth County billionaire Rick Jackson, founder of Jackson Healthcare, opened his own gubernatorial campaign with a television ad comparing Raffensperger's 2020 actions to those of Judas. Attorney General Chris Carr rounds out the field's top tier alongside several lesser-known candidates, with all of them converging on the May 19 Republican primary ballot.

Raffensperger's broader platform beyond elections centers on affordability and public safety, including calls for capping property taxes, expanding school choice, and restoring phonics-based reading instruction to boost fourth-grade performance statewide. He has committed $5 million of personal funds to the race and his campaign has reserved more than $3 million in advertising that began airing in April.

The Forsyth stop carries immediate practical relevance for county election administrators. The Forsyth County Department of Voter Registrations and Elections is actively recruiting more than 600 poll workers for the 2026 election cycle, a staffing demand that puts the county squarely inside the policy debate Raffensperger carried into Thursday's meeting. Forsyth County News reporters questioned Raffensperger directly during the visit on election integrity specifics and what a Raffensperger governorship would mean concretely for counties shouldering that kind of operational load.

Raffensperger announced his candidacy in September 2025, capping a career that ran from the Johns Creek City Council to the Georgia House before his 2018 statewide win. He survived a Trump-backed primary challenge from then-Rep. Jody Hice in 2022 by a wide margin, a result he frequently cites as evidence that his record can withstand an antagonistic political environment. Whether that argument reaches enough Republican primary voters before May 19 is the question he was still working to answer in Forsyth County Thursday.