Republican state Rep. Tim Fleming won Georgia’s Republican runoff for secretary of state, defeating former DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones and advancing to a November matchup with Democrat Penny Brown Reynolds.
Fleming’s win was called shortly after polls closed, with the state lawmaker leading Jones by roughly two-thirds of the vote, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The result came in a race highlighted by The New York Times, with the next secretary of state set to help shape election administration in a presidential battleground still defined by the 2020 vote fight.
Fleming is a Covington Republican with deep ties to Gov. Brian Kemp. Before winning a state House seat in 2022, he served in senior roles in the secretary of state’s office when Kemp held the job and later worked as Kemp’s chief of staff, WABE reported.
Jones, a former Democrat turned Trump ally, ran as the more aggressive election-fraud candidate, while Fleming tried to appeal to Trump-aligned voters without going as far. The Associated Press reported Fleming has said he believes there were 2020 “irregularities” but is “not running on conspiracy theories,” and wants Georgia to eventually move toward hand-marked paper ballots.
The Republican nominee will face Brown Reynolds, a former Fulton County judge who beat Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett in the Democratic runoff. Brown Reynolds has argued the office must rebuild confidence through transparency and accountability, WABE reported.
Georgia’s secretary of state is best known for overseeing elections, but the office registers voters, tracks corporate filings, grants professional licenses and oversees the securities market. That gives the winner power over both ballot administration and business regulation.
The November race is likely to center on voter confidence, absentee voting, voting machines and whether Georgia’s next election chief continues or reverses the Raffensperger-era approach before the 2028 presidential election.
