The Georgia Republican Party expelled Geoff Duncan, the Peach State’s former lieutenant governor and an outspoken critic of President-elect Donald Trump, from the party.
Turmoil among Georgia Republicans boiled over on Monday when the party’s Executive Committee voted Duncan out, citing his outspoken opposition to GOP political candidates at the state and national levels, his flirting last fall with a third-party presidential bid, his support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s and President Joe Biden’s Democratic presidential campaigns, and an alleged pattern of “false and exaggerated claims, including that he graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology.”
“Geoff Duncan is hereby banned from all property owned or leased by the Georgia Republican Party and all events held by or under the authority of the Georgia Republican Party,” a resolution from the party read.
Duncan slammed Josh McKoon, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, for expelling him from the GOP in a statement Monday evening.
“Hard to believe this is a good use of time for a party that’s only got a limited amount of time to figure out mass deportations, world peace and global tariffs. Learn how to take a victory lap — not light another dumpster fire,” the former lieutenant governor said in a post on X.
A one-time minor league baseball player, Duncan spent three terms in the Georgia state House before serving as the Peach State’s lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2023.
Throughout his tenure as the lieutenant governor, Duncan attracted attention for making moves that often put him at odds with his party.
He publicly criticized GOP candidate Herschel Walker’s 2022 Senate bid, saying he didn’t “respect” him. Duncan revealed he had refused to vote for Walker or Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) following the election.
“I showed up to vote this morning. I was one of those folks who got in line and spent about an hour waiting, and it was the most disappointing ballot I’ve ever stared at in my entire life since I started voting,” Duncan said during a CNN interview. “I had two candidates that I just couldn’t find anything that made sense for me to put my vote behind, and so I walked out of that ballot box showing up to vote but not voting for either one of them.”
In 2022, Duncan also refused to endorse Burt Jones, the Republican nominee to succeed him as lieutenant governor, citing his support for Trump after the former president said the 2020 election was stolen from him in Georgia.
The move launched a feud between the two men, with Jones saying in July 2024, “He was a minor leaguer then; he is a minor leaguer now. Everything [Duncan] does is amateur hour.”
However, Duncan is best known for his fiery opposition to Trump.
The now-expelled Georgia Republican has accused Trump of inciting the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, ridiculed him over the New York hush money indictment, and blasted the president-elect for questioning Biden’s win in the Peach State during the 2020 elections.
Duncan even contemplated mounting a third-party challenge to Trump as a No Labels candidate last year before withdrawing his name from consideration in March.
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He subsequently backed Biden over Trump for the presidency during the 2024 presidential election. When Biden dropped out of the race in July, Duncan switched his support to Harris and endorsed her at the Democratic National Convention in August.
McKoon told him to “cease referring to yourself as a Republican,” saying, “Geoff Duncan clearly decided to join with the Democratic Party, and particularly extreme elements of the Democratic Party,” in comments to Channel 2 Action News.
