Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stood up to Trump and wants to inspire a GOP revival. But he'll have to make it past his party's own voters first.

• Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wants to lead the charge on a major GOP reset.
• Raffensperger spoke to Insider about his new book "Integrity Counts" and his vision for the party.

"Honesty. Hard work. Decency. Patriotism," Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Insider in a recent interview when defining what he sees as the old-fashioned value system that he believes his party should once again embrace.

"They were just undergirded by integrity and character," he said of past generations of Americans, like his father, who served in World War II. "And those go back to our foundational values of I think, of being an upstanding, good, solid, citizen."

Raffensperger spoke to Insider ahead of the Tuesday publication of his new book "Integrity Counts." The book functions as part memoir, part day-by-day recounting of the whirlwind two months between Election Day 2020 and his infamous January 2 phone call with President Donald Trump, and part blueprint for how the GOP should recalibrate and move forward.

Raffensperger is a structural engineer-turned-politician who entered public service after losing his son Brenton to addiction. He took office as the state's chief election official in 2019, a pivotal moment for Georgia and American democracy.

In 2020, Raffensperger gained national prominence for standing in the way of Trump and his allies' attempts to overturn President Joe Biden's election victory in the state. In 2021, he's trying to pick up the pieces for himself and his party.

Beyond delivering some tough medicine for the GOP, Raffensperger pulls no punches when it comes to his Democratic opponents, devoting sections of his book to recapping his high-profile clashes with Georgia's 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and her group Fair Fight Action.

"My book is fact-based, both as it relates to Stacey Abrams, but also to the 2020 election. President Trump did come up short in the state of Georgia. And I understand that my party's grieving over that. But we have to face the brutal truth: as Republicans, we have not won the popular vote nationwide since 2004," Raffensperger told Insider.

"So we need to look at a message that really builds a bigger tent," he added. "What does that look like? Building a bigger tent while still holding on to our basic Republican values of conservatism, economic opportunity for people, and lifting people up to having a better life for themselves and for their children."

'Americans are aspirational people'

Before Raffensperger can carry out his own vision of a GOP revival and party reset nationwide, he has to make it past his party's own voters.

The Georgia Republican occupies a unique, and somewhat lonely, position in American politics as one of the only Republican statewide elected officials seeking reelection to his office after directly standing in the way of Trump's aggressive efforts to overturn his election loss.

Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, who nonchalantly declined a call from the White House while certifying the state's 2020 election results for Biden, and Nevada's GOP Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, censured by her own party for defending the integrity of her state's election, are both barred from running for reelection by term limits.

Raffensperger's upcoming reelection will serve as one the biggest tests yet of how deeply Trump's lies about the 2020 election permeate Republican politics.

He'll face two GOP challengers, including the Trump-endorsed Rep. Jody Hice, in the May 2022 primary. Like any politician, Raffensperger projected confidence that he'll win, telling Insider, "I've never doubted the goodness of the American people or Georgians."

But Raffensperger did acknowledge that his vision for a sharp GOP course-correction is hampered by a lack of common understanding over what the facts are - even over something as seemingly basic as who won the last election.

"I've been honest, I've been calm, I've been factual, I'm not trying to pick fights with anyone. I'm just stating what the facts are," Raffensperger said. "The sooner that people accept what the facts are, then the sooner we can move forward and reunite, as a Republican Party...with all of our different factions we have."

He listed them off: "We have our Goldwater Republicans, our Reagan Republicans, our Bush One Republicans, our Bush Two Republicans, our Trump Republicans, I don't know that we still have 50%. So we need to realize that we have to have more growth and grow the base of our party. And that's going to be with a positive aspirational message because Americans are aspirational people."

'I can do what I can do.'

Toward that point, Raffensperger invoked towering figures from American history like Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Teddy Roosevelt, his political role model Ronald Reagan, and his father as exemplifying values that the GOP should emulate today.

But forming any kind of GOP unity around common facts and values also relies on GOP voters showing up at all.

Raffensperger said he "would hope" 2022 will not see a repeat of the 2021 US Senate runoffs in Georgia, when, after being bombarded with misinformation and lies about the integrity of the election, voters from GOP stronghold areas in the state disproportionately stayed home, contributing to Democrats flipping back both Senate seats and control of the chamber.

"I know that one political party will be working hard on a unified basis to turn out their folks," Raffensperger said of the upcoming midterm elections. "I'm hoping, speaking as a Republican, that we turn out everyone. What my book does is explain that the machines are accurate, they do not flip. We did a 100% hand recount. Every allegation that was made, we checked it out, and they were never supported by the facts."

And, in a nod, to Georgia's newly-minted status as a competitive swing state, Raffensperger urged voters to "understand that whoever you pick in the primary needs be able to carry the day in November 2022," adding, "I'll be a very strong candidate in November 2022, because I've shown that I call balls and strikes just like the umpire does in the World Series."

The question that Raffensperger's reelection will answer in part is whether the notion of decency and a basic belief in democracy can outpace the growing incentives within his party to sow doubt about elections for political and financial gain.

"I can do what I can do, which is manage myself and be a person of integrity and walk with integrity. And that's what we've done," Raffensperger told Insider when asked about that tension. "I've stood for election integrity and stood for the rule of law, and other people will have to answer for their actions."