As he bids for a second term as Georgia’s top election administrator, however, Raffensperger is not so much standing in the gap as he is falling through it. A Trump loyalist in Congress, Representative Jody Hice, is challenging him in a primary with the former president’s enthusiastic endorsement, and the state Republican Party voted last month to censure him over his handling of the election. GOP strategists in the state give Raffensperger no chance of prevailing in next May’s primary. “I would literally bet my house on it. He’s not going to win it,” Jay Williams, a Republican consultant in Georgia unaffiliated with either candidate, told me. Another operative, speaking anonymously to avoid conflicts in the race, offered a similar assessment: “His goose was cooked the day Georgia’s presidential-election margin was 12,000 votes and Trump turned on him.”... Perhaps the most important question in the primary is how Hice would respond if he were secretary of state in 2024, and Trump, running to reclaim the White House, tried to pressure him to overturn another Democratic win in Georgia. Would he stand firm as Raffensperger did? “I do not think Jody Hice is anybody’s puppet,” Representative Austin Scott, another Georgia Republican who has endorsed Hice, told me. The GOP operative I spoke with wasn’t so sure, however. “There’s no evidence to suggest that he’d be his own man,” the strategist said. “There’s no evidence to suggest that he’d think for himself.” When I put the question to Hice, he didn’t answer directly. Trump “wouldn't need to call me,” he said. “I will abide by the law and abide by the Constitution, and when there are issues of potential fraud, and mismanagement in elections, we will investigate. That's the job of the secretary of state, which Raffensperger did not do.”