MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Geoff Duncan was the No. 2 elected official here in Georgia. He served as lieutenant governor from 2019 until last year. And when I tell you that he is a lifelong Republican, you might raise your eyebrows to listen to him delivering a keynote address this summer at, of all places, the Democratic National Convention.
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GEOFF DUNCAN: Let me be clear to my Republican friends at home watching - if you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, you're not a Democrat, you're a patriot.
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KELLY: Geoff Duncan joins me now at the WABE studios here in Atlanta. Geoff Duncan, welcome.
DUNCAN: Thank you. I approve that message.
KELLY: (Laughter) What was the breaking point for you, a lifelong Republican?
DUNCAN: Simply put, it's Donald Trump. The heartburn started to build as I watched him govern for four years as a state representative and then in office. And I held my nose as long as I possibly could, and then I just eventually ran out of patience for somebody who walked into their job ignorant and unprepared to lead a country.
KELLY: You still consider yourself a Republican?
DUNCAN: Absolutely. Absolutely. I've got a life of work as a conservative - you know, five years as a state legislator, then I ran for lieutenant governor. And I think the hardest-hitting accusation against me was "Geoff Duncan is too conservative to be a statewide elected official."
But there's one important difference - I'm conservative. I'm just not angry. I feel like there's an opportunity to build consensus, and my four years as lieutenant governor here in Georgia gave me the opportunity to test-drive this thesis that you could work with the other side. You could take Ronald Reagan's mantra of, you know, somebody who's with you 80% of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20% traitor. I got to see that play out firsthand, working with Democrats and Republicans as lieutenant governor and president of the Senate.
KELLY: Why do you think so few of your fellow Republicans are not following suit? Because the list of prominent Republicans making the decision you have is pretty short.
DUNCAN: I think there's two parts to people. And, certainly, everybody listening knows this in their business life. They know this in their personal lives. But there's the public-facing and there's the private-facing. I don't know what - the right percentage to throw to it, but there's a huge number of Republicans that all agree that Donald Trump is not the future of the party. They don't support his activities. They don't support his actions. But you only hear that privately, right? To swim upstream publicly takes, you know, a big toll on your life. I mean, I still, to this day...
KELLY: Well, and it can be political suicide.
DUNCAN: Well, yes - even more than that. As a dad raising three kids and married to my high-school sweetheart, you know, getting a call from them, saying, hey, we just received another death threat, or somebody's screaming at one of us at the grocery store or at the theater or - you pick your place.
KELLY: That's happened?
DUNCAN: That's not - oh, absolutely. That's not very fun, but I get it. I've just chosen to take a different path. I've chosen to stand up and try to make a difference.
KELLY: Have Democrats done enough to welcome people like you - understanding you're not looking to join the Democratic Party, but you would like to work with them?
DUNCAN: They've been fantastic. You know, quite honestly, I've not had a single person approach me about my positions that are different than, obviously, theirs, on a number of - you name the issue - knowing that I'm on the other side of a number of these issues.
But, you know, it's - I got to see this test-driven in the state Senate when I was the president of the Senate. You know, I never viewed anybody in the Democratic Party as an enemy. We were just on opposite sides of issues, and, you know, one of the learning lessons for me was - we had enough majorities in the Senate where we could pass, in Georgia, anything that we wanted to, essentially, just because we have enough Republican majorities. But I always felt like the quality of the legislation that we finally sent to the governor's desk was always better when it was bipartisanly voted on and supported.
Look, the job of president has very little to do with affecting all of our day-to-day lives - our traffic, our schools, our community safety. But a president's most important job is setting the tone and tenor of the country - the direction. And I can't wait for that leader to show up that actually cares more about the future of this country than the future of their political career. We'll see.
KELLY: What's the future hold for you? You don't sound done with politics.
DUNCAN: I don't know. You know, I've got so much work in front of me to heal and rebuild the party. I've committed my life to it. I didn't get beat for the job of lieutenant governor. I chose not to run because I didn't feel like it was a big enough platform to do the work that I needed to do. If the Republican Party gets itself back together and shows a willingness to take our medicine, absolutely, I'd love to jump head-first back into politics. But until then, there's work to be done.
KELLY: Geoff Duncan, thank you.
DUNCAN: Thank you very much.
KELLY: Geoff Duncan, former lieutenant governor of Georgia, lifelong Republican, as you heard, talking with us about why he is voting for Kamala Harris. And we talked with him as part of our We, The Voters series. You can find more of that reporting at We, The Voters at npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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