As soon as Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia failed, he went on a revenge mission against the top three Republicans in the state who opposed him: Governor Brian Kemp, Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Both Kemp and Raffensperger managed to survive primary challengers backed by Trump, but not Duncan who declined to run for re-election.

Duncan’s story might have ended there, another rising Republican star whose political career was ended by Trump, but he decided to keep speaking out, first as a pundit on CNN. Last year, he testified before an Atlanta grand jury that would go on to indict Trump for alleged crimes pertaining to the election. This summer, he addressed the Democratic National Convention in prime time. “This journey started for me as an anti-Trump journey,” he says. “But it’s grown into a pro-Kamala Harris journey.”

On Tuesday, that journey brought him to address a much smaller audience than the DNC but one that may be just as important. A crowd of about two dozen disaffected Republicans like himself gathered inside the backroom in a Mexican restaurant just off the Perimeter highway that encircles Atlanta. Munching on chips and sipping from margaritas that are the size of a household pet, they were rapt as Duncan delivered his pitch: Harris will govern as a moderate while jabbing at Trump as “a fake conservative” who spent profligately and failed to secure the southern border.

“If I’m wrong about Kamala Harris, she ends up being this strong left liberal that wants to just fall deep to the left … we’ll end up in a legislative log jam for four years,” Duncan says of his worst-case scenario. Then he turns to consider the worst case scenario for Trump winning. “Ukraine will fall, Western Europe will be under Vladimir Putin’s boot. We’ll have runaway inflation,” he adds, before also mentioning the threats to rule of law and the menace of Project 2025.

So-called Never Trump Republicans have captured media attention, in the way that heretics often do, ever since they first emerged in 2016 after failing to stop Trump’s nomination — and as it became clear that his appeal was not a passing fad but represented a deep strain with the Republican Party. Their track record since is debatable, but this election is almost surely their last and most important stand.

Perhaps no demographic has become more vital to the........

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