Georgia Republicans say they know a profitable message for 2024: Under President Biden, voters are battling inflation, fuel costs are on the rise and undocumented migrants are streaming throughout the southern border.

But they worry Donald J. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, received’t be capable of keep on message.

Mr. Trump’s obsession with the 2020 election, now heightened by two legal instances over his efforts to steal it, threatens to reopen wounds within the state’s G.O.P. which have bedeviled it within the two and a half years since he pushed to overturn Mr. Biden’s narrow victory there. If Mr. Trump is the nominee, it’s unlikely he would include his vitriol towards the officers who defied him to certify the 2020 election outcomes, together with the state’s standard governor — making for potential competing visions.

“I don’t think he’ll let us” unite, stated Jack Kingston, a former House Republican from Georgia and a Trump ally. “His nature isn’t to sit down and say nice things, even about Brian Kemp, one of the most successful governors in the country.”

Like many Republicans, Mr. Kingston believes that Mr. Trump’s false claims that the election in Georgia was rigged value the G.O.P. two Senate seats in runoffs in January 2021. Democrats flocked to the polls to safe victories for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, whereas many Republican voters appeared to heed the previous president’s warnings that the state’s election system was “rigged” and stayed dwelling.

Mr. Trump’s false claims will now most certainly be on trial within the state — and in its most populous county, Fulton — because the presidential election heats up. The 41-count indictment is essentially the most sweeping of the 4 legal instances that Mr. Trump faces, stretching from the Oval Office to the Georgia secretary of state’s workplace to the elections workplace in tiny Coffee County, where Trump allies successfully copied sensitive software.

Republicans in Georgia “have always had fissures,” stated Rusty Paul, the Republican mayor of Sandy Springs, a quickly rising Fulton County suburb abutting the capital metropolis, Atlanta, to the north. Voters in North Georgia and different rural stretches are typically staunchly conservative. Voters within the populous suburbs of Atlanta had been as soon as reliably Republican, however extra average. Low-country Republicans in Savannah are nonetheless one other breed.

But essentially the most tough disconnect for the time being is the pro-Trump management of the Georgia Republican Party, versus the voters who soundly rejected the first candidates handpicked by Mr. Trump in 2022. Those Trump-backed candidates challenged state officers, together with Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who refused to associate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In a runoff election, a small however essential slice of Georgia Republicans cast ballots for Mr. Warnock or stayed dwelling altogether, serving to the Democrat win a full six-year time period in opposition to Mr. Trump’s chosen U.S. Senate candidate, the retired soccer star Herschel Walker.

Senior Republicans within the state consider the eventual presidential nominee will safe the assist of the hard-core Republican base. They’re extra involved concerning the Republican voters who backed both Mr. Kemp and Mr. Warnock — and who recoil on the celebration management’s ardently pro-Trump stance.

“That disconnect between the Republican leadership and the rank-and-file voters creates organizational problems,” Mr. Paul stated, including, “How do you get voters fired up and ready to go when they disagree with you?”

The preliminary response of Georgia’s Republican base to Monday’s indictment, Mr. Trump’s fourth, is more likely to mirror the nationwide Republican response: rally across the candidate. But over time, Mr. Paul predicted, that might change, suggesting that “there’s beginning to be some fatigue with President Trump.”

Mr. Kemp refuted stolen election claims that Mr. Trump made on Truth Social on Tuesday, saying that elections in Georgia are “secure, accessible and fair.”

“The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus,” he wrote on X, the location previously often known as Twitter.

Mr. Raffensperger additionally weighed in: “The most basic principles of a strong democracy are accountability and respect for the Constitution,” he stated in a press release. “You either have it or you don’t.”

Mr. Kemp has dedicated to supporting the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 no matter who it’s. But he has saved his distance from the celebration’s far-right factions. Neither he nor Mr. Raffensperger attended the state celebration conference in June — an occasion that when served as a conservative confab peppered with unflashy enterprise conferences however has now turn out to be beholden, within the eyes of some state conservatives, to tradition wars and election denialism.

Georgia, with its 16 electoral faculty votes and genial suburban Republicans, has never been terribly friendly to Mr. Trump’s model of pugilistic politics. Mr. Trump’s 50.8 % in 2016 was down from Mitt Romney’s 53.3 % in 2012 and George W. Bush’s 58 % in 2004. The pattern continued in 2020 when Mr. Trump slipped below 50 percent and lost to Mr. Biden by 11,779 votes.

Geoff Duncan, Georgia’s Republican former lieutenant governor and a fierce Trump critic, emerged from grand jury testimony on Monday and stated, “We’re either as Republicans going to take our medicine and realize the election wasn’t rigged” or lose once more.

“Donald Trump was the worst candidate ever in the history of the party, even worse than Herschel Walker, and now we’re going to have to pivot,” he stated. “We want to win an election in 2024. It’s going to have to be someone other than Donald Trump.”

That entreaty contrasted with the conclusion of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Republican and Trump ally who represents Northwest Georgia. “Corrupt Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis’ ‘investigation’ (WITCH HUNT) of President Trump dragged on for over two and a half years, just in time to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election,” she wrote on X. “That’s not a coincidence. That’s election interference.”

Mr. Biden’s allies recommend that Mr. Trump’s ongoing campaign in opposition to Georgia Republicans may assist Democrats preserve the state in 2024.

“Donald Trump is the one candidate around which Democrats can rally and will turn out to vote against him,” stated Fred Hicks, an Atlanta-based Democratic political strategist. “This is a real crisis moment for Republicans who care about electability.”

Joshua McKoon, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, stated he thought the indictment would drive Republican voters within the state to unite round what they see because the politically motivated focusing on of not solely the previous president however a number of state figures, together with a sitting state senator and the previous chairman of the state celebration. But, he added that very same improvement may have a chilling impact on efforts to recruit and set up state activists.

“I think the intent of this kind of activity is to discourage people from being involved,” Mr. McKoon stated. “It’s sort of like sending a message, ‘you better be careful about how active you are in the party or you may find yourself criminally indicted.’”

Mr. Trump, ought to he be the Republican nominee, would nearly definitely preserve his conservative base of assist by subsequent 12 months. But for any G.O.P. candidate to achieve 2024, she or he would want to woo Georgia’s average and swing voters — the identical small group whose distaste for Mr. Trump in 2020 helped Mr. Biden to victory, and who elected each Mr. Kemp and Mr. Warnock in 2022.

Cole Muzio, president of the Georgia-based conservative group Frontline Policy Council, known as Mr. Trump’s standing within the state “very dubious at best,” ought to he win the Republican nomination. For the G.O.P. to hold the state within the subsequent presidential election, he added, “it can’t be about 2020.”

“Good grief, we can’t keep re-litigating 2020 because if we do, we will lose the most consequential election in my life,” he stated.