Georgia's former lieutenant governor backs Biden in high-profile defection from GOP

Not long ago, Geoff Duncan was seen as a rising star in GOP politics. Now, the former Georgia lieutenant governor says he’s voting for President Joe Biden in 2024, and he's urging other Republicans to do so, too.

“Unlike Trump, I’ve belonged to the GOP my entire life. This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass,” Duncan wrote in an op-ed published Monday in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia was a breaking point for Duncan, who along with other state GOP officials, like Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, defended the integrity of the state's elections and condemned Trump’s actions and rhetoric as false and undemocratic.

That break with Trump led Duncan to decide not to run for re-election in 2022 and to write a book about re-inventing the Republican Party without Trump.

Duncan, who is also a former professional baseball player and state lawmaker, was recruited to join the centrist third-party presidential ticket backed by No Labels earlier this year, but he ultimately declined.

The deep-pocketed Washington group announced in March that it was abandoning its 2024 presidential ambitions after being unable to find a credible candidate. Duncan appears to be closest they came to securing a candidate for the top of the the ticket, though No Labels kept much of its work private.

Duncan has since said in interviews that he seriously considered the No Labels ticket, but was not confident that any third-party candidate would have a real path to victory in November and worried he would merely be a spoiler.

With Trump now back atop the GOP and on track to be its nominee in November, Duncan criticized other erstwhile GOP skeptics of Trump for falling in line behind the former president instead of backing the current Democratic one.

“[T]he GOP will never rebuild until we move on from the Trump era, leaving conservative (but not angry) Republicans like me no choice but to pull the lever for Biden,” Duncan wrote in his new op-ed.

“The alternative is another term of Trump, a man who has disqualified himself through his conduct and his character," he continued. "The headlines are ablaze with his hush-money trial over allegations of improper record-keeping for payments to conceal an affair with an adult-film star."

Duncan went on to write that he disagrees with Biden’s policies and that Republicans who support Biden should simultaneously “work to elect GOP congressional majorities to block his second-term legislative agenda and provide a check and balance.”

In a statement, Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer said the campaign "is actively reaching out to Americans like Geoff Duncan, who put their country and concern for protecting our democracy before blind loyalty to Donald Trump and his self-centered campaign of revenge and retribution."

Singer said the campaign welcomes Duncan and all others who share their value for democracy, the rule of law, and public decency, adding that they "have a place in President Biden’s vision for America.”

Anti-Trump Republicans were a key piece of the coalition that helped Biden oust the former president in 2020, when Democrats highlighting the support of GOP officials in ads and speaking slots at the Democratic National Convention.

But some of those same pro-Biden Republicans said the president's outreach since has been lackluster since then, warning that his campaign needs to do more to win over so-called soft Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.

Democrats closely watching this year’s GOP primary also saw potential Biden supporters among the segment of voters won by former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, a moderate and Trump critic.

Biden’s team has yet to make a major public effort aimed specifically at those voters, but Democrats say the time for such a move would come closer to the election. In the meantime, they believe that Trump and his campaign will continue to denigrate Haley and her supporters, rather than try to win them back.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com