DUBLIN, Ga. After 2020, I saw what you saw, John Gordon, the insurgent challenger in Georgias upcoming Republican primary for attorney general, told a dozen or so Georgia GOP voters gathered in the dining room of a Golden Corral on Thursday evening. I was shocked. Frustrated. Mad. Disappointed. I went through those stages of grief. And I felt called to try and do something.

Gordon, who is attempting to knock off incumbent Attorney General Chris Carr in a race that will conclude Tuesday, has received considerably less attention than former Sen. David Perdue or Rep. Jody Hice, the conservatives waging similar challenges against Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, respectively.

But he is no less enthusiastic in his embrace of the idea that the 2020 presidential election in Georgia was stolen from Donald Trump, a lie that has become the cause clebre of the GOP and, in Georgia, of the trio of Trump-backed candidates challenging the states top three Republicans.

Theres no question in my mind that he won Georgia, Gordon said in an interview a few minutes later, as he sipped a soft drink across a four-top table inside the restaurant. This was a coup detat, and people need to wake up.

Trump didnt win Georgia, as multiple reviews of the election have confirmed. There is no evidence to back the claims Gordon and others have made that fraud marred the outcome of the contest, as multiple state-led investigations have proved. Joe Biden, as Carr has acknowledged, won the contest legitimately.

But in Gordons eyes, that admission and Carrs decision to back Kemp and Raffenspergers decision to certify the election and stand by the investigations that refuted fraud claims makes him totally responsible for the outcome of the 2020 election.

Along with Hice and Perdue, Gordon has turned the birthplace of the big lie into its next major battleground.