From WNYC Studios, it's Brian Lair, a daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, May 24th.

Today is a very important primary day in several southern states, especially in Georgia,

as you may have been hearing on the news,

where there are several tests of how attached Republican voters are to Donald Trump's false

claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump is backing gubernatorial candidate in Georgia,

David Perdue, who echoes Trump on the election lie. Mike Pence is backing incumbent Governor Brian Kemp,

who refused to throw out the 2020 election results. Down ballot, Secretary of State Brad

Raffensberger, who also certified the election, is being challenged by Trump-backed candidate Jody

Heist. Today's voting follows the gubernatorial primary win in Pennsylvania this month by Doug

Mastriano, who was a January 6th participant and who Democrats fear would use his power as governor

to cancel a future Democratic presidential election victory in that state, whether there is evidence of fraud or not. Democrats see democracy

itself at stake in these Republican primaries. There was also the partial test in the Georgia

primary of the restrictive new election law, which was based on the false election fraud claims,

and makes it harder to vote in a variety of ways. But it's only a partial

test because the critics say the law is targeted at Democratic areas, which are not voting

much in this election with the Republican primaries being the main contests. There's at least one

interesting test for Democrats today. It's a congressional primary runoff in Texas involving the long-time

incumbent Henry Quayar against progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros. Quayor is the only Democrat

in Congress who opposes abortion rights, and obviously that's become much more salient as a voting

issue since the Alito draft was released. We get a take on today's elections

and the primary season so far from Washington Post columnist Henry Olson. He is also a senior

fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center think tank and he is the author or co-author of two

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