ATLANTA — Gabriel Sterling, a former aide to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, announced on Wednesday that he is running to take over the job.
Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Mark Winne sat down with Sterling, who gave him his first on-camera confirmation of his candidacy.
“I’m running for Secretary of State to keep Georgia the best and safest place to vote in America,” Sterling said.
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Sterling served on the Sandy Springs City Council for seven years, but he says his high-ranking roles with the Secretary of State’s Office during the 2020 election helped his name become well-known.
He is running as a Republican and says that his public statements defending the integrity of the 2020 election gained him some supporters, but also tarnished his reputation with some of President Donald Trump’s strongest supporters.
“When I go around the state of Georgia, I have many, many more people thank me for the work that we have done than ever say anything disparaging about it,” he said.
Sterling says he’s received death threats, had to increase security at his home, and was the victim of a swatting incident.
“You go into the Twitterverse, it’s still pretty bad out there, but a lot of that’s Russian bots, so we kind of roll with it,” he said.
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Despite all that, he says he wants to lead the office.
“I got a responsibility to the voters of Georgia and a responsibility to do the right thing and I’m gonna do it,” Sterling said.
He says election security in Georgia is as strong as anywhere else in the United States.
“We are constantly improving. We are constantly evaluating. The threat environment changes every week, every month, every year,” he said. “We have foreign actors, we have domestic actors, who are doing things to try to undermine the system, both at a psychological level, but also attack it at a fundamental cyber level, which we always have to be prepared for.”
Sterling is one of at least eight Georgians running for Secretary of State, including fellow Republicans Kelvin King, Vernon Jones and Tim Fleming and Democrats Adrian Consonery Jr., Penny Brown Reynolds, Dana Barrett and Cam T. Ashling.
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