Vernon Jones and Tim Fleming are heading to a runoff after neither claimed at least 50% of the vote in Georgia’s Republican primary for secretary of state on Tuesday.

The Republican field included Jones, Fleming, Gabriel Sterling, Kelvin King and Ted Metz, while Democrats Cam Ashling, Dana Barrett, Adrian Consonery Jr. and Penny Brown Reynolds competed for their party’s nomination for Georgia’s top election officer.

The race underscored how disputes stemming from the 2020 presidential election, including claims from President Donald Trump that the contest was stolen, continue to shape debates over voting laws and election security years later.

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The winner of the runoff on June 16 will advance to the general election in November, where control of the office overseeing voter registration, election certification and ballot administration is expected to remain a closely watched issue in one of the nation’s most competitive battleground states.

Sterling, Georgia’s former chief operating officer in the secretary of state’s office, entered the race with statewide name recognition after publicly defending Georgia’s handling of the 2020 election.

Jones, a former Democratic state lawmaker turned Trump ally, campaigned as a staunch supporter of the president and emerged as a fierce critic of the state’s election system.

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King is a general contractor who previously ran for U.S. Senate and is married to State Election Board member and conservative commentator Janelle King.

Fleming previously worked in the secretary of state’s office when current Republican Gov. Brian Kemp held the position. The former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party pitched himself as a conservative focused on tightening election procedures.

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Metz, the Libertarian Party’s 2022 gubernatorial nominee, also joined the GOP primary field.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who drew national attention after rejecting efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results, is running for governor.

This is a developing story. Check back for the latest election results and updates.

WASHINGTON — In the latest escalation of a fight over the use of paid social media creators, Tom Steyer’s campaign for governor filed a complaint Tuesday accusing influencers who posted content supportive of Xavier Becerra’s campaign of failing to disclose that they had been paid, which is required by California law.

One of the two influencers accused, however, said she had not been paid by the Becerra campaign to create posts supporting his candidacy.

The complaint, filed with California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, accuses Jay Gonzalez of producing at least 14 pro-Becerra posts on Instagram and Facebook in late April and early May, after he was hired by the campaign, and only belatedly editing the posts to acknowledge they had been sponsored by the campaign.

The complaint also said that a social media creator named Maggie Reed, who posts under the username mermaidmamamaggie, created four pro-Becerra posts on Instagram and had previously offered to create paid posts for another gubernatorial campaign.

The complaint alleges that Becerra’s campaign failed to disclose payments to both influencers in its campaign filings.

But Reed said she had not been paid by the Becerra campaign for her posts.

“I have never accepted, nor have I been offered, money from Xavier Becerra’s campaign. I endorsed Becerra because of his policies and proven track record,” Reed said in a statement.

The Becerra campaign maintained that it has not paid influencers who have created posts in support of the campaign.

“All of the content you see online is entirely and purely organic,” said Becerra spokesman Jonathan Underland.

Becerra and Steyer have been the top two Democratic candidates in recent polling for the governor’s race, with Becerra consistently maintaining a slight edge in those polls.

The complaint by Steyer’s campaign comes after two influencers who support Becerra filed a complaint last week accusing social media creators hired by the Steyer campaign of failing to disclose that they had been paid to produce their posts.

The campaign of the billionaire candidate for governor had previously disclosed payments to some influencers with large audiences, including one creator with the user name zayydante, who has 1.8 million followers on TikTok, and another with the user name littleyeg, who has nearly 350,000 followers on TikTok. The complaint filed last week said that both of these influencers failed to disclose that they had been paid by the campaign to produce content.

The complaint also highlighted several accounts created by user who don’t appear to live in California who created posts promoting Steyer and, in at least one case, posted elsewhere that they had been paid by the campaign.

The influencers who filed the original complaint said they saw the newly filed complaint as an attempt by Steyer’s campaign to deflect criticism.

“All he’s done is attack his opponent instead of taking accountability for violating the law,” said Kaitlyn Hennessy, one of the two influencers who filed the complaint against Steyer’s campaign. Hennessy and the other influencer who filed the complaint both said they have not been paid by the Becerra campaign.

In a post on Substack, Steyer defended his campaign’s use of paid social media influencers and said that it had been transparent about their use.

“Every creator we compensate has been and will be publicly disclosed as required by law,” he wrote.

Under a California law passed in 2023, social media creators who create paid content on behalf of a political campaign are required to disclose in their post that the material was sponsored and who paid for it.

The onus is on creators to provide the disclosure, but campaigns are required to notify influencers they hire of the requirement.

Violation of the rules doesn’t trigger criminal, civil or administrative penalties but the FPPC can take alleged offenders to court and ask a judge to force compliance with the law.

Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is still pursuing a diplomatic deal with Iran but remains “locked and loaded” to restart the military campaign if nuclear talks collapse.

“It takes two to tango,” Vance told reporters at a White House press briefing. “We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon.

“So as the president just told me, we’re locked and loaded,” Vance added. “We don’t want to go down that pathway. But the president is willing and able to go down that pathway if we have to.”

The administration sees two paths forward, according to Vance: a negotiated agreement that permanently blocks Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, or renewed U.S. military action.

VANCE WARNS IRAN THAT ‘ANOTHER OPTION ON THE TABLE’ IF NUCLEAR DEAL NOT REACHED

“We think the Iranians want to make a deal,” Vance said. “The president of the United States has asked us to negotiate in good faith. And that’s exactly what we’ve done.”

But Vance warned that diplomacy will not come at the cost of Trump’s core demand that Tehran never obtain a nuclear weapon.

“There’s an option B, and the option B is that we could restart the military campaign to continue to prosecute the case, to continue to try to achieve America’s objectives,” Vance said. “But that’s not what the president wants. And I don’t think it’s what the Iranians want either.”

TRUMP WARNS IRAN’S ‘CLOCK IS TICKING’: MOVE ‘FAST’ OR ‘THERE WON’T BE ANYTHING LEFT’

The exchange came after Trump said he was just an hour away from ordering fresh attacks on Iran on Monday night.

“We were getting ready to do a very major attack [Tuesday], and I put it off for a little while — hopefully maybe forever,” Trump said, “because we’ve had very big discussions with Iran, and we’ll see what they amount to.”

“There seems to be a very good chance that they can work something out,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “If we can do that without bombing the hell out of them, I’d be very happy.”

The announcement marked the latest shift in Trump’s handling of the fragile ceasefire reached in mid-April. For weeks, the president has warned Iran that fighting could resume if it did not accept a deal, while repeatedly setting deadlines and then backing away from them.

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Over the weekend, Trump warned that “the Clock is Ticking” and said Iran needed to move “FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them.”

Trump first disclosed the pause in a social media post Monday, saying he had ordered the U.S. military to be ready “to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice” if an acceptable deal is not reached.