Governor Brian Kemp will announce his family re-election offer at the Georgia National Fairgrounds on Saturday, July 10, 2021 in Perry, Georgia. (Clay Teague / The Macon Telegraph via AP)
Brian Kemp often urges his supporters to “chop wood”, as the self-proclaimed “compatriot” urges a steady, deliberate approach. However, the Georgia governor also says he will “be scared” if he seeks a second term. Because politics in Georgia are not very calm until 2022.
Part of the Republican right flank joins Donald Trump, who blames Kemp for not doing more to undo the former president’s loss last year. Some moderate Republicans have since cooled down to a party under Trump’s control. And the Democrats have proven they can capitalize on winning both seats in the Georgia Senate in the January runoff, two months after President Joe Biden won the state’s 16 votes.
Now, 57-year-old Kemp must reshape the GOP coalition that helped him climb the political ladder of the state.
“We need everyone to get involved, because we know that the Democrats are united,” said Kemp on Saturday at the start of his election campaign in Perry, Georgia, south of Macon in front of more than 300 supporters.
The governor’s inner circle has planned so much since Kemp defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams by 55,000 votes – or 1.4 percentage points – out of more than 3.9 million ballots. In this competition, Kemp expanded typical GOP margins beyond the metropolitan areas of Georgia. But his advisors realized that four more years of a rapidly urbanizing, diversifying electorate could undo his meager statewide advantage if Abrams, as expected, goes for a rematch.
What Kemp and his team didn’t expect was the loss of Georgia to Trump in 2020 and the promise of retaliation against the governor and other state officials. Kemp has since been reprimanded by several local GOP committees and booed by a minority of Republican Congress delegates who roared for the far-fetched lead challenger Vernon Jones. Even on Saturday, one participant in a crowd piled up for Kemp shouted, “We need an exam,” reiterating Jones’ calls for 2020 to continue warming up.
Governor Brian Kemp will announce his family re-election offer at the Georgia National Fairgrounds on Saturday, July 10, 2021 in Perry, Georgia. (Clay Teague / The Macon Telegraph via AP)
Jones, a former Democratic state legislator, has so far proven no threat to Kemp in a primary election. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t harm the governor with the already troubled right flank while reminding the temperate suburbs of why they deviated from Republicans in the Trump era.
“You never used to challenge the incumbent governor of your party,” said Eric Tanenblatt, former chief of staff of two-time governor Sonny Perdue and a leading national fundraiser for Republicans. “That only makes you weaker as a party if you go to the federal election.”
Republicans need only look back at the January Senate runoff election for evidence. As Trump made false claims of electoral fraud challenged by courts, election officials and his own attorney general, turnout fell in GOP strongholds and Democrats took advantage of the hand-to-hand combat in the suburbs to send Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the Senate.
Kemp’s plan so far reflects how he has won three previous statewide competitions, including 2018: Playing to conservatives in rural and small-town Georgia while reaching out to enough moderates concentrated in Atlanta. His argument, which swings from Trump’s drama to the continuation of 20 years of GOP control.
“Our state has been on a tremendous path here for decades,” Kemp said in an interview with The Associated Press on Saturday. “And that’s because we had good leadership, not just in the governor’s office, but also in the general assembly.”
State House Minority Whip David Wilkerson, an Atlanta suburban Democrat, grudgingly praised Kemp’s approach: “I think he’s an incrementalist.” But Wilkerson said Kemp was getting credit for the money the Democrats poured into the economy, and said he believed people want “fundamental change.”
For the GOP base, Kemp’s strategy of pounding Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, an ally of the Democrats and Biden, amid an increase in crime, means posting a letter to the state school board urging members to be critical Baning racial theory from Georgia classrooms and saying that Democrats want “open” boundaries. “
In the middle, Kemp is promoting a pay raise for teachers, investments in rural broadband, and a GOP version of the Medicaid extension. He touts everyone for his “moderate reopening” after the initial closings of the COVID-19 pandemic and one of the lowest national unemployment rates in the country.
When it comes to the most controversial topic – the post-2020 election laws – Kemp is walking his tightest tightrope. Alluding to Trump’s tough supporters, Kemp signed a revision of the Republican-led general assembly that insists on restoring confidence in the Georgia elections. The bill blends stricter restrictions on postal voting and out-of-hours mailboxes, which Trump said is ripe for fraud, while expanding some options for early personal early voting. It also gives the state more power to usurp local authorities in elections, a move that Democrats and some civil rights activists see as an attack on highly democratic urban districts.
Avoid repeating Trump’s claim that the November results were fraudulent, however, Kemp notes that Abrams and her supporters had questioned his election two years earlier. Kemp insists that it is “just not true” that the new law was made “all in response to the big lie” that Biden stole the election. In an interview, he emphasized that more draconian proposals, such as the complete abolition of postal voting without an apology, “went too far” and therefore never reached his desk.
Liberal advocates have already filed several federal lawsuits to challenge the law, arguing that it disproportionately affects minority voters who lean towards democracy.
Meanwhile, the governor’s campaign trumpeted that he has raised $ 12 million so far – an impressive early sum intended to stifle the conversation that he will not be able to rival Abrams’ national fundraising skills if it repeats its efforts to become the nation’s first black female governor.
The question, however, is whether Kemp can effectively present himself as an uncompromising but still mainstream conservative in a political climate where Trump is casting the longest shadow.
Twin City Mayor Matt Donaldson and longtime Kemp supporter predicted that the Conservatives would “look to the facts” rather than “a lot of the rhetoric that is out there.” But he tacitly acknowledged Trump’s influence: “I would tell President Trump that I appreciate his service to our country, but I hope he continues to support conservative candidates for office.”
Given Georgia’s new tossup status, Democrats may be more optimistic about Kemp’s ability to withstand the momentum than some Republicans are.
Rep Debbie Buckner, the last rural white Democrat in the General Assembly, said Kemp made an impression when he came across tornado damage in Talbotton, east of Columbus, in 2019. “That was very meaningful” to the residents, she said.
Democrats have also vowed to pound Kemp for his dealings with COVID-19, including attempting to block local mask mandates, but are no longer sure of the power of the problem once the pandemic wears off. And Kemp can boast a strong economy and flush the state coffers, even if Republicans didn’t back federal pandemic aid.
“I’m not counting the governor,” said Wilkerson, chairman of the Democratic Parliament, even if “he has to run with Trump, whether he wants to or not.”
Democrats and Republicans also broadly agree that Kemp expects a potentially unifying variable: Abrams.
“I really have a feeling that much of the race will be race based,” said Buckner, explaining that most white voters in their district are unwilling to elect a black woman to be governor.
For his part, Kemp said “reminding people of my record that I didn’t have in 2018” will call for support. And even if Georgia Republicans range from arch-Conservative MP Marjorie Taylor Green to metropolitan Atlanta residents who voted for Biden, Kemp denied the idea that the GOP was too fractional to win a second term .
“It depends where you are. Some people may say that Marjorie Taylor Greene is a problem for the party, ”said Kemp. “But you know, when you’re up in her district she seems pretty popular. I respect the voters. I’m going to campaign for who I am to run nationwide. “
