Incumbent Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and former House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who wants Kemp’s job, are entering the final leg of their campaign with very different programs for the state should they win.
The race draws national attention. After her narrow loss to Kemp in 2018, Abrams became a national figure, was considered for the 2020 vice presidency and is considered a Democratic leader of the future. In early 2019, she delivered the televised refutation of the Democrats in former President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.
Kemp also took the spotlight by distancing himself from Trump’s voter fraud allegations. He has been subpoenaed to testify before a Fulton County grand jury investigating Trump’s attempts to probe the 2020 Georgia election. But a judge has allowed him to postpone his appearance until after November’s election.
In the meantime, however, he has conspicuously slapped an opponent who has backed Trump to counter Kemp’s perceived lack of support. “Of all Georgia Republican officials on Trump’s wrong side, none has been more a target of the president’s anger than Republican Gov. Brian Kemp,” Greg Bluestein wrote in Politico in March 2022. Kemp still won his primary in May over Trump’s former nominee Senator David Perdue, by a margin of almost three to one.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp won the Republican primary convincingly despite opposing Donald Trump, in part by delivering what Republican voters wanted in his first term. Here he is speaking on May 24, 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Despite a steady influx of new voters, many from blue states, Abrams has failed to convert her national standing to a leading position in the polls. In the years leading up to the 2020 census, about 50,000 more people moved to Georgia annually than left.
Republican vision
Analysts say Kemp held on to Republican voters because he ruled as a conservative. His tough abortion law, which he signed into law in 2019, bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected – usually around six weeks into pregnancy. It came into effect after the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade overturned in June and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in July dismissed lawsuits filed to stop it.
This spring, Kemp signed a “constitutional carry law” allowing Georgians to carry a gun in public without a permit or background check. The law still requires a background check for retail gun purchases.
Kemp has been aggressive about reopening businesses in Georgia in 2020 after they closed in March due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Non-essential businesses such as barber shops, hair and nail salons and gyms were allowed to reopen in late April, bars and nightclubs in June. Kemp repealed mask laws some cities had passed and instead encouraged voluntary mask use. In March 2021, he ended most social distancing requirements. Schools reopened in August 2020, although some places have not followed suit. Georgia ranks 9th among states in terms of population but so far 12th in confirmed COVID cases.
And while Kemp did not support Trump’s voter fraud allegations, his Election Reform Act, signed into law in March 2021, fixes what many perceive as loopholes in the system, many of which revolved around permissive mail-in voting measures put into practice in 2020 during the pandemic. The reform measures again tightened postal voting and the use of mailboxes to deliver it. They gave the legislature greater control over elections, including the power to remove county election officials. The state, meanwhile, has continued its aggressive purge, begun by Kemp, a former secretary of state, of dead or relocated voters — and sometimes those who were simply inactive. Abrams and the Democrats have stepped up their allegations of voter suppression.
democratic vision
Abrams, meanwhile, sees a very different vision for Georgia’s future. She would repeal Kemp’s abortion law and reverse some of the provisions of his gun laws, which she says make it easier for criminals and the insane to carry guns and allow guns on campus. She would work against the “systematic barriers” she says her government has put in place for voting, and she advocates registering voters on election day.
Her campaign spans a long list of policy proposals that promise economic, social and educational mobility, affordable housing, rural revitalization and environmental resilience.
Their different approaches are evident in education. Kemp promised a $5,000 raise for teachers in 2018 and completed it this year. Abrams has proposed more aggressive teacher salary increases, base salaries from $39,092 to $50,000 and median salaries from $62,500 to $73,500, which she says would put Georgia — currently ranked 21st for teacher salaries — in the top 10 states for teacher salaries. Abrams estimated the pay rise would cost $1.65 billion. She wants to create 20,000 new training places and free up the technical college entrance qualification.
Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis in her office on Jan. 4, 2022. (Ben Gray/AP Photo)
Kemp recently announced a $25 million “learning loss grants” program aimed at helping elementary school kids who have fallen behind during COVID — particularly in school districts that have remained closed for extended periods — catch up. He called for more careers advisers and accelerated training of teacher assistants to become teachers. He said if re-elected he would fill the teacher shortage with new funding, but did not ask for any further pay rises. An Abrams spokesman derided “Brian Kemp’s last-minute half-measures in election year” as “too little, too late.”
Abrams has denounced the impending closure of Atlanta’s large Atlanta Medical Center and has tried to link the money-losing hospital’s failure to Kemp’s previous refusal to expand Medicaid under Obamacare’s terms. But analysts have said the hospital may have failed even if more currently uninsured people are covered by Medicaid.
Kemp has been wary of allocating unexpected federal government funds for COVID relief, announcing relatively small initiatives on specific issues. He recently announced a continuation of the state’s 29-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax moratorium through October 12. The suspension is costing the state $150 million a month in revenue, and Kemp, meanwhile, has been using state surpluses to pay for road construction.
Abrams clipped her work for her this fall. Real Clear Politics shows Kemp ahead of her by an average of 5.5 percentage points in multiple polls. A problem for them is their base — the black vote — which Georgia Democrats typically expect to get 90 percent or more. In an Atlanta Journal constitutional poll in July, she received just 80 percent of the black vote — 5 points fewer than Senator Raphael Warnock, who is running for re-election to the Senate. Some analysts say it’s particularly weak in black men.
Critics say she’s become complacent as the darling of the national press, and because she gets most of her money from out-of-state donors, she hasn’t campaigned hard enough on behalf of Georgia voters. Abrams appeared to be targeting black men’s voices as she chatted with radio host and television personality Charlamagne Tha God, rapper 21 Savage and attorney Francys Johnson. They discussed how their programs would benefit black men.
Former South Carolina Gov. and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley came to Georgia last week to campaign with Kemp.
consequences
