ASHBURN, Georgia — When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp refused to meddle in the 2020 presidential elections on behalf of then-President Donald Trump, some feared it could be a career-ender.
A caravan of horn-honking Trump supporters paraded past the governor’s mansion almost daily. There were threats against Kemp’s family, and Trump himself pledged to boot the career conservative out of office. The president’s pal, Lin Wood, encouraged Trump supporters to keep up the heat on the Republican governor.
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“I want you to go to the governor’s mansion. I want you to circle it. I want you to blow your horn until Brian Kemp comes outside and orders a special session of the Georgia legislature,” Wood told an amped-up audience in Alpharetta. “Then he can resign, and as far as I am concerned, they can lock him up.”
In the months that followed, Kemp became a verbal punching bag for Trump — but it was Kemp who would get the upper hand.
Georgia served Trump a big slice of humble pie in May when Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger easily beat their Trump-endorsed rivals. A GOP congressional runoff a month later turned into a proxy war between Kemp-endorsed Mike Collins and Trump-endorsed Vernon Jones, with the former coming out on top.
Even though Trump saw his endorsement power evaporating in the Peach State, it still carried a lot of weight elsewhere. Candidates across the country with his stamp of approval won 91% of the time in open primaries, according to an NPR tally. Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, five of the six who ran for reelection faced Trump-endorsed primary challengers, and only two won.
But in Georgia, Kemp was king.
The governor kept up the momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic when he pushed for businesses to stay open and students to return to schools, two topics he told the Washington Examiner resonated with Republican voters.
“It reminded people what my record was, and the more they heard that, I think the more they came to their senses,” Kemp said at a campaign stop at Carroll’s Sausage & Country Store in south Georgia. “Plus, they heard, too, what the truth was, and that a lot of the things that people were wanting me to do, I didn’t have the constitutional power to do. I think they started realizing, too, that I followed the law and the Constitution, and that’s what conservatives and a lot of Republicans want in their leaders. They want leaders that are going to protect and defend the Constitution and the laws of the state, and that’s what I’ve done.”
Kemp is now locked in a tight race against Democrat Stacey Abrams, whom he narrowly defeated in 2018.
Abrams doesn’t believe Kemp deserves any credit for refusing to meddle in the election.
“What was the alternative?” she said in an interview with podcast host Kara Swisher that aired Thursday. “The alternative was committing treason. This was not an act of courage. He simply refused to commit treason.”
She added that Kemp was elected by Georgia voters, not Trump.
“Your job is to serve the needs of the people of Georgia, and so, refusing to essentially negate their voices is not an act of courage. It’s an act of competence,” she said.
Trump put more money and effort into unseating Kemp than he had any other Republican he felt wronged him, including Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who voted to impeach him.
Not only did Trump recruit, promote, and clear the primary field for his candidate, former Sen. David Perdue, but he also recorded television ads against Kemp and gave $2.6 million to groups helping Perdue — the most the former president had ever invested in another politician. Members of the “MAGA-verse” also kept up their verbal attacks on Kemp, calling him unpatriotic and blaming him for everything from inflation to the war in Ukraine.
Kemp clobbered Perdue in the primary by campaigning on a number of conservative policy wins he racked up during his first four years in office and the 2022 legislative session, including teacher and state employee raises, permitless firearm carry legislation, as well as tougher restrictions on election rules and abortion. He’s using that same winning strategy in the general election.
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Georgia News Collaborative poll released this week showed Kemp with a double-digit lead over Abrams, who has outspent the governor 2-to-1. Kemp has been on the road nonstop over the past two weeks, listening to rural voters and pitching his plan for moving the state forward. He told the Washington Examiner that despite polls giving him the edge, he’s not slowing down any time soon.
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“I don’t worry about polls,” Kemp said. “The poll’s going to be on Nov. 8 and during early voting, and that’s why we’re working as hard as we ever have to make sure we keep our state moving in the right direction.”
The political rivals will meet Monday night for a debate, the same day early voting begins in the state.
