There is portentous news this week: Brian Kemp, the two-term governor of Georgia, announced on Monday that he would not be getting into the race for the state’s U.S. Senate seat, currently held by Democrat Jon Ossoff. It’s objectively terrible news for the GOP’s hopes of expanding their current Senate majority; I have difficulty imagining any Republican candidate other than Kemp who has a realistic chance of winning statewide in Georgia against an incumbent, in what by any reckoning is likely to be a “backlash” election against Trump and the GOP. (This is the way of nearly all midterms, even in our increasingly rigid and polarized age, and Trump’s recent economic moves do not speak of a man too terribly concerned about the outcome of the next election.)
I cannot say, however, that Kemp’s decision to pass came as much of a surprise. I don’t claim any deeper insight into his decision-making process than what his public résumé provides — although he was a fine speaker at the NR Institute Ideas Summit in March — but it long ago seemed obvious that he had many reasons for giving the 2026 Georgia Senate campaign a miss. Consider for a moment the governor as an actual person with a life and a history — and not some robot or piece on an abstract political chessboard to be moved around by others — and all that becomes clear. But this requires a brief history lesson first.
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