Kemp stood up to Trump on his election lies — and it appears to be paying off.
The August 2021 poll spelled trouble for Georgia governor Brian Kemp.
Ten months after Kemp became Public Enemy No. 1 of former president Donald Trump, and two months after the conservative Republican was booed at his own party’s state convention, the poll — commissioned by Trump’s political operation — showed Kemp struggling to win the backing of a large number of Republican voters in Georgia.
According to the poll, while Trump had approval from 93 percent of Georgia Republicans, only 69 percent approved of Kemp, who had drawn Trump’s ire for refusing to help him overturn the state’s 2020 election results. The poll found that 27 percent of Republicans in Georgia disapproved of their governor, compared with only 6 percent who disapproved of Trump.
Kemp was a “weak incumbent that could be very susceptible to a strong primary challenge,” the Trump pollsters wrote. If former senator David Perdue challenged Kemp in the Republican primary, a Trump endorsement would catapult him to a double-digit lead over Kemp and “would completely upend the race,” the pollsters wrote.
Perdue did jump in the race in December. That led to predictions of an escalated intraparty war in Georgia that would suck up critical resources and leave the eventual primary victor politically wounded, a boost to Stacey Abrams, then the expected Democratic nominee.
But that intraparty battle never really materialized; Kemp cleaned Perdue’s clock, running a masterful primary campaign and winning 73.7 percent of the vote. Now, with less than a month before Election Day, polls show Kemp with a steady lead over the progressive but polarizing Abrams, who has struggled to unite her side and has polled behind Kemp all year.
In an interview with National Review, Kemp said his political vulnerabilities of a year ago were not a mirage. “They were very real,” he said. “I was feeling heat from both sides of the aisle.”
Kemp said he dug out of that hole in large part by talking to Georgia voters and sharing his strong conservative record with them. He acknowledged that “we played hardball” in the primary against Perdue. That strong win in May “helped Republicans unite very quickly,” he said. He also cautioned against looking at polls and assuming a victory in his November rematch with Abrams, a voting-rights activist who claimed their 2018 race was “stolen from Georgians.”
“I tell people, ‘Do not believe the polls.’ Stacey Abrams has raised a tremendous amount of money from all over the country, so she has a lot of resources,” Kemp said. “Our people are fired up on the ground out there. We’ve just got to keep them working and not have them take anything for granted.”
‘Not Worrying About the Outside Noise’
Kemp’s troubles didn’t start with his fallout with Trump, though that may have been his biggest political hurdle. There was “a lot of insanity going on,” even before the 2020 election, he said.
Like other leaders, Kemp had difficult choices to make during the Covid-19 pandemic. He was one of the last governors to issue statewide stay-at-home orders, and the first to allow businesses to reopen, and he was a strong advocate of reopening Georgia’s schools. In retrospect, those look like smart calls, but Kemp received plenty of criticism at the time, including from Democrats like Abrams who seemingly prioritized Covid safety over almost all other concerns.
“She wanted to mandate masks and vaccines,” he said. “She criticized me for letting churches decide whether they should go in-person or virtual or whatever. She wanted to mandate that they couldn’t be open.”
And like other leaders, Kemp also had to deal with the civil unrest that stemmed from the killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. After Floyd’s death, Kemp sent in hundreds of National Guard troops to quell riots and unrest in Atlanta, after then-mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms failed to end the violence in the city. Kemp later signed a law blocking Georgia cities and counties from defunding the police departments.
During the campaign, Abrams, who has a long history of affiliating with anti-cop groups and has advocated for reallocating police resources, has attempted to appear more moderate on law-enforcement issues and has tried to distance herself from far-left police-defunding activists.
When discussing his fallout with Trump and Trump’s contention that the 2020 election was rigged, Kemp spoke carefully. He stopped himself from calling it a situation he “got into,” instead calling it, in passive voice, a situation that “arose.”
“I didn’t really get into it. It was kind of brought to me, if you will,” he said.
Kemp said he responded to the adversity by “grinding away every day,” outworking his opponents, and having confidence in building what he described as “one of the most conservative records in the country.”
Kemp made headlines last fall for signing an election law that reformed many of Georgia’s election rules. That sent prominent Democrats into a tizzy, and led to overblown allegations that the new law was an attempt to suppress minority voters. Joe Biden famously called the law “Jim Crow 2.0.” Despite the criticism, Kemp stood by the law, which seemingly has done little to suppress any votes — minorities voted in record numbers in the May primary.
Kemp has also reduced high-stakes testing in Georgia, approved the largest teacher pay raise in state history, signed into law a $1.6 billion income-tax refund, and temporarily suspended the state’s gas tax to help residents absorb high prices at the pump. More controversially, he also banned most abortions in the state after a baby’s heartbeat is detected.
Last month, Abrams incorrectly stated that fetal heartbeats detected at six weeks are “manufactured sound” designed to help men control women’s bodies.
“It was just a very polarizing environment,” Kemp said of the political terrain the last two years, “and we just kept fighting every day, putting people here first, not worrying about the outside noise. And that served me very well.”
‘We Played Hardball’
Despite Kemp’s conservative successes, ousting him from office has remained one of Trump’s top political priorities. In September 2021, the former president told Georgia rallygoers, “It would be okay with me” if Abrams dethroned Kemp. “Of course, having her, I think, might be better than having your existing governor, if you want to know what I think,” he said.
Trump threw his weight — and about $3 million — behind Perdue’s campaign. Perdue, who had initially indicated his intention to challenge Democrat Raphael Warnock for his Senate seat, blamed Kemp and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger for dividing the state and failing to sufficiently back Trump. “Instead of protecting our elections, he caved to Abrams and cost us two Senate seats, the Senate majority, and gave Joe Biden free rein,” Perdue said.
But Kemp, using political cunning and his powers as an incumbent governor, essentially kneecapped Perdue’s campaign before it even got started. According to a Politico report, one Kemp adviser told hundreds of well-heeled donors and contributors earlier this year that they had a plan to “go f***ing scorched earth” in the primary. Kemp used the levers of power to win the support of Georgia power players, including many of Perdue’s former backers, and to court the state’s biggest donors, leaving Perdue’s campaign financially devastated, Politico reported.
Kemp told National Review he doesn’t know about the “scorched earth” talk. “I just know this: When David Perdue got in the race, the first day he attacked me. He took the gloves off,” Kemp said. “My thing to my folks was, we’ve got a more conservative record than he does, and we’re not going to let him attack us and get away with it.”
“We played hardball in the primaries, as Republicans do,” he added. “But the primary is over now. David’s supporting me. We’re united.”
Kemp said the primary challenge helped him in one sense, by providing him an opportunity to travel the state early and share his record with voters. “And also, quite honestly, highlight my opponents’ records, both of them, on the Republican side and the Democratic side.”
He also spoke of the importance of his ground game, which he called “unprecedented for Republicans here in this state.” After 2020, he said, it was clear that Democrats had a better ground game in Georgia, and had for several cycles. Kemp’s team aimed to change that.
“We had a ground game in the primary that nobody saw coming. We knocked on 500,000 doors. We spent $5 million on our ground game,” he said. “We’re using the same apparatus in different neighborhoods in the general election. I believe we’re going to be able to peel off a lot of that suburban vote and urban vote that Perdue and Trump didn’t get in 2020. We’re also going to be able to go and take a pretty good share of the minority voters in our state.”
‘We’ve Got to Win This Race’
Heading into November, Kemp said he believes Republicans are more united around him than Democrats are around Abrams. “I mean, Abrams is standing by Biden, says she’ll be glad to campaign with him, which we would love. You don’t see Senator Warnock saying that,” Kemp said. “Stacey also weighed in on a lot of other primaries on the Democratic side of the ticket, so there’s candidates out there that she weighed in against that have hurt feelings on their side.”
Polls have showed Kemp with a solid lead all year. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Kemp up 6.4 points, and he’s led in 22 of 23 polls this year (a June poll showed the race tied).
Kemp notes, however, that Abrams has plenty of money heading into the home stretch. Her campaign and her political action committee together raised more than $36 million over the last three months, nearly $8 million more than Kemp, according to Axios. But much of her money is coming from outside Georgia, and Kemp has reported more cash on hand.
The race will likely hinge on turnout. Abrams has faced claims that she’s struggling to energize black voters like she did in 2018, when she received 94 percent of their votes. A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll showed she has about 79 percent support from black voters this year, with about 75 percent support from black men.
Kemp, on the other hand, needs to ensure that Republicans and conservatives who stayed home for the 2021 Senate runoffs come out to vote. Some of those voters are still angry with Kemp, and some still aren’t convinced the state’s elections are fair. Those concerns may be overblown, Kemp said — “I hardly get asked about elections anymore.”
“The Republican base is with us on this issue, because they know we passed the strongest election-integrity act in the country, and quite honestly, a lot of these people that are naysayers have been lied to and people haven’t been truthful with them,” he said.
Kemp, who received Trump’s endorsement in 2018, has made a consistent point of letting Trump supporters know that he has no beef with the former president. “As you know, he was mad at me. I’m not mad at him,” Kemp said. But a reconciliation appears unlikely, at least anytime soon. “I’m focused on the people of this state who can vote for me,” he said.
Another turnout concern: The multiple controversies surrounding Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker threaten to keep some potential Kemp voters home on Election Day.
“That’s a decision every voter is going to have to make: Who do you think is going to serve you better in the United States Senate?” Kemp said. “But look, I’m focused on what I can do to help our entire ticket, up and down the ballot.”
Most of the Republican Georgia voters who spoke to National Review during a trip to the state in September said they were solidly behind Kemp, even some who wished he had handled the post-2020 election dispute differently.
Clint Turner, 31, who lives in Rome in northwest Georgia, is both a Trump and Kemp supporter. He said he didn’t really care for Perdue’s ads during the primary. Even though Trump has it out for Kemp, Turner said it won’t affect his vote in November.
“I love Donald Trump. As far as what he’s done for the country, I like him,” Turner said. “But I don’t think just because I’m in favor of him I have to be in favor of everything that he stands for, as far as people he pushed towards.”
Sandy Hooks, 71, who lives in southern Georgia, also supported Kemp in the primary.
“I hope Republicans will stick together and vote for Kemp,” she said. “I mean, I don’t care, but we don’t need Stacey Abrams. . . . She is way too liberal for Georgia. We’re not a liberal state.”
Kemp agrees that the choice for voters is clear.
“I would tell people, anybody that’s still angry with me, they should look at the choices on the ballot,” he said. “Having Stacey Abrams as their governor would be a disaster. We’ve seen . . . the policies she supports, in Washington, D.C., they’re being implemented [and] brought us 40-year-high inflation, a disaster at the gas pump, a disaster at the border, and many other things.”
With his conservative bona fides and his strong response during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kemp has been floated as a potential 2024 presidential candidate, but, not surprisingly, he isn’t discussing that yet. His focus, he said, is exclusively on November 8.
“That’s all I’m focused on,” he said. “I’m not worried about anything else. Our calendar after November the eighth is clear. We’re not doing scheduling, we’re not doing anything. We’ve got to win this race. That is our whole team’s sole focus.”