THOMASTON, Ga.- Brian Kemp, the incumbent governor of Georgia and a prominent fixture on former President Donald J. Trump’s enemies list, was winking in a pair of cowboy boots in this small town one recent morning and happily handing him his away. by an adoring Republican crowd at a place called Greatest Generation Memorial Park. Soon he was confronted by a smiling man wearing a baseball cap decorated with a cursive letter “A”.
It was a hat from the University of Alabama. Mr. Kemp, a sports enthusiast, is a famous supporter of the University of Georgia, his alma mater and one of Alabama’s rivals. He’s even adopted the Bulldog football team’s motivational slogan, “Keep choppin'”, as his own†
There was a brief moment of good natured sportsman ribbing. Then Mr. Kemp turned to the left and addressed a man with a badge. “We need to lock this man up, Sheriff,” he said dryly. The audience chuckled.
With his shoes, his football fixation, and a quintessentially folksy Southern voice—a voice that rarely, in campaign mode, nails the “g” to the end of a gerund—Mr. Kemp presents himself as the most Georgian of Georgians. And it’s his gift for both reflecting and rewarding his conservative Georgia constituency that has given him a surprisingly easy lead in the polls ahead of Tuesday’s Republican primaries, even as Mr. Trump, who remains hugely popular in Georgia continues to belittle him as a “Republican in name only” and demand that voters punish Mr Kemp for refusing to help him reverse the results of the November 2020 presidential election.
What the former president apparently did not count on was the willingness of many Georgian Republicans to remain loyal to both Mr Trump and Mr Kemp at the same time.
Right after the campaign event in Thomaston, Upson County Sheriff Dan Kilgore identified himself as a Trump voter. But he said that Mr. Kemp seemed a natural fit for the state. “It belongs to the people,” said Mr. Kilgore. “He’s one of us.”
Linda Reeves, a retired government official, said she and her husband, Clarence, had voted for Mr Trump and even believed his claim that the Georgia elections had been stolen, an argument that proved unfounded. “We are Trump supporters,” she said. “But anything that comes out of one’s mouth is not necessarily true.” Kemp, she said, had proved his bona fide allegiance, most recently signing a law limiting discussion of race in public school classrooms, and another allowing Georgians to carry firearms without a permit.
“Brian Kemp is a very conservative governor,” she said.
While Mr. Kemp has kept socially conservative Republicans happy with legislation, he has also strengthened his hand with major economic development victories, including a planned Rivian electric truck plant east of Atlanta and a new Hyundai electric truck plant. vehicles built outside of Savannah. The state budget he signed this month includes pay increases for teachers and state officials. Former Vice President Mike Pence plans to come to Georgia Monday to campaign on behalf of Mr. Kemp; in a statement, he called Mr Kemp “one of the most successful conservative governors in America.”
Mr Trump backed former US Senator David Perdue, the former chief executive of the discount chain Dollar General, who has repeated Mr Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. But Mr. Perdue, who lives in the exclusive community of Sea Island, is struggling to gain traction in his primaries against the governor.
This week, NBC News reported that the former president privately complained about Perdue’s actions and essentially wrote him off. Mr Trump pushed back on Friday with a social media post calling the coverage “FALSE.”
“I’m all with David because Brian Kemp was the WORST governor in the country in terms of election integrity!” He wrote.
Mr. Trump’s record in influencing Republican primary results this season has been mixed. Successful Trump-backed candidates include JD Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and US Senate candidate from Ohio, and Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania governor candidate who reiterates Mr Trump’s false claims about voter fraud. . But other Trump candidates have lost high-profile Republican primaries in North Carolina, Nebraska and Idaho.
Mr. Trump has endorsed a comprehensive list of Republican candidates in Georgia, where he and some of his allies in Fulton County are under investigation for possible violations of state criminal law in their efforts to influence the results of the presidential election. But the results of the Georgian Trump squad this primary season may vary.
A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll of likely Republican voters shows the U.S. Senate nominee and former University of Georgia Herschel Walker fall back by a big lead in his primary race, likely aided by both Mr. Trump’s endorsement as Mr Walker’s status as a football legend. The same poll shows Trump-backed candidate for secretary of state, U.S. Representative Jody Hice, in a tight primaries against incumbent Brad Raffensperger.
The April AJC survey shows Mr. Kemp with a 23-point lead over Mr. perdue; a more recent Fox News poll showed the governor more than 30 points ahead. Perdue, whose appearances this week also include a Bikers for Trump event in Plainville, Georgia, hopes the high early vote turnout is a sign that Trump voters are quietly moving the needle in his direction and will at least allow him. to mr. Kemp in a second round.
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The Kemp campaign has made and spent the Perdue campaign much better, a sign that much of the donor class in Georgia, who tend to be wary of political turbulence, prefer the status quo. And while Perdue has taken advantage of the TV ads from outside groups featuring Mr. Trump, the Perdue campaign has not aired its own ads since late April, according to Adimpact, an ad tracking company.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kemp the wrath of Mr. Trump responded with a relentless focus on business in his own backyard. On Wednesday, Norman Allen, the chair of the Upson County Commission, praised Mr Kemp for personally taking his calls in 2020 and promising additional help from the state government as the county suffered during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Kemp has also strategically dished out executive loot, including coveted government appointments, by keeping fellow Georgia Republicans in his camp, or at least on the sidelines. That appeared to be the case earlier this year when the state council that oversees Georgia’s public college system, which is filled with Kemp loyalists, Sonny Perdue, a former Georgia governor and Trump cabinet official who happens to be David Perdue’s cousin. is, as system chancellor chose. †
Before his stupid speech at Thomaston, Mr. Kemp mingled with the crowd, with the sleeves of his red-checkered shirt rolled up, shaking hands with old acquaintances, talking about tailgate parties from past football seasons and praising his octogenarian mother’s moxie.
Mr. Kemp is aware that this kind of warm welcome, from a rural, predominantly white crowd, is accompanied by a strong distaste for him on the left and for influential voices outside Georgia. In 2018, a number of high-profile Democrats described some of the moves he made as Secretary of State as voter suppression tactics. Some of them used variations of the word “steal” to describe Democrat Stacey Abrams’ Mr. Kemp’s defeat in the governor’s race that year. Ms. Abrams, who also claimed that Mr. Kemp engaged in voter suppression, never gave in in that contest.
His four years in office have created more controversy. President Biden described the sweeping bill Mr Kemp signed in the wake of the 2020 election to restrict access to vote “Jim Crow in the 21st century”. And Mr Kemp was heavily criticized for his decision, in April 2020, to allow many businesses in the state to reopen in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
In his speech at Thomaston, Mr Kemp said he knew that criticism was wrong because he had listened to voters. “I knew how bad they were hurting because I heard from them,” he said of business owners and workers in Georgia affected by the pandemic. “I was talking to them. I spoke to hairdressers and the beauticians and the waitresses and the restaurant owners.”
The governor made no mention of David Perdue, or of Mr. Trump, but rather looked ahead, with multiple mentions of Ms. Abrams, who he will be running for in the general election when he gets there. “We are fighting for the soul of our state, all of you,” he said. “We get up every morning to make sure Stacey Abrams doesn’t become our governor or our next president,” he said.
He added: “Keep choppin’, God bless you, and thanks for coming.”
