“Virtually every ‘stop the steal’ is being rejected by Republicans in Georgia tonight,” tweeted Conservative radio presenter Erick Erickson just before he took to the stage to present Kemp’s victory party. “The message is that voters want to move forward, not resolve Trump’s grievances for him.”
But over the past 18 months, Trump’s revenge against Kemp has become personal, threatening the governor’s ability to maintain the support of a Republican base still deeply in love with the former president. Trump has publicly criticized Kemp, insulting him as a “name-only Republican” and the “worst governor in America.” He openly sought out a formidable main rival for Kemp and even suggested that Stacey Abrams, Kemp’s 2018 Democratic opponent who will challenge him again this November, would be a better governor.
From the beginning of the cycle, people close to Kemp’s campaign told CNN that the governor’s battle plan was simple: ignore Trump’s attacks, promote his existing record, present himself as a brazen conservative, and emphasize the future. .
The team around Kemp perfected this strategy as early as January 2021, when it became clear that Trump’s relentless attacks on the governor after the presidential election would not stop.
“As it became clear to us that we were not going to move forward, we made the decision that if we want to win an election, we need to have people like us who like Trump as well,” said an aide to Kemp. CNN. “We had to give Trump supporters permission to please both of us.”
In a nutshell at his victory party Tuesday night, Kemp summed up his approach.
“Even in the midst of difficult primaries, conservatives across our state did not hear the noise. They were not distracted. They knew our record of struggle and victory for Georgian workers,” he told supporters of the Col · read. Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta. “The Republicans of Georgia went to the polls and overwhelmingly endorsed four more years of our vision of this great state.”
Kemp’s example could provide guidance for Republicans who are in Trump’s sights, especially in a possible primary confrontation with the former president if he shows up at the White House in 2024.
“I think it’s a prescription for others to focus on your history and the issues you’re going to address,” said Marc Short, Kemp’s campaign adviser who was former chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence.
Virginia’s first lesson
Last fall, Kemp already anticipated that Perdue would soon jump into the race with all the strength of Trump’s political machine behind the former U.S. senator.
Kemp’s team found inspiration to manage Trump in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race, when Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin won in a state Trump had lost a year earlier by more than 10 points. Youngkin presented himself as an advanced conservative who enjoyed Trump’s endorsement but kept the former president at bay.
Especially for Kemp’s advisers, Youngkin never adopted the idea of a “stolen election” that grabbed the most fervent parts of the Republican base at the time.
“It shows that ‘stop the steal’ is not the winning formula for the purple states,” Kemp’s aide told CNN in November as Virginia’s results arrived. “And that’s what Perdue should accept.”
Kemp had no Trump support that Youngkin enjoyed to keep MAGA voters on the scale, but he did have something the Virginia Republican lacked: a record and one that pleased Republicans.
“Brian had the added challenge that the president wanted to make this race a focal point, but the governor did not focus on those attacks and focused on one conservative achievement after another,” Short said.
As incumbent governor, Kemp pushed for conservative agenda items in a legislative session that ended 50 days before the primaries. In the final stretch of the race, Kemp could aim for a massive reduction in income taxes, loosened restrictions on the concealed carrying of firearms and a ban on teaching “divisive concepts” about race in public schools , all new laws in addition to previous successes. in his tenure. Short said Kemp was one of the first Republican governors to stand up to “awakened” corporations that pushed back GOP policies, in some cases years before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took over Disney for his objection. to recent state policies. prohibition of certain instructions on sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom. In 2019, Kemp signed a law banning abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected, prompting Hollywood film and television companies to threaten to withdraw production from Georgia. And in 2021, Kemp helped enact a new election law criticized as restrictive by many, including Major League Baseball, which moved the Atlanta All-Star Game from Denver in protest.
“Even when the All-Star Game was taken away from us, I didn’t hesitate, as I told you I wouldn’t,” Kemp said Monday at an election rally in Kennesaw.
On the runway, Kemp also noted his focus on the coronavirus pandemic, boasting that Georgia was one of the first states to end initial blockades and resist mandates on masks and vaccines.
“We started pushing for one of the first states in the country to get our children back to the classroom,” Kemp told Kennesaw on Monday.
The Stacey Abrams factor
The effect was to create a lot of goodwill among Republican voters toward Kemp, even among those who are inclined to be angry with him for not accepting Trump in canceling the 2020 election. Even Perdue’s committed supporters said before the primaries that they would support Kemp if he won the nomination.
“I should vote for him,” said Kelly, a Watkinsville voter who declined to give her last name when she spoke to CNN earlier this month.
This illustrates another thing that drove Kemp to the primaries: the prospect of Abrams becoming governor. His narrow defeat in 2018 sparked fears among Republicans in Georgia that his control over the state would have loosened. Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, followed by the Democratic twin victories in the second round of the U.S. Senate in January 2021, confirmed those fears.
So when Trump met in Georgia last September and in the midst of a diatribe over Kemp, he said he would prefer Abrams as governor, the state Republicans withdrew.
“Trump did the Abrams route helped Kemp … consolidate the established support of the established GOP,” Kemp’s assistant told CNN earlier this year. “It was a lie that Stacey Abrams was a better governor than Kemp.”
He also indicated that Trump’s interests in Georgia, that is, revenge against Kemp, did not align with those of the state’s Republican voters.
“I don’t think the former president has a skin in the game in Georgia,” Carol Williams, a real estate agent in Athens and a Republican voter, told CNN at a Kemp event on Saturday. “He doesn’t understand what’s best for our state. We’ve stayed open. We’ve done the right thing here at this Covid. His endorsements should remain more in Florida.”
While Kemp’s victory over Trump through Perdue is conclusive, it remains to be seen whether Republicans who can challenge Trump’s hegemony over the GOP more directly, for example, in a presidential primary, can be so successful with the same strategy.
But the future of the Republican Party and Trump’s role in it were central to Pence’s statements, which he campaigned for Kemp in Georgia on Monday and are preparing for a possible White House candidacy.
“When you say yes to Governor Brian Kemp tomorrow, you’ll send a deafening message across America that the Republican Party is the party of the future,” Pence said.