Georgia Governor- Race of the Day

84 Days Until Election Day

Georgia Governor

Status: Republican Incumbent

2020 Presidential Result: Blue State (South)

Outlook: Leans Republican

The Peach State was the epicenter of drama in the 2020 election cycle, especially after the November election itself and it will receive much attention this year as well in as the state elects a Governor and United States Senator. It must first be mentioned that Georgia has a system in which candidates need to pass the 50 percent threshold to both win a primary and a general election. The latter proved to be a huge deal in 2020, and directly affected the U.S. Senate balance of power. Today though, we will talk about the race for Governor. A runoff was not needed in May. It is yet to be determined if a third party candidate might force the Democrat and Republican to have to face each other in a December runoff. Right now though, it is looking like that might not be necessary and that an incumbent, once written off by people in both parties as a one-termer is now in a much stronger position.

Even before the 2020 drama, Georgia saw a very competitive Gubernatorial election in 2018. The incumbent was term-limited out and the GOP was favored to hold on to the office they had won every election this century. Democrats made history by nominating former State House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who romped in the primary, over another woman named Stacey. The other Stacey ran as a relative moderate while Abrams was a pretty bold progressive. She was seeking to become the first woman and first African-American Governor of Georgia. Abrams had been active in building a campaign that brought large numbers of black voters to the polls and many believed that evidence was mounting that Georgia was becoming more competitive, especially as the state's Hispanic population grew. It was also becoming a factor that more liberal leaning suburbanites from the North were moving to Georgia and making the state more fertile for Democrats. Ironically, that is how Georgia first became more competitive for Republicans in the 1970s, as other Northerners began to move in then.

A bunch of Republicans entered the field for Governor but the leaders were considered Lt. Governor Casey Cagle, who was the front-runner and Secretary of State Brian Kemp. Cagle took the initial primary vote 39-26 over Kemp. The runoff between the two statewide office contenders looked competitive after the May primary. Kemp seemed to go out of his way to play up his "Bubba credentials", and ran ads in which he threatened to shoot a teenage boy looking to date his daughter and in which he said he might round up illegal immigrants in his own pickup truck. It looked like Kemp might be making it easier to win a July runoff but harder to win a November general election. 

Then, Donald Trump endorsed Kemp right before the runoff and scores of Georgia Republicans fell in line. Kemp won the runoff by a more than 2-1 margin. A couple years later Trump would claim that Kemp was a horrible candidate going nowhere until he endorsed him and made all the difference by propping him up .That is a huge exaggeration, as Kemp might have been in line to win the runoff without an endorsement but there is no question that the open support from the then Republican President turned the contest into a blowout.

The general election between Abrams and Kemp was one of the most paid attention to and competitive races in the country. Republicans claims that Abrams and her supporters were trying to increase voter turnout by cheating while Democrats claimed that Kemp, in his role as Secretary of State, and from which he refused to step away from the oversight of his own election, was actively trying to suppress the vote to his advantage. In the end, Kemp won 50-49, barely avoiding a runoff. Several days later, Abrams made a statement in which she admitted the contest was over, but refused to say that Kemp had been legitimately elected. She would continue to speak of the election being "stolen" in a way that foreshadowed the rhetoric of the man who would lose Georgia's 2020 Presidential vote.

Abrams cleared intended to stay active in politics and remained a national figure after her defeat. She even said directly that she wanted to be President one day. She decided not to seek either of Georgia's U.S. Senate seats in 2020 though, making it appear obvious she was focused on another try for Governor As she worked to register and energize African-American voters in Georgia, others speculated that she could be a future Supreme Court nominee or even Joe Biden's running-mate. 

There is little question that Abrams efforts helped Biden win Georgia narrowly over Trump (a race that does not require a majority to win the state's Electoral Votes), and that she also helped the two Democrats running for Senate be in the position to make run-offs and then win those races, which did not take place until January 5, 2021. Two Republican incumbents were ousted and suddenly Joe Biden had an all Democrat Congress to work with as he prepared to be sworn in.

Donald Trump played a large part in those Senate defeats as well of course, as he insistence that Georgia was stolen from him and that voters could not trust the machines in the state or that their votes would be counted accurately, definitely caused many of his voters to avoid voting in the runoff.

The defeated President had also turned on Kemp by this time. In office, Kemp had proceeded to govern in a way that thrilled many base conservatives, even including relaxing Covid restrictions in Georgia, before the Trump White House approved of doing so. Kemp strongly supported Trump for reelection but refused to say that the election in Georgia had been stolen and proceeded to certify the results. This caused a huge rift within the Georgia GOP. Trump famously called Georgia's Secretary of State, urging him to "find" votes to put him in front in Georgia, even though the state alone would not have changed the election's national outcome. Those actions have Rudy Giuliani, about to plead the Fifth tomorrow in an Atlanta courtroom, as the former New York City Mayor and one time national political hero, is almost certain to be indicted for what he did in Georgia in his role as Trump's attorney. Many believe that Trump himself may soon be facing charges in Georgia over his post-election activities, unrelated to whatever he may wind up charged with federally.

Towards the end of 2021, Abrams announced that she would run for Governor again, and it was a coronation for her at that point in regards to winning her party's nomination again. It would be the incumbent who would have a much more complicated path. Trump vocally declared that he would do whatever he could to defeat Kemp and would campaign extensively in Georgia against him. Pundits in both parties assumed he would be able to do just that. Trump certainly tried, but ultimately fell embarrassingly short of ending Kemp's political career.

Vernon Jones, an African-American who once the very liberal Democrat CEO of DeKalb County had a transformation as a State Representative and switched parties in 2020 as an avid MAGA adherent. He started to run for Governor, but was convinced instead to seek a U.S. House seat as Trump had another candidate in mind for Governor. Jones would get Trump's endorsement for the Congressional bid, but would lose a primary this May, in what became a bit of a theme in the state for Trump's endorsees.

Trump was now backing former Senator David Perdue in his race for Governor. A wealthy businessman, who was the cousin of Georgia's former Governor (and Trump's Agriculture Secretary), Perdue had been elected to the Senate in 2014, winning a runoff, after emerging from a large GOP field as a political outsider and someone considered the most moderate candidate in the bunch. After Trump became President, Perdue became one of his biggest allies and sometimes golf partner. His loyalty to Trump cost him when he sought a second term in 2020 against an opponent he had been expected to beat. In November, Perdue finished first but barely missed out on avoiding a runoff. In the two months after, he continued to support Trump's tales about the election being stolen and then lost his seat.

One would think that Perdue's recent electoral failure would make him the wrong person to try to take out Perdue but Trump's fans insisted that if Trump wanted Kemp gone, Kemp would be gone, even as the polls showed the incumbent ahead of his challenger. Trump campaigned for Perdue several times, but privately expressed frustration at how the effort was going. Other GOP Governors campaigned for their colleague Kemp, as did Trump's Vice President Mike Pence. The Governor refrained from saying anything critical about the former President, even as Trump suggested that it might be better for Georgia if Stacey Abrams would become Governor over Kemp. Suddenly though, supporting Kemp became sort of a weird motivation for voters, who may not have liked the way he had governed, merely as a means to piss off Trump, Not a small number of Democrats are believed to have voted in the Republican primary to do so.

 

Winning re-nomination alone should be considered quite a feat for Kemp, and by Primary Day, it was clear he on the path to do so, but the margin of Kemp's victory over Perdue was staggering. He won 74-22. A female candidate, running on the "Jesus/Guns/Babies" platform, took three percent, and in the new Georgia tradition claimed the election was rigged to make her lose and called for investigation. In defeat, Perdue maintained that everything critical he had said about Kemp was true, but that he would go all out to help him beat Stacey Abrams. Trump has not endorsed Kemp, and almost certainly will not. If anything, he will tell his supporters to vote for Abrams at this point. In even more surprising news from the Georgia primary, the Republican Secretary of State, who had defied Trump on the election results, and was counted out by just about everyone, won his re-nomination, without the need for a runoff, and is expected to win big in November over the Democrat.

How Kemp managed to quietly but determinedly beat back the firestorm directed against him by the most powerful voice in the party is something that should be studied in political science classes. It is likely that conservative voters liked how Kemp was performing as Governor and just did not believe the things Trump was saying about him and might not really believe the stories Trump was saying about massive election fraud. A desire was expressed to move on from the re-litigating everything associated with the Presidential contest of 2020, especially after the U.S. Senate runoffs debacle.

Georgia Republicans though took steps in the legislature to try to change election laws. To be sure, some of what was proposed, and ultimately scrapped, were bad ideas, put forward merely to appease Trump. The final bill also contained what I believe were some serious problems in regards to who would then have the power to regulate the election. The final bill though actually made it easier to vote in Georgia than it had been previously, not harder, and in fact made it easier to vote in the state than is the case in many heavily blue states. Democrats nationally, led by Abrams, went beserk in opposing the Georgia law, signed by Kemp, and backed by Secretary of State Brad Raffnsperger and other Georgia Republicans who stood firm in saying no to Trump after the 2020 election. The claim that it was massive "voter suppression" just did not hold up to the actual facts. The claim was echoed though throughout the national media, and by President Joe Biden, who shamelessly and ludicrously compared it to "Jim Crow." The outrcy led to the 2021 Major League Baseball All-Star Game being pulled from Atlanta and moved to Denver, even though it is in some ways easier for people to vote in Georgia than it is to vote in Colorado. 

If I may editorialize, if it is a "Big Lie", as I believe it is, that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, it is also a "Big Lie" that there is voter suppression going on in Georgia targeting black voters or anyone else. Both examples of these lies are why are politics appears broken today and why the current state of both major parties is such a sad one to someone like me. If nothing else, this new law made it easier for pro-Trump conservatives to stick with Kemp. The fact that Georgia had high voter turnout in this year's primary, under the new law, seem to show how all the rhetoric about it being dangerous was vastly misstated.

There is no doubt though that the issue of voting, as well as other wedge issues such as abortion and gay rights will play a part in Georgia's general election rematch between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican. Abrams' past work with organizations that called for "defunding the police" will be talked about much. It cannot be ignored that Democrats have pockets of strength in current day Georgia. The polls though are currently showing Kemp ahead and that he might be in line to win by at least a few more than his narrow 2018 win. Republicans seem pretty willing to support Kemp at this point, and that it might take the active involvement of Trump opposing Kemp to get many of them to change their minds. The bottom line is that conservatives in Georgia fear Stacey Abrams as Governor, for whatever reason. Kemp's campaign has been saying that if she is elected, she will immediately begin to run for President.

A second loss for Abrams in Georgia will be a major blow to her political future. She continues to speak to national media on many occasions and may come across as looking beyond the campaign for Governor. She has had some awkward moments on the campaign trail this time around. Several months back, she was photographed, unmasked, in a room full of schoolchildren, who were masked. At first her campaign tried to claim that criticism of this failed photo-op as being somehow sexist and racist, but several days later, after much consternation within the party, admitted they made a mistake. There was also an instance in which she was quoted saying that Georgia was the "worst state in the country" to live due to some socioeconomic factors. The statistics seem to not back up the claim, but in any event, it is a very odd thing for a candidate trying to lead the state to say.

On Election Day in November, I think Kemp will win another term, and although the race may be competitive, it will probably take second fiddle in Georgia and nationally to whatever will happen in the U.S. Senate election there. Someone will win the Governorship though, be it in November or December, and the big question might be, will the loser concede?

Gubernatorial Races predicted thus far:

4 D (2 Likely. 2 Leans) , 5 R (1 Safe, 2 Likely, 2 Leans)

Total with predictions thus far:

10 D (6 Holdovers,  2 Likely, 2 Leans),  13  R (8 Holdovers, 1 Safe, 2 Likely, 2 Leans)