Georgia Governor- Race of the Day

 86 Days Until Election Day

Georgia Governor

 

Status: Republican Open

2024 Presidential Result: Red State (South)

 

Outlook: Tossup (R)

 

This definitely feels like the sort of Tossup race that is too soon to actually predict. The political ground might still settling in Georgia after the May primary and June runoff and it seems like there are definite reasons for Democrats to be optimistic about winning their first Gubernatorial election in the state since 1998. I feel like it is entirely possible to change my eventual predictions. For now though, it seems like at least a small benefit of the doubt must be given to Republicans in an open contest.

 

Outgoing Governor Brian Kemp is term-limited. He was a Trump endorsed MAGA acolyte when he emerged as the sitting Secretary of State in the 2018 Republican primary over a more establishment favorite. He twice won the Governorship over Democrat Stacey Abrams, a former State House Minority Leader who received a tremendous amount of national coverage in her bid to become the first African-American woman ever elected Governor. Their first race was extremely close and Abrams proved reluctant to concede the election. The rematch was more decisive in favor of Governor Kemp. In the meantime though, Kemp ran afoul of Donald Trump in refusing to go along with extreme plans to claim that Trump and not Joe Biden was the rightful winner of Georgia's electoral votes in 2020. Furious by a perceived lack of loyalty, Trump recruited and endorsed a primary challenger to Kemp in 2022, but the state's Republican voters decided to stick with the incumbent in a landslide fashion. Some have talked about Kemp as being a potential Presidential candidate who might now not be tarnished with an association with Donald Trump, but Republican Presidential primary voters probably are not even looking for someone like that anyway. Since 2024, Trump and Kemp appear to have somewhat smoothed over their spat.

 

With the Governorship opened, a wide bevy of candidates in both major parties were interested. For Democrats though, there was perhaps a fear that Abrams might make a third bid, after having already twice failed. Many breathed a sigh of relief when she did not run. Then, the frontrunner looked like it could be Congresswoman Lucy McBath, also an African-American woman, but someone who had won tough political races in suburban Atlanta. McBath though would exit the race due to her husband's health and is now running for reelection in what is now a solidly blue district. Former State Senator Jason Carter was mentioned as a potential strong candidate, especially in the aftermath of the passing of his grandfather, former President (and Georgia Governor) Jimmy Carter. The younger Carter, who lost as his party's Gubernatorial nominee in 2014, but he ruled out a bid amid his wife's battle with brain cancer.

 
Among the major candidates who did run as Democrats for Governor of Georgia, most were African-American, going along with the reality that black voters represent the key demographic of the party in many southern states. Mike Thurmond, who spent 12 years as Georgia's elected Labor Commissioner and who was his party's 2010 U.S. Senate nominee decided to make a bid for Governor at the age of 73. More recently, the party stalwart had served as the CEO of populous DeKalb County. Thirty years younger than Thurmond, State Senator Jason Esteves, who is black and of Puerto Rican descent emerged as the favorite of many party activists and he was endorsed by Jason Carter. Also in the field was Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was elected Mayor of Atlanta in 2017 and served one term leading the state's largest city amid tumultuous times and did not seek a second term. The daughter of the late R&B singer Major Lance, Bottoms even had been talked about for a while as a potential Biden 2020 running-mate. In the new Administration, she was not chosen for a Cabinet position. In 2022, she became a White House advisor to Biden, but only stayed at that post for less than a year. In the primary for Governor this year, Bottoms received a rare candidate endorsement by Joe Biden.

 
The one major white candidate seeking the Governorship as a Democrat was former Lt. Geoff Duncan, a time one Republican rising star. The former minor league baseball player was elected to the second highest state government spot, in a separate election, in 2018, the year Kemp won the Governorship. Considered a standard conservative Republican, Duncan broke with MAGA over the 2020 election brouhaha in Georgia. He went much further than Kemp did and it was clear he would not be able to seek another term. Duncan tried to advocate a post-Trump future for the Republican Party but burned many bridges. Some wanted him to run as an Independent for President in 2024 (I would have been one of them), but Duncan eventually endorsed Kamala Harris and spoke at her nominating convention. The Republican Party in Georgia voted to expel Duncan and he would soon become a Democrat running for Governor. In doing so, he did move to the left on such issues as abortion, which I think has to be considered at least a mark against his authenticity, though I greatly admire his being willing to sacrifice a promising political career, rather than just submitting himself to Trump, like so many Republicans had. In theory, I think it was fairly obvious that if Democrats had nominated Duncan, he would have had the most capacity to take Republican voters away in a general election, but in a state where Democrats have won some recent statewide contests, he was never going to seen as a "break glass" option and the party was always more likely to go with someone who had been a Democrat for a much longer time.

 

As it turned out, the Biden endorsement might have had a lot more influence in Georgia Gubernatorial primaries than the Trump endorsement has lately. Bottoms won in the primary big. She took 56 percent of the vote, well more than enough to avoid a runoff. Esteves was second with 19 percent, Thurmond took 13 percent and Duncan took just seven percent and finished fourth out of seven. Now, Keisha Lance Bottoms is in the position that Stacey Abrams twice was as her party's nominee in Georgia and has the chance to become the nation's first black female Governor.

 

The Republican field was also very crowded and produced a surprise victor who was a late entry to the fray. One person who did not run after apparently considering it and according to Donald Trump sounding him out on the possibility was Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene a combative one-time MAGA darling who is another politician who would have a major falling out with Trump. When that political divorce occurred, Greene announced her resignation for Congress and is now a sworn critic of Trump, while maintaining some far-right views on social issues and some would say a far-left isolationist foreign policy vision.

 

Chris Carr, the Republican Attorney General, tried to get an early jump  in the race for Governor, but his campaign never took off and he finished fourth of eight in the May primary with 12 percent. Another statewide elected official who ran was Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, another conservative elected official who became a target of Trump in regards to the 2020 Georgia Presidential count. Raffensperger even recorded a conversation in which the then defeated President told him to find another votes to allow him to win Georgia, and Trump would wind up being indicted in Atlanta over that whole episode. Trump vowed revenge, but like Kemp, and even more impressively so, Raffensperger won a primary for re-nomination in 2022 and did not even require a runoff on his way to a second term as Secretary of State. Many wondered what he was thinking in running for Governor in 2026, but I will say at the converse to the Duncan situation, as the Republican nominee, Raffensperger probably could have had the easiest time in appealing to anti-Trump independents and some Democrats. In running for Governor, Raffensperger, to his credit, never denounced his efforts in enforcing Georgia election law, nor directly embraced Trump, but the soft-spoken candidate did dye his hair darker and took some pains on hot-button issues to remind voters he was actually a conservative after all. Those who took their cues from Trump though were never even going to entertain the notion of his candidacy. The Democrats who admired Raffensperger probably did not give much sympathy for him either after he tacked right in the primary and he finished third with 15 percent as two other candidates advanced to a June Republican runoff.

 

As was the case in Georgia in 2022, Donald Trump's endorsed candidate was not nominated for Governor. He has had more success in the state in picking Republican U.S. Senate candidates, but those folks have gone on to lose to Democrats. More about that in the next Race of the Day. As for this contest though, Trump could not deliver the nomination to Lt. Governor Burt Jones. For that matter, neither could Governor Kemp, whom in this instance, sided with Trump and endorsed Jones in the final weekend before the runoff.

 

Jones did finish first in the crowded May primary with 38 percent of the vote. An early Trump backer in the state, he won the Lt. Governorship by a five percent margin in 2022. In 2020, Jones had been part of the alternate state of electors that Trump wanted as part of the Electoral College, even though Joe Biden won the state. The then State Senator was not charged in Fulton County but was named as an unindicted co-conspirator.

 

For months leading up to the primary, it seemed pretty likely that Jones would be the Republican nominee for Governor and after that point would face questions about his electability statewide. Then came the surprise announcement of Rick Jackson. A very wealthy healthcare executive, "Action" Jackson announced he would run for Governor and was willing to spend millions of his own dollars to do so. At 72 years old, Jackson was 25 years older than Jones and positioned himself as an outspoken political outsider, much in the mold of Donald Trump. He claimed to be aligned with Trump on the issues, even though Trump had by this point endorsed Jones. In the first round of the primary, Jackson took about 33 percent of the vote. In the runoff, the name-calling between the two men got even more intense. Even as Jackson received endorsements from former candidate Chris Carr and nationally known conservative names like Senators Ted Cruz and Rick Scott, the anticipation was still that the Trump backed Jones would prevail. The establishment suffered a loss though when Jackson beat Jones 53-47, It was the second straight endorsement loss for Donald Trump in regards to the Republican candidate for Governor of Georgia and he probably wished he would have issued a late-game "co-endorsement" so he could claim to have a perfect record, but the result was in and an outsider businessman had won the nomination and those on the other side including the current and former Republican Governors of Georgia would  have to come around quickly to Jackson. After his runoff L, Trump seemed to only focus on the fact that Raffensperger lost the nomination, but that had happened the month earlier and was hardly a surprise.

 

Looking ahead to the general election, both candidates have nominated candidates who probably appeal more towards those in the ideological bases of their parties and less towards the middle. Someone has to win though. A bunch of early polls show a very small lead for the Democrat Bottoms, which probably comes as a huge surprise to many Republicans considering Georgia is a southern state, but of course it was a key swing state in 2024 Presidential election and has been very close in recent cycles in several races. Democrats have of course won the last three U.S. Senate elections in the Trump era and are looking for a fourth this year on the same ballot as the Gubernatorial election.

 

I happen to think that the polls right now may not tell the whole story as first-time candidate and surprise nominee Jackson is probably not too well-known to many Republicans and he may still be in the process of coalescing the party behind him. Jackson has an appealing personal story but his business record will be highly scrutinized in attempts to make him look bad to economic populists. Bottoms will have an easier time in uniting Democrats, and that is a plus for her, but she is still someone who is likely to struggle heavily in the rural parts of the state and many small towns. Being Mayor of Atlanta during Covid and during the race-fueled riots in the summer of 2020 will be frequent topics of conversation among those trying to defeat her. Bottoms' time in the Biden White House, while perhaps a positive among Democrats in the primary, is likely not to be something that plays well with the statewide electorate.

 

For better or worse, Jackson's fate in this race will be tied to Donald Trump. The political reality is that Trump has some pretty bad polling numbers these days and a lot of his softer 2024 voters are believed to have regrets. Are they willing to vote for any Democrats or will they view Keisha Lance Bottoms as being too far to the left causing them to stick with a Republican? All things considered, Brian Kemp is a reasonably popular Governor right now and electing a Democrat would be a sign of major change. Some on the right continue to be mad at Kemp and the state political establishment for not redrawing Congressional maps at the urging of Trump as other states have leading up to this year's elections. Is it possible that Republicans may stay at home in this midterm? That was definitely a factor in play in the general election runoffs of 2020 when after Trump accused the state's elections of being corrupt, two Republican incumbents lost their Senate seats to Democrats.

I would argue though that Jackson is at least somewhat of a stronger general election candidate than Jones would have been. After all, nobody can claim he was Trump's guy at the start, but the White House now definitely will be saying they are firmly behind the Republican nominee. Rick Jackson though will face questions though regarding his age and ability to reach out beyond his political base.

 

To conclude, I feel pretty confident that if Election Day winds up being an unmistakable blue wave, Keisha Lance Bottoms will make history in Georgia. At the moment though, we are at least several weeks away from knowing that will happen and with the racial background of the nominees reversed, this is a similar situation to the Florida Gubernatorial election. Georgia is probably actually a more winnable state than its southern neighbor for Democrats but at the moment, I will give the slightest of edges to Republicans and their free-billionaire candidate keeping their long Gubernatorial streak going.

 

Gubernatorial races predicted thus far: 

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

 

Totals predicted thus far:

11 D (6 holdover, 1 Safe, 2 Likely, 1 Leans, 1 Tossup), 12 R (8 holdover, 1 Safe, 1 Likely, 2 Tossup)