Trump’s Attacks on Georgia’s GOP Governor Stand to Benefit Harris
As the presidential race tightens, Republicans in the state would rather focus on unifying against Democrats
Cameron McWhirterAug. 11, 2024 at 5:00 am
Trump’s loss here in 2020 left the state’s Republican Party deeply fractured, with Trump blaming Kemp and other statewide GOP officials for refusing to overturn President Biden’s narrow victory in the state. Republican officials have blamed the feuding for repeated losses in Senate races.
“I thought any kind of bad blood had blown over, and I don’t know why President Trump would want to reopen that wound and attack a very popular governor,” said state Sen. Larry Walker III, a member of the Georgia Senate GOP’s leadership.
Trump, at an Atlanta rally recently at Georgia State University, called Kemp “a bad guy.”
“He’s a disloyal guy and he’s a very average governor. Little Brian, little Brian Kemp,” Trump said.
Walker called Trump’s comments “definitely unproductive and unwarranted,” adding: “If we continue with this kind of feud, it will make it more difficult” to win Georgia.
Ryan Mahoney, a longtime Georgia political strategist who has worked for Kemp and other Republicans, called it “political suicide.”
Former President Trump waved to supporters after his campaign rally at the Georgia State Convocation Center in early August. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Mahoney added: “We’ve seen this movie before, and the former president’s baseless and ill-advised remarks will make it damn near impossible for Republicans to prevail in November.”
Only weeks ago, with Biden in the race, some state polls showed Trump up by 5 percentage points. Since the president dropped out, Georgia polls show Vice President Kamala Harris running a much closer race, with some surveys finding Harris and Trump tied. Two major political handicappers now rate Georgia as a tossup after previously rating it “Lean Republican.”
Trump pressured Kemp and others publicly in 2020 to overturn his loss. He also made telephone calls to state leaders, pressing them to find evidence of election fraud, including an infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to “find” votes for Trump. Investigations and audits found no evidence of widespread fraud. In August 2023, Democratic Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis announced an indictment against Trump and others, charging them with operating a criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 election. The case is ongoing.
During Trump’s Atlanta rally, a crowd of thousands booed at the mention of Kemp’s name. Trump said he didn’t want Kemp’s endorsement, adding, “In my opinion, they want us to lose…If we lose Georgia, we lose the whole thing.”
He then posted similar attacks on Truth Social, his social-media platform, calling Kemp “a bad guy” and Georgia’s economy “average.”
“Brian Kemp should focus his efforts on fighting Crime, not fighting Unity and the Republican Party!” he wrote.
The crowd at the Atlanta Trump rally earlier this month, saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Photo: Dustin Chambers/Bloomberg News
Georgia Republican leaders had hoped the quarrel between Trump and Kemp was in the past. Kemp told The Wall Street Journal in June that he was willing to move on and support Trump’s candidacy. Afterward, Kemp said on X that Trump should stop “engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past.”
On Friday, during an interview with conservative radio host Erick Erickson at an event in Atlanta, Kemp said he still planned to support the Republican ticket in the fall. “Regardless of the noise, we’re plowing ahead,” he said.
The saga was a reminder of how Trump nurses a grudge and often veers off script, adding to worries among allies that he can sometimes be his own worst enemy. Just before the Atlanta rally, Trump faced criticism for questioning Harris’s racial identity as part of his campaign’s overarching goal of painting her as inauthentic.
Stephen Lawson, a Republican consultant who worked on former Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s failed election bid in 2020, said the rally could have been used to unite Georgia Republican voters against the Democratic ticket. “Instead, it was lobbing bombs,” Lawson said.
“Georgia Republicans, Georgia independents, and swing voters don’t want divisiveness. They don’t want a relitigation of 2020,” he said.
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Infighting and other problems within the state Republican apparatus after the 2020 election led Kemp to set up his own get-out-the-vote operation. That statewide effort, apart from the state GOP, helped Kemp win the primary and the general election in 2022. Kemp also formed a federal political-action committee, Hardworking Americans, which has aided GOP Senate candidates around the country. He has another state committee aiding candidates in Georgia.
A person with direct knowledge of Kemp’s political operation said Trump’s remarks were uncalled for, and said any joint appearances between the two were now likely “off-the-table.” This person added that conversations between the Trump and Kemp camps “aren’t taking place.”
A Trump spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether Trump and Kemp would appear together on the campaign and whether the two camps are talking. Earlier, when asked about Trump’s Atlanta speech, the spokeswoman referred to Trump’s Truth Social post criticizing Kemp.
Kemp and Trump were once allies. Before Kemp won his first race for governor in 2018 against Democrat Stacey Abrams, Trump—then president—tweeted that he gave Kemp “my full and total endorsement.” After Kemp won, Trump sent him a signed congratulations on a copy of a Wall Street Journal article about the election.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019 with President Trump. Photo: Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP
The relationship imploded after the 2020 presidential election when Kemp said he had no authority to overturn the results in Georgia. Meanwhile, two other sitting Republicans from Georgia, Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, echoed Trump’s claims and focused on false accusations of election fraud, taking away from their own campaign messages. They both lost in January 2021.
The string of losses for Republicans, who have dominated Georgia politics for decades, set off a sharp split in the state GOP between a Trump faction and others, led by Kemp, seeking to move beyond the loss. Candidates put up to challenge Kemp and Raffensperger failed in 2022, and Trump-backed candidate Herschel Walker lost to Democratic Raphael Warnock in a Senate race that same year.
The party split endures.
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Kemp has overseen a large state budget surplus, a major tax cut for residents and historically low unemployment in the state. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll from June found 63% of those surveyed approved of Kemp’s job in office. An AJC poll from July found 48% of those surveyed had a favorable opinion of Trump.
GOP leaders hoped the two men could bury the hatchet for this election.
Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who attended the rally and was praised by Trump, said in a statement to the Journal: “I am friends with both the president and the governor and as much as I would like for my friends to be friends sometimes that is not the case…and that’s ok.”
Others, like Lawson, the political consultant, say a fractured relationship could be detrimental.
“We know exactly how this story ends. If he’s not running on the issues, he’s going to lose,” he said.
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