(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Commentary: How Georgia’s 2024 Presidential Race May Have More to Do with Brian Kemp than Donald Trump [1] ['Charles Hayslett', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] Date: 2024-09-18 Several political eons ago – by which I mean July – it seemed likely Georgia would skate through the 2024 presidential race without again being the center of the universe. President Joe Biden had suffered multiple senior moments during his debate with former President Donald Trump and was down 4 or 5 points in every poll taken. Few if any sentient observers thought Biden could recover from that and replicate the stunning 11,799 vote Georgia win he pulled off in 2020. Even after Biden decided to step aside and pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris, Georgia didn’t really look like it could reprise its role as one of the half-dozen or so pivotal battleground states that would decide the next president of the United States. It’s probably fair to suggest that Harris was widely perceived by the Georgia electorate as a California liberal who, in the view of your typical conservative, had thrown open the Southern border to hundreds of thousands – nay, millions – of illegal aliens who were raping, pillaging and plundering their way across the country (not to mention voting illegally at every stop along the way). But then several funny things happened. The first was that the Georgia polls immediately began to tighten up. A week after Biden’s abdication, Landmark Communications, a respected Republican polling firm based in Gwinnett County, had Trump’s margin down to a single point. Since then, three major polls – including one by FOX – had Harris leading Trump, although the newest poll (from Quinnipiac) has Trump back on top. At this writing, the recent polling average at Real Clear Politics has the former president leading by 0.3 points in Georgia. The second funny thing was that Harris and her vice-presidential pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, announced that their first campaign trip following the Democratic National Convention in Chicago would be to South Georgia (and, yes, we capitalize the S in south). It’s not much of an exaggeration to suggest that Democrats need a passport to go south of Macon or west of Savannah, so this was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. The initial expectation was that they would take a bus trip through a rural stretch of impoverished counties somewhere between Macon and the Florida state line. The truth, though, is that they avoided Third World Georgia and stuck to the coast, hopscotching across the only two Democratic counties in the region. In Hinesville, they attended the practice of a local high school marching band, did a little retail politicking and then went to Savannah for more flesh-pressing and a rally that packed the Enmarket Arena with 7,500 people. Even if Harris and Walz didn’t actually attempt an incursion into interior rural Georgia (which would have been a logistical and security nightmare), their trip to Hinesville and Savannah sent a powerful signal that they plan to fight for the state. The campaign says it has 35 field offices and more than 170 paid staff in the state – plus roughly 35,000 volunteers. If Trump is still favored to win the state, he will now have to spend money and time defending terrain he probably thought he owned. Which brings us to the Honorable Brian Porter Kemp, 83rd governor of the great state of Georgia. Kemp is only the state’s third Republican governor since roughly the Jurassic Period and occupies a unique place in the Trump political galaxy. On the one hand, he arguably owes his governorship to Trump. When then-Secretary of State Kemp first ran for governor in 2018, he was in a tight race with Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle in the GOP primary until Trump publicly endorsed Kemp. By all accounts, the bottom fell out of the Cagle campaign overnight, and Kemp then cruised to the Republican nomination and squeaked by Democrat Stacey Abrams in the General Election. On the other hand, he flatly refused to go along with Trump’s 2020 demands that he somehow reverse the results of presidential election results in Georgia. At the same time Trump was pressuring Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,800 votes,” he was leaning on Kemp and other state leaders to block certification of the state’s vote. Kemp and the state’s top two legislative leaders, House Speaker David Ralston and Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, both Republicans, said no. “I understand why (Trump’s) frustrated,” Kemp told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein. “He’s a fighter. But at the end of the day, I’ve got to follow the laws of the constitution of this state and that’s exactly what I’m doing.” Part of the fallout from Trump’s incessant – and unsupported – claims of voter fraud in the presidential election is that it almost certainly cost the GOP both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats. Told repeatedly by Trump and his allies that the presidential vote was rigged, many reliable Republican voters clearly believed him and almost certainly decided there was no point in voting in the state’s two Senate elections that year (one regular and one special election) and sat them out. The result was that Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock defeated incumbent Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. Such was Trump’s fury at Kemp over the 2020 election that he talked Perdue into running against him in the 2022 governor’s race. The early money was that Perdue, with Trump’s backing, could make a horserace of it, but the early money was wrong. Kemp crushed Perdue by more than 600,000 votes and 50 percentage points. Kemp thus stands as one of the few significant GOP politicians in the nation to defy Trump and live to tell the story. He stiff-armed the former president on his demands to reverse the 2020 results and then kneecapped his handpicked gubernatorial candidate in 2022. All of which brings us now to Kemp’s potential role in the 2024 presidential election. If Georgia does indeed emerge as the ultimate swing state in this year’s presidential election, Kemp could well be the individual who determines which way the pendulum goes on election night. Not through any political mischief or malfeasance, but because he’s built what is almost certainly the most potent political operation in Georgia since the old Talmadge machine of a half-century ago. Trump’s fate in Georgia – and possibly the nation – could well hinge on just how much muscle Kemp puts into activating his political organization. And here things get a little complicated. First, you’d think Trump and his camp would let bygones be bygones and put a measure of effort into the care and feeding of the governor. You would be wrong. Just a few weeks ago, Trump pursued what might charitably be viewed as a counterintuitive strategy, attacking both Kemp and his wife, Georgia First Lady Marty Kemp. The former president took to his social media platform, Truth Social, and said: “He and his wife didn’t think he could win. I said, ‘I’m telling you you’re going to win.’ Then he won, he was happy, and his wife said, ‘Thank you Sir, we’ll never be able to make it up to you!’ Now she says she won’t Endorse me, and is going to ‘write in Brian Kemp’s name.’ Well, I don’t want her Endorsement, and I don’t want his.” At a rally in Atlanta at the same time, Trump referred to Kemp as “little Brian” and “a very average governor.” He added: “Atlanta is like a killing field, and your governor ought to get off his ass and do something about it.” Kemp responded via X (formerly Twitter): “My focus is on winning this November and saving our country from Kamala Harris and the Democrats — not engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past. You should do the same, Mr. President, and leave my family out of it.” Since then, the two have made at least a public show of patching things up. On August 23, Kemp was interviewed by FOX News host Sean Hannity and said: “We gotta win. We gotta win from the top of the ticket on down. We need to send Donald Trump back to the White House. We need to retake the Senate. We need to hold the House.” Shortly afterwards, Trump posted to Truth Social: “Thank you to #BrianKempGA for all of your help and support in Georgia, where a win is so important to the success of our Party and, most importantly, our Country. I look forward to working with you, your team, and all of my friends in Georgia to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” And later that night, he went on Brett Beir’s program and praised Kemp’s comments to Hannity: ” … he was interviewed by Sean Hannity and he was very nice. He said he wants Trump to win and he’s going to work with me 100 percent and I think we will have a very good relationship.” Whether that 100 percent prediction holds up remains to be seen and probably hinges on several factors, including Trump’s own fickle nature. Beyond that, Kemp is focused on holding strong Republican majorities in the Georgia General Assembly, and it will be interesting to see whether and how he divides his resources between that goal and helping Trump. The other is Kemp’s own political future. Kemp is term-limited and will be out of his current job in another two years, but few believe that – at the tender age of 62 – he will be ready to hang up his spurs and go home to Athens. The most common line of speculation is that he will challenge Jon Ossoff, the incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator, in 2026, but the second most common line of speculation is that he will begin laying the groundwork for his own presidential campaign in 2028. Either way, he has to think about the somewhat unusual blend of political support he now has – and how whatever he does this fall might affect that blend. Kemp enjoys a job approval rating of 47%, according to a June 2024 Quinnipiac University poll, including positive ratings from 50% of Independents and even 20% of Democrats. At the same time, only 71% of his fellow Republicans approve of his performance, and it seems a fair bet the remaining 29% would overlap significantly with Trump’s MAGA base. So, would going all in for Trump cost Kemp more with independents and soft Democrats in the northern Atlanta suburbs than he might gain back with red-capped Trump supporters in rural Georgia? Or is that a trade he would willingly, if not happily, make? The north Atlanta burbs are growing rapidly, after all, while rural Georgia is declining. Such a calculation might be a step toward reconstructing a post-Trump Republican Party. Ultimately, Kemp’s actions in the 2024 election cycle may serve as a bellwether for the future direction of the Republican Party in Georgia and beyond. Whether he chooses to fully embrace Trump, maintain a measured distance, or chart a new course entirely, Kemp’s decisions will likely reverberate through Georgia politics for years to come. Charles Hayslett is the scholar in residence at the Center for Middle Georgia Studies at Middle Georgia State University. Based in Decatur, the former political journalist and public relations professional now studies major economic, political and health issues affecting rural Georgia. He shares his research through statewide speaking engagements, regular columns appearing in publications across the Georgia Trust for Local News and his blog, Trouble in God’s Country. Related Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. 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