Anomalous Treatment of a Republican Candidate in Georgia’s Senate Race: Herschel Walker, the Last Stand before Election Day, and the Clues to Trump
Editor’s Note: Geoff Duncan, a Republican, is the 12th Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. The views he expresses in this commentary are of his own. CNN has opinion articles.
Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee in Georgia’s US Senate race, shocked the political world in October when he decided not to run, causing one of the country’s closest races for congress to go into turmoil five weeks before Election Day. Just as there should not be two Democrats representing a center-right state like Georgia in the US Senate, the Republican Party should not have found its chance of regaining a Senate majority hanging on an untested and unproven first-time candidate.
Walker won his Senate primary because he was the only one who could win it. He trounced his opponents because of his performance on the football field 40 years ago and his friendship with former President Donald Trump – neither of which are guaranteed tickets to victory anymore.
Everyone in America deserves due process, and Walker vehemently denied the Daily Beast report suggesting he had paid for a woman’s abortion in 2009 after the two conceived a child while they were dating. Walker has opposed abortion rights. He went so far as to threaten legal action against the publication as a recourse. But the impact in the court of public opinion was immediate and intense. Even influential conservative personality Erick Erickson described it as “probably a KO.”
Now, members of a nervous GOP infrastructure must hold their breath and hope Walker can weather the storm. To his political credit, Walker has faced other serious allegations, including domestic abuse, an exaggerated business career and an erratic personality. He has had a Trump-esque quality of weathering scandals that would ruin his reputation. Walker’s latest test is his most serious and serious in October, not only due to its nature.
Most recent polling showed that the race was not close, and the stakes were higher forAbrams. Kemp, one of the few prominent Republicans to resist former President Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election in 2020, has positioned himself as a more traditional, pro-business conservative – a tack that his gentle resistance to Trump reinforced with swing voters. Abrams has argued that Kemp shouldn’t get any special credit for doing his job and not breaking the law.
In those comments, she argued that Kemp, as the state’s top elections official, and his associates had unfairly worked to suppress the vote and that she would not concede the contest. Instead, Abrams said then, she would only “acknowledge” him as the winner.
Kemp is breathing easier because of factors that extend beyond the flaws ofAbrams. He has achieved something and results, which is why he has his record back on track. Georgia was recently named the best state for business for the ninth consecutive year by Area Development magazine. Kemp re-opened the state faster than many others, angering then President Trump who was angry at the decision. Georgia has made progress in becoming the technology capital of the East Coast, as more people and businesses have relocated to the state.
The First Lady of the Georgia Senate Race, Raphael Warnock, Compared to the Democrat Hillary Kemp, a Republican Senator who doesn’t Like Biden
The incumbent senator has a steady lead over the challenger. He voted for the President more than 100 times in a state where less than half of the voters approve of him, according to a recent survey.
The numbers do not lie. Our Senate race should be a referendum on Warnock’s blind rubber-stamping of Biden’s agenda. The American Rescue Plan Act and the $750 billion Inflation Reduction Act were passed along party line votes, and could not be stopped in an evenly divided upper chamber.
If we want the American public to take us seriously, we need to get our candidates nominated. That process goes beyond celebrity or fame. It requires leaders capable of winning elections by articulating a conservative vision for governing.
Like Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker did in his debate with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock last week, Kemp took every opportunity – and when they weren’t there, tried anyway – to connect Abrams to Biden, who, despite winning the state in 2020, is a deeply unpopular figure there now.
The only person running for the Democrats this year who has distanced herself from the President isAbrams, who recently stated that she would welcome him in Georgia. The first lady attacked Kemp over his position on abortion, Medicaid and voting rights, as well as his refusal to expand, during a visit to Georgia last week.
“Georgians should know that my desire is to continue to help them fight through 40-year high inflation and high gas prices and other things that our Georgia families are facing right now, quite honestly, because of bad policies in Washington, DC, from President Biden and the Democrats that have complete control,” he said.
Asked if he would pursue such legislation if reelected, Kemp said, “No, I would not” and that “it’s not my desire to” push further abortion restrictions, before pivoting to an attack on Biden, national Democrats and more talk about his economic record.
Kemp said that he had to be in legislative session to take up all of the things that he could.
“I’m going to work hard for every Georgian,” Sen. Susan Abrams tells a packed room at the Georgia House of Representatives
Georgia in 2019 passed and Kemp signed a so-called “heartbeat” bill, which bans abortions at around six weeks, and went into effect soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade. Before the ruling, abortion was legal in the state until 20 weeks into pregnancy.
Abrams has promised to work to “reverse” the law, though she would face significant headwinds in the GOP-controlled state legislature, and called the state law “cruel.”
One of the first questions was about her speech and how it came to be conceded to Kemp.
She was asked if she would accept the results of the upcoming election but she accused Kemp of trying to make it harder for people to vote.
Kemp pointed to high turnout numbers over the past few elections and said the law made it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
Mr Kemp, if you keep lying, I think you believe that it is true. I support law enforcement and did so for 11 years (in state government),” Abrams said. “I worked closely with the sheriff’s association.”
Kemp has been accused of trying to weaponize crime and public safety by pitting her against police. She said the reality was less than it appeared.
“Like most Georgians, I lead a complicated life where we need access to help but we also need to know we are safe from racial violence,” she said, before turning to Kemp. You could have had that experience, but I don’t know if too many people have.
The message was simple. “I support safety and justice,” he said, often pointing to his anti-gang initiatives – especially when he was pressed on the effect of his loosening gun laws on crime.
“I said in my inaugural address that I’m going to work hard for every Georgian, even if you didn’t vote for me,” he said to a crowd of supporters from his second term this year. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing.
The incubators of democracy: what do governors and Republicans actually do in Georgia to ensure that they run the galactic witchcraft? A conversation with Kemp on the aftermath of the 2020 election
The governors of the country have had their hands full with a number of recent events, such as the loss of the abortion ban in the US, a global pandemic, and a tumultuous 2020 election.
Kemp doesn’t talk much about the aftermath of the 2020 election, or the state’s voting laws that were criticized by Democrats.
He refers to 2020 in a number of ways, including by describing how he reopened schools and businesses during the outbreak when most governors did not.
“We’re the incubators of democracy,” Kemp said in an interview. A lot of the things that you’ve seen are good for our states but don’t fare well at a national level. I think covid only made that worse.
In her quest to become governor, Abrams has made abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign. Kemp signed a law banning most abortions after six weeks.
“Governors have the greatest amount of power that people rarely comprehend,” she said in an interview. The United States Supreme Court’s decision stripping women of their right to choose is one of the reasons why more and more of the power is being put in the hands of the states.
Still, an issue that may help decide tight races in Georgia and other states is mostly out of governors’ hands – inflation. Kemp and other Republicans have used rising costs for everyday expenses as a way to make Democrats lose control of Washington.
The states can help alleviate voters’ economic pain, and both candidates have laid out ways the state can do that. Kemp has suspended the state’s gas tax for a while now. She has doubled her pledge to expand Medicaid.
But as the two candidates top midterm ballots in Georgia for a second time, they have laid out very different visions for the state – on everything from economic development and the state budget to healthcare, voting and public safety – at a time when Georgia’s demographics and politics are in flux.
Kemp made a plan to deal with the anger from Trump supporters. The man pointed out that he had voted for Trump, and wished he had won reelection. In March 2021, as Trump was publicly calling on Kemp to resign, the governor appeared on Fox News and said he would “absolutely” support Trump if he was the party’s nominee for president in 2024.
“It lays out this blueprint,” said Stephen Lawson, a Georgia-based Republican operative. “I think there’s going to be lessons here for other people the president has recently lashed out against. If you don’t take the bait, you’ve got a pretty good chance of winning.”
Kemp’s approach has the attention of the party’s bigwigs, impressed by his principled stand on the 2020 election result and his ability to survive as a target of Trump’s fury.
“If we didn’t hold the governor’s race in the 2022 midterm, there’s no path for a Republican to win the presidency in ’24,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday. “And I think now we have that path.”
One person familiar with his thinking said it’s “unlikely” Kemp will run for president himself, and aides say Kemp’s sights are set on more institutional leadership, possibly a role at the Republican Governors Association.
The governor hasn’t done anything. He has done nothing. Trump said he was ashamed that he endorsed Biden when Georgia certified his win in 2020.
The calls came first from longtime donors, then voters, all with varying levels of false theories about the conduct of the election in Georgia. Kemp directed his team to write a response that would be sent out to donors. He also developed a response ready to deliver at meetings with local party organizations and activists.
Allies say Kemp did not back down from his refusal of the request from Trump, but that he was going to address these concerns head-on with patience and knowledge of the state election laws.
When Trump’s opponents looked like obsequiousness, they intended to deny the former president from being in office and from having a Twitter feed.
After the MLB All-Star Game, Mike Kemp fought for the Republican Party: A Political Campaign against a Failover of the GOP
The MLB decided to remove the All-Star Game from Atlanta after it was protested and boycotted. Kemp was given a prime opportunity to play the hero, not the villain, for the Republican base by the MLB’s decision.
Brian was able to find his voice after the All-Star game, and it galvanized his supporters around him. It gave him a foil,” said John Watson, a former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.
Trump, meanwhile, looked out of step with conservatives when he criticized Kemp and the new law as “far too weak and soft.” One person close to the governor said Kemp’s biggest online fundraising haul came on the day of the MLB’s announcement. In the spring of 2021, he conducted more than 100 interviews defending the law, with conservative media casting Kemp as a fighter against the “woke mob.”
“You cannot underestimate the political gift of (the elections law) and the MLB All-Star Game,” said the person close to him. “It gave the Republican voters a bogeyman who was not the governor.”
Perdue had been close with Trump during his Presidency, but he was kept out of the picture when it came to Trump recruiting him to take on Kemp.
Kemp’s operation quickly recognized the threat from Perdue and sought to coax important figures close to the former senator into his camp, including enlisting former Perdue aides and making early outreach to the state’s GOP donor network.
Save America transferred a few million dollars to an anti-Kemp PAC, which was not enough to overcome Trumps lackluster effort to boost Perdue. Trump avoided the state before the primary because he had a rally for Perdue in March.
The result was unanimous. Kemp won the primary with 74% of the vote. The Kemp win gave Trump his worst primary defeat in the cycle, and it wasn’t even a shot at the man himself.