Posted on 05/03/2022 5:10:09 AM PDT by Kaslin
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp says he is certain one thing won't happen before the Republican gubernatorial primary May 24: an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump.
After Trump called him "a turncoat, a coward, and a complete and total disaster" in front of a crowd of supporters at a rally in Commerce, Georgia, last Saturday, Kemp is probably not wrong. And he said he is fine with that.
"I've never said a bad word about President Trump. And I don't plan on doing so. I appreciate what he did for our state," Kemp told me in an interview.
Kemp says his emphasis right now is on the present. "I'm staying focused on what my record is. I can't control what other people are doing. I'm looking for the endorsement of our voters and I believe I'll get that on election day."
Ever since Trump publicly blasted Kemp for refusing to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results — results that were certified following three recounts — many Georgians figured Kemp would be a dead man walking in this year's Republican primary race, especially if Trump backed someone else to run against him.
hat's exactly what happened when Trump tapped former U.S. Sen. David Perdue to run against Kemp in the Georgia primary, which many presumed would catapult Purdue ahead of Kemp in the polls.
But polling for the past few months has steadily shown Perdue trailing Kemp by about 10 percentage points. The most recent Fox News Poll in March shows Kemp now up 11 points over the former senator.
The media have wildly underestimated Kemp's tenacity and appeal with voters. They also don't truly know what matters to people when they vote. They see Republican voters as frozen in time in a cultish allegiance with Trump, but in reality, they are much more complicated.
It is not hard to find Republican voters in Georgia who lean right and have also voted for Trump, Purdue, President Joe Biden and Kemp over a number of years. Voters are more complicated than the way they're framed by reporters or strategists.
Leland Sproul is one of them. The 33-year-old customer-training manager for a Fortune 500 company who lives in suburban Atlanta voted for Trump in 2016, cast a vote for Biden in 2020, and sat out voting for any of the U.S. Senate candidates — Republican or Democrat — that year.
"I fall very in line with most Republican policies, especially when they focus on fiscal policies, but I was just unhappy with how all of the candidates on the Republican side focused on social issues and I couldn't get with the Democrats, so I just didn't vote for Senate," Sproul explained.
He will, however, vote in the upcoming Republican gubernatorial primary and he said he is about 90% sure Kemp has earned his vote. A lot of the reason has to do with Trump's influence — and not in the way the ex-president intended.
"As much as I agree more with David Perdue's platform, I fear his Trump endorsement. I fear his disagreement with the election. I fear his Trump alignment and what I would describe as blind loyalty," Sproul said.
"I'm worried that Perdue's term as governor would be more stacked towards helping out Trump in his 2024 (presidential) bid instead of trying to run the state of Georgia."
Right to his point, Purdue said at the Trump rally on Saturday, "In the state of Georgia, thanks to Brian Kemp, our elections in 2020 were absolutely stolen, yeah!"
Statements like that don't sit well with a lot of Georgia voters who lean center-right. Many are still angry that Trump encouraged Georgia conservatives not to vote in the 2020 senate runoff election, where two Democrat challengers battled against two Republican incumbents, including Perdue — and both Republicans lost. As a result, the GOP lost its majority in the senate.
The upcoming Georgia primary is one of three big contests where Trump has handpicked challengers to upend fellow Republican incumbents. But if all three challengers lose, that could cause him to rethink a run in 2024.
In the senate primary race in North Carolina, Trump has backed Rep. Ted Budd over former governor Pat McCrory. And, in the GOP House primary race in Wyoming, he has backed attorney Harriet Hageman over Rep. Liz Cheney, the most prominent Republican in Congress to vote for Trump's second impeachment.
But, among all three contests, a Kemp loss would be the biggest win for Trump.
Kemp said his job is not to get mired in the endorsement drama. He just needs to meet with voters one-on-one and talk to them about what his administration has accomplished.
"We took a pounding in the polls right after the election and all of the questioning about the results, but governors go through that with tough issues," he said of the initial weeks after the 2020 elections. "But I do think that situation gave me the opportunity to let people know that I was still the fighter they elected when I got in office."
The 58-year-old businessman — who jumped into local politics nearly two decades ago because of his frustration over bureaucratic red tape — said his fortunes changed with the voting bill last year.
"It was a good bill. I knew what was in it," he said of the sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state elections that had President Joe Biden repeatedly calling it "Jim Crow 2.0" and saw Major League Baseball pull the All-Star Game out of the state.
"I never wavered. I stood by our position. I defended the bill. I pushed back against the Democrats, including the president, the vice president, a lot of woke corporate CEOs and retired CEOs and called them out for lying about the bill," he said.
"And even though we lost the All-Star Game to another state, we got poetic justice when the Braves won the World Series," Kemp proudly said of his home team.
Jim Southard has voted for both Purdue and Kemp. He also voted for Trump twice and liked his policies. But as the confluence of all three meet in this primary he said he'll be casting his vote in the best interests of his state.
"Kemp, most certainly," said the 37-year-old entrepreneur and father of four boys.
Southard said he's impressed Kemp evaded the controversies that Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams tried to bait him with in 2018. Now, four years later, he is a fan — especially as Abrams is running again.
"I think he's done a fantastic job. He has transformed Georgia, particularly in my region, and has turned it into an EV (electric vehicle) powerhouse. We've got the new battery plant, and the Rivian automaker that just announced they're going to be building a $5 billion factory in that same region," he said.
"I don't care who endorses whom," he added. "Kemp has a really good track record. He's batting a thousand against Stacey Abrams and I want the person running who has already beat Abrams to win the primary.
"It is just offensive for anyone to say, 'You should vote for him because I endorse him.'"
Yabut didn’t you go from the frying pan, to the fire?
GA voters are as stupid as South Carolina voters.
Trump needs to stay out of this, lest he hand the state over to Stacy:
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You have no idea what you’re talking about. Kemp has doubled-down on covering up the GA GOP’s collusion with the DNC/Abrams/China/Zuckerberg/Soros/CIA/Dominion to steal our elections. Plus, Kemp cannot beat Stacy.
Trump endorsed Perdue.
Abrams is an improvement over Kemp. Outright marxists, you know where they stand. Kemp is a marxist too, masquerading as a conservative.
That would hand the Senate seat to Warnock and the Secretary of State race to whoever wins the Democrat primary.
But you omitted the salient fact of primary importance
Stacy is Black and therefore intent on Africanization and is existentially bad.
Political analysis
I will not vote for Kemp under any circumstances!! He screwed up when he sold that Senate seat to Loeffler!! He screwed up when he took the $$ from Dominion on those voting machines!! He screwed up when he let Raffensburger make that deal with Abrams on the drop boxes!!! I hate Crooks!!!! I don’t care if they are Ds or Rs!!!
Not arguing otherwise. I’ll take that over a faux-conservative.
At some point, generally after it’s too late, conservatives push back against the Abrams of the world. Trudeau is a good example. If it wasn’t for Dominion voting machines, he’d have been out sooner.
“Is that the way its going to be from now on? If my side loses then it was rigged? If Kemp wins the primary is it rigged too?”
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40K affidavits of election fraud in GA say it is rigged. 2000mules, 200,000 felonies.
More than 300,000 votes unverified in Georgia’s Fulton County in 2020, new complaint alleges
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4056772/posts
Excerpt:
“According to the complaint, Fulton County violated state law regarding the closing of ballot scanner polls and tampering with ballot scanners.
At the end of early voting in the 2020 election, on October 30th, “with the ballot scanner polls still open, the seals were broken and the flashcards were removed,” according to the recent complaint.”
Brian Kemp has been censured in moderate Cobb County for failing to crack down on illegal immigration. A far cry from what he’s repeatedly promised and campaigned on.
Georgia General and Runoff Elections were rife with fraud and caught on tape.
Remember Brian Kemp just a few days ago killed a bill to unseal some ballot boxes for a forensic audit, even though he was presented with 40,000+ affidavits for election fraud.
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This is how they cheated. True The Vote has the receipts, on video.
Posted by Kane on April 11, 2022 11:51 pm
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RINOs Kemp, Duncan Block Key Election Integrity Bill to Unseal Ballots
Thursday April 7th 2022
Excerpt:
VoterGA co-founder Garland Favorito provided details indicating Duncan’s subversive actions were taken at the request of Gov. Brian Kemp: “Our volunteers were in touch with a variety of Brian Kemp’s policy people throughout the day on Sine Die. We emphasized how important SB89 is to the voters and the Governor’s re-election. We noted that it is a win-win situation for everyone. We explained he only needed to call his good friend Geoff Duncan to ensure that SB89 got a vote. It is now clear that Kemp asked Duncan to block this key election integrity bill that would have been passed unanimously by Georgia’s Republican Senators.”
https://voterga.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Press-Release-Geoff-Duncan-and-Brian-Kemp-Block-SB89-Unseal-Ballots.pdf
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Breaking Video of Brian Kemp [GA] in Front of Communist Flag, Talking About Business
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3912995/posts
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“Abrams is an improvement over Kemp.”
Spoken like a true Free Republic Assistant Democrat. You stand with your buddies Pelosi, Warren and Schumer in hoping a Dem is elected Governor.
“Abrams is an improvement over Kemp. Outright marxists, you know where they stand. Kemp is a marxist too, masquerading as a conservative.”
Kemp is disgusting and underhanded and should be in prison for his crimes.
Now, I wish there was a way to ressurect the Tyranny Response Team.
Colorado. Bad.
But at least you didn’t California yourself.
Kemp is a traitor and a straight up criminal. He sold Loeffler a senate seat for $500,000 and took God knows how much from the CCP to put dominion voting machines in Georgia. He then helped Raffensperger cover up election fraud.
Now he has twisted arms to get Constitutional Carry passed which he has helped to hold back for the past 4 years and temporarily suspended the gasoline tax. He’s as slippery as an eel. I will never vote for him. If Perdue wasn’t such a sorry candidate Kemp would not be winning.
So what will kemp say when the cow beats his butt in november
Never been there. They’re all coming here.
Yes.
The conservative part of the Republican-conservative coalition will be at home washing its hair the day of the "election" instead of "voting".
Kemp has GOT to know this.
That means he's an Assistant Democrat, just as everyone realized when he rubber-stamped the Georgia Steal.
He's going to hand the Georgia governorship to the Democrats ON PURPOSE.
If 300000 MAGA members do not turn out or vote for Kemp in the general election, and Kemp is still able to beat Abrams, then yes, this will be proof that the general election was rigged.
There is no way in hell that Kemp can beat Abrams in the general election without those 300000 MAGA voters.
FYI: Four years ago, Kemp beat Abrams by only 50,000 votes. He cannot do it again without MAGA.
Kemp played politics and timed the constitutional carry and state stimulus checks properly. But that’s politics.
It doesn’t help that Purdue isn’t exactly exciting.
I want Purdue to win, but Kemp is immeasurably better than Abrams.
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