Free Republic

For nearly two years, former President Donald Trump criticized Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia for not helping him overturn now-President Joe Biden's victory in the Southern swing state in the 2020 election. In advance of the 2022 midterms, Trump even recruited former Sen. David Perdue to run against Kemp in the GOP gubernatorial primary, but the governor defeated him landslide — a reflection of his strength among Peach State conservatives. And in the November general election, Kemp defeated his Democratic archrival Stacey Abrams by nearly eight points, winning by nearly 300,000 votes — a marked improvement over his roughly...

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is done being underestimated. Having vanquished both a Donald Trump-backed Republican challenger and Democratic star Stacey Abrams to win reelection, Kemp is looking to expand his influence in his second term, free from the caricature of the gun-toting, pickup-driving, migrant-catching country boy that emerged during his first campaign for governor. A new vision of Kemp steering his party toward a non-Trumpian conservatism made its debut in his November victory speech after it became clear that he had defeated Abrams by a much larger margin in their rematch than he had in their tight 2018 matchup. “This...