Trump’s feud with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp risks blowing the key state
Former President Donald Trump has renewed his feud with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp even as Kemp has tried to turn the page from 2020
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has shown Republicans how they win in the increasingly purple swing state. So naturally, former President Donald Trump is renewing his feud with the popular leader.
Trump’s decision to blast Kemp and his wife, Georgia First Lady Marty Kemp, during a rally in Atlanta, is indicative of a campaign that has lost its footing since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
“I don’t want her endorsement. I don’t want his endorsement. I just want them to do their job for Georgia,” Trump said of the Kemps during an August 3rd rally in Atlanta. “In my opinion, they want us to lose.”
Trump also called Kemp a “bad guy” and a “very average governor.” Neither Kemp supported Trump during the GOP presidential primary. Marty Kemp said in April she would write her husband’s name in instead of Trump this November. Gov. Kemp has endorsed Trump and has moved to turn the page.
Republicans had a fairly conventional playbook to beat Vice President Kamala Harris, who has jettisoned most of the progressive views that defined her 2020 primary campaign. Instead of questioning Harris’ policy, Trump told a room of Black journalists that Harris wasn’t really Black. He’s gone after Jewish Americans who happen to support Harris, questioning their faith in a way that harkens back to the worst impulses of antisemitism. And now, Trump is back to attacking his fellow Republicans.
Influential Republicans and even Trump’s allies are begging him to get back on message.
“If we lose Georgia, it could be a very long night. So let’s win this election,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a noted Trump ally, told “Fox News Sunday” when asked about the feud. “How about that? Let’s win an election we can’t afford to lose.”
But Trump’s renewed feud with Kemp illustrates how, at any moment, the former president can harm his own standing. It’s a return to the form that cost Trump the White House and Republicans both houses of Congress.
“If you want to understand the problem Trump created for himself in Georgia, today on the radio, 9 out of 10 callers are women, and they’re all mad at him for attacking Brian Kemp’s wife,” conservative radio host Erick Erickson, who lives in Georgia, wrote on earlier this week.
Trump can retake the White House without winning Georgia. But flipping the Peach State back to Republicans would preserve what once seemed to be a very expansive Electoral College map.
Harris can also win the White House without Georgia. If she holds the state and its 16 Electoral College votes, she could sustain a potential setback in one of the so-called “Blue Wall” states in the upper Midwest.
There hasn’t been much polling of the state since Harris rose to the nomination, but a recent AARP poll found a race that is too close to call. Cook Political Report, which had previously moved more states closer to Trump, put Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona all back into their “toss up” category.
Trump needs Kemp’s organization.
Kemp is more than just a popular governor. He is the leader of an expansive ground game that powered his nearly 8-point reelection victory in a rematch against former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who he beat by less than 55,000 votes just four years prior.
Trump’s team, according to Erickson, needs Kemp’s organization because it hasn’t stood up one of its own. Unlike Harris, Trump is relying far more on outside groups to push the type of canvassing and get the out efforts expected of a presidential campaign. His campaign leaders have said that traditional organizations aren’t all they are cracked up to be, but Republicans across the country are nervous about the strategy.
Kemp didn’t even have to moderate his stances to win so convincingly. In a state with two Democratic US senators, the Republican governor championed the passage of one of the nation’s toughest abortion bans, weakened gun laws, and restricted how teachers can discuss race in the classroom. By any measure, he’s shown the blueprint of how Republicans can win without compromising conservative principles.
Even after the Trump rally, Kemp tried again to press on. But the former president couldn’t resist taking another swipe at Georgia’s governor during his meandering Thursday news conference.
“Without me, he wouldn’t be governor. I got him elected,” Trump, who endorsed Kemp in 2018, told reporters at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump also added that he hoped his relationship with Kemp could be repaired. On Friday, Kemp offered another olive branch while jokingly comparing Trump to Tropical Storm Debby, which slammed the state.
“A lot of noise out there, as you can imagine, a lot of distractions, which in my opinion, is not what we need to be doing right now in the presidential campaign or in any of the campaigns we’re running in the state of Georgia to keep our majorities in the House and Senate,” Kemp told Erickson during an onstage interview at a conservative conference Erickson is hosting.
Left unsaid is that biggest distraction of all has been Trump. The man Kemp is desperately trying to put back in the White House, if only he will let him.
