Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, at the time a candidate for governor, accompanied then-President Trump when Trump attended a rally in Macon, Ga. On November 4, 2018, just a few days before the election. Sour on Kemp, Trump is currently backing former US Senator David Perdue for the 2022 GOP primaries for governor.
John Bazemore / AP
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John Bazemore / AP
Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, at the time a candidate for governor, accompanied then-President Trump when Trump attended a rally in Macon, Ga. On November 4, 2018, just a few days before the election. Sour on Kemp, Trump is currently backing former US Senator David Perdue for the 2022 GOP primaries for governor.
John Bazemore / AP
When Brian Kemp first ran for governor of Georgia in 2018, there was little doubt about his conservative credentials.
He even ran a campaign ad called, “So conservative“, which shows him ripping through regulations with a chainsaw. And, somewhat famously, in the cabin of his pickup truck, he promises to ‘handle illegal criminals and bring them home himself. . “
Kemp also runs with no restraint support of President Trump at the time.
Four years later, Kemp was incumbent, running for re-election. But now, Trump has not only upset the governor, he is also urging Republican David Perdue, a former US senator who lost his seat in January, to oppose him in the GOP primaries. Perdue announced its candidacy this week.
In Georgia rally in September, Trump called Kemp “a complete and complete disaster” and said Democrat Stacey Abrams, who also announced his candidacy in 2022, could make a better governor than Kemp.
So how can a conservative, incumbent Trump ally stand up to a challenge from his own party?
The answer can say a lot about what happens in mid-term 2022.
“This is the boundary”
Listen to Trump’s rally speech in Perry, Georgia this fall, and have a complaint the former president made over and over again about Kemp.
“He’s a complete and total disaster of electoral integrity,” Trump said.
Brian Robinson, GOP strategist in Georgia, said Trump’s relationship with Kemp had begun to strain in 2020.
But the governor’s major split with Trump came in the weeks after the November election, as Trump pressured public officials in states where voter ratings were tight to overturn the results. under the pretext of bogus claims about widespread election fraud.
While Kemp did not completely rebut those claims, that November he ultimately refused to do what the president wanted.
“This is going to be the biggest problem in primary,” says Robinson. “This is the dividing line.”
Perdue, however, has backed all of Trump’s claims about the integrity of the 2020 election.
This week, he said that he will not be certified Georgia’s election results if he was governor last year. And on Friday, he joined a litigation challenged the results of the 2020 election in Georgia on the grounds that the claim of voter fraud was exposed.
“David Perdue told us this is what happens,” Robinson said. “That is, the connection this campaign revolves around.”
A major campaign for 2022, fueled by competing stories about 2020.
“This is definitely an issue that goes far beyond Georgia,” says Robinson. That’s what we’re going to see all over the country.
Trust in the elections
“It’s not about whether they’re conservative, because they’re conservative Republicans,” said Tammy Greer, a professor of political science at Clark Atlanta University. ‘with the former president’ or not,” said Tammy Greer, a professor of political science at Clark Atlanta University.
She said while the divisive Republican primaries will help Democrats, the intense focus in 2020 could muddy the waters for voters in November. If Kemp makes it through In the wake of the general election, she wondered if some voters might see him as simply someone who stood by the results of the election, rather than someone who passed a very conservative legislative agenda.
“The incumbent governor is abiding by the law that can be seen as a moderate Republican, which is reasonable for this one issue, rather than the sum total of what happened while he was in office,” she said.
However, one thing is clear. The false claims about the integrity of the election don’t just last long. They are fueling the Republican identity debate and enlivening the 2022 midterms.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston told WABE’s Rahul Bali on Friday.
Robinson, the GOP strategist, said he thinks most people have decided on Trump’s electoral fraud claims, and that candidates like Perdue are capitalizing on what voters already believe.
That leaves disinformation experts like Nina Jankowicz, a global fellow at the Wilson Center and author of How to lose the information war. She says that political candidates who include lies about election fraud in their campaigns are likely to become a mainstay of American politics – and the impact of that could be lasting.
“This is about the long-term health of our democratic system, and I worry that in 2070 we’re still thinking about 2020 and people are going to wonder if the people who are counting their votes will get it. Believe it or not,” Jankowicz said.
