“You’ll get a lot of strong Trump supporters going to vote for Brian Kemp,” said Martha Joler, a talk radio presenter in Georgia.
Zoller said that when considering Perdue’s running for governor, he advised him to go beyond broadcasting Trump’s grievances and find meaningful ways to differentiate himself as a candidate. “It could not be about the 2020 election,” he told Berdu. That never happened, and Perdue entered the primary outpost on Tuesday and trailed badly in the polls.
Georgia can provide a clear indication of the limits of Trump’s influence during the primary election, which underscores the extent to which most GOP candidates, even those without his support, are at the center of the Republican Party. Loyalty to him.
Beach State Power Struggle
Georgia has emerged as one of the most important political battlefields in the country in recent years. Demographic changes have made what has long been a credible red state competitive. Two Democrats’ victories in the January 2021 Senate runoff gave the party full control of Congress.
This is zero in on Trump’s retaliation against Republicans for not supporting his lies about election fraud. Trump helped recruit and clear the field for former senator Perdue, who failed in one of those runoffs last year. In his bid to oust Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, he backs Representative Jody Hayes, who, after a phone call from Trump in early January 2021, urged him to “find” enough votes to reverse Georgia’s decision and offer its 16 elections. College votes for Trump.
But not all voters are interested in reconsidering that election.
“I want him to stay out of our elections,” said Chuck Horton, a retired police officer and Okoni County Commissioner after the Kemp rally on Saturday. “I voted for him in 2020. On the other hand there is no other way. But he thinks wrong. I do not think the election was rigged and he does not support the right person.”
Georgia is ready for a series of races in November. Democratic Senate. Rafael Warnock is facing an election for a full six years, and is likely to face Trump-backed former football star Herschel Walker, who wants to win the Republican primary on Tuesday. In the gubernatorial race, Democrats will nominate Stacey Abrams for a second term in 2018 after a brief defeat to Kemp.
Some Republican voters say they would rather stick with the governor who won that closer 2018 election than follow the former president responsible for at least part of the party’s 2020 losses in Georgia. Some pointed to Trump’s continued criticism of the mail-in ballot, arguing that he had hurt his own chances and reduced Republican votes in the Senate runoffs.
“According to our senators and delegates, if he had done one thing, we would not be in this mess: if he had stayed away from his Twitter for three days in seven days – then he would not have set aside his own supporters for what he says, and we would not expect 11,000 votes,” he said in Ogoni County. Eddie Trinkard, a real estate broker in the city, said President Joe Biden’s 2020 is making a difference. Success. “But he’s not smart enough to do that.”
Carefully avoiding any criticism of Trump on policy matters, Trump maintained himself for victory on Tuesday, making sure not to say anything that would offend believers.
He was joined in the campaign by a crowd of Republican governors, including Arizona’s Doug Duchy, Ricketts and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Benz will appear with Kemp at an election rally on Monday.
At his campaign stops, Kemp leaned into an argument that he was the strongest alternative to Abrams, and that Republican voters would surround him once the bet was reduced to a head-to-head election.
“I think Stacy Abrams is a great coordinator. I think every Republican in Georgia will come together after Tuesday,” Kemp told reporters Saturday afternoon.
Kemp and his supporters spent more than $ 12 million on TV commercials that went to primaries on Tuesday, almost doubling down on Berto’s side.
Election over 2020
In some ways, Kemp’s actions closely reflect the views of today’s GOP voters: in April 2020, during the Govt-19 epidemic, he sought to quickly reopen the state – a situation that was widely attacked by public health professionals at the time, and even by Trump. , Who said, “I think it’s too soon.”
Despite his dismissal of Trump’s lies about election fraud, he signed into law a new voting process passed by the Georgia legislature last year that imposes new restrictions on postal ballots, banning the provision of food and water to people waiting in line to vote, and more. That law will be tested for the first time this year.
Supporters of Kemp argue that Trump’s criticism of Kemp ignores the fact that the governor has implemented conservative policies despite the state turning left.
Carol Williams, who works in real estate in Athens, said: “Those comments are about herself, not really about the governor.” I think the former president has no skin on the game in Georgia. He did not understand what was best for our state. We were in the open. We have done the right thing in this cowardly situation. His approvals should be even higher. In Florida. “
Perdue, meanwhile, has been building his entire campaign around the lie that the 2020 losses of the Republicans are the result of fraud.
“I did not know his heart was full of it,” said Joler, a talk radio presenter. “I think Senator Berto, at his center, ran more because he was angry at the loss in 2020 than what he could do as governor.”
Sarah Pauline, the former governor of Alaska and now running for Congress as the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, joined Perdue in the campaign on Friday.
“Kemp had the opportunity to do something about the atrocities of the last election. I do not know why he was so reluctant, why, you know, he went out together.
