Kemp wins Georgia GOP gov’s race in stinging rebuke of Trump
Trump, Pence backed different candidates while Abrams ran unopposed in Democratic primary
ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia easily dispatched Donald Trump’s hand-picked challenger on Tuesday in a Republican primary that demonstrated the limits of the former president and his conspiracy-fueled politics in a critical swing state.
Kemp will face Democrat Stacey Abrams this fall in what will be one of the nation’s most consequential governor’s races.
The results served as a stinging rebuke of Trump in a race that he prioritized above almost all others. Angered by Kemp’s refusal to go along with his extraordinary effort to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, Trump personally recruited former Sen. David Perdue to launch a primary. Trump even encouraged another Republican to drop out of the race to clear a path for a Perdue victory.
But Kemp ultimately emerged as a powerful candidate able to draw prolific fundraising totals that helped him flood Georgia with television and other ads. He tapped into the power of his office to show voters what he could do for them, unveiling a $5.5 billion, 8,100-job Hyundai Motor plant near Savannah in the final days of the campaign.
“Even in the middle of a tough primary, conservatives across our state didn’t listen to the noise. They didn’t get distracted,” Kemp told cheering supporters, before calling on his party to rally behind his campaign.
In defeat, Perdue struck a unifying tone that has become increasingly rare in a Republican Party dominated by Trump’s hardline tactics.
“I want you to know tonight that I am fully supporting Brian Kemp in his run to beat Stacey Abrams,” Perdue said. “It’s emotional for all of us, we’re disappointed, I get that. Let’s take a few hours, lick our wounds, and tomorrow morning, you’re going to hear me going to work for Brian Kemp to make damn sure that Stacey Abrams is never governor of Georgia.”
In all, five states were voting Tuesday, including Alabama, Arkansas, Texas and Minnesota. But none had been more consumed than Georgia by Trump and his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Perdue’s loss becomes the latest example of a primary setback for Trump’s preferred candidates, who have lost governor’s races in Idaho and Nebraska. A Pennsylvania Senate primary is too close to call a week after the election.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won his Republican runoff election against Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush on Tuesday despite facing a slew of legal problems, including an FBI investigation and a trial on securities fraud charges.
Bush is the only member of his famous family still in office, but the loss means he will now exit in January. That will leave the Bush dynasty out of elected office for one of the few times in the last 40 years.
The coming end of the Bush era — at least for now — came at the hands of a two-term incumbent still dogged by a 2015 felony indictment and a separate FBI investigation into accusation of corruption. But importantly in Texas, Paxton had the backing of former President Donald Trump, who has mocked and antagonized the Bush family on his way to taking their mantle as the GOP’s standard-bearer.
Paxton, who has denied wrongdoing, is now within reach of a third term in Texas, where a Democrat hasn’t won statewide office in nearly 30 years. More recently, the State Bar of Texas is weighing possible reprimands against Paxton over his baseless attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
It was one of two closely watched primary runoffs in Texas: On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, one of the last anti-abortion Democrats in Congress, was in the fight of his political career against Jessica Cisneros, who supports abortion rights.
Despite finishing second in March’s four-way primary, Bush trailed Paxton by 20 points. The wide gap underscored Paxton’s continued political durability and showed how much ground the 46-year-old scion of the Bush political dynasty needed to make up with GOP voters in Texas.