In Georgia vote, candidate backed by Trump wins
ATLANTA — With a damning secret recording of his opponent and an endorsement from the president late in the race, Secretary of State Brian Kemp on Tuesday won a bruising Republican runoff in the race for Georgia governor.
A self-described “unapologetic conservative” whose campaign ran an eyebrow-raising ad that said he could use his own pickup to “round up criminal illegals,” Kemp rode a national wave of voter contempt for the establishment in favor of bare-knuckled outsider politics.
He now faces Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is seeking to become the country’s first black female governor, in a race that will test Democrats’ assertion that changing demographics have turned the Republican stronghold into a swing state.
Kemp beat once heavily-favored Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who outraised Kemp more than 2-to1 and had a Rolodex of endorsements from establishment Republicans in the state, including Gov. Nathan Deal.
In a tweeted endorsement last week, President Donald Trump pointed to Kemp’s tough stance on illegal immigration and strong support for gun rights. With days left in the race, Vice President Mike Pence also stumped for Kemp on the campaign trail. Both reiterated their support for Kemp in tweets Tuesday.
“Today is the day to vote for Brian Kemp. Will be great for Georgia, full Endorsement!” the president tweeted.
Cagle began to lose ground after the release of a secret recording in June in which he says he helped pass a “bad public-policy” bill for political gain. The recording was made without Cagle’s knowledge during a private conversation with former GOP gubernatorial rival Clay Tippins, who last week endorsed Kemp. Portions of the recording were released by Tippins and then by Kemp’s campaign.
In a 50-second piece of the recording released in early July by Kemp’s campaign, Cagle candidly discusses the GOP primary’s sharp turn to the right, saying the five-man race came down to “who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck and who could be the craziest.”
Cagle denied that his words amounted to criticism of Republican primary voters, saying they were aimed at his opponent.
Kemp had received widespread criticism — and national headlines — with television ads in which he pretends to intimidate a young man interested in his daughter with a shotgun and says he has a big pickup “just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take ’em home myself.”
Kemp’s opponents also hammered his record of securing voter data as secretary of state, in a line of attack likely to become a refrain for Abrams during the general election.
Cagle labeled Kemp “inKem-petent,” pointing to a 2015 incident in which Kemp’s office inadvertently released Social Security numbers and other identifying information of millions of Georgia voters on disks sent to members of the media and political parties.
Kemp said a member of his staff was responsible for the error, that person was fired and procedures were changed.
Kemp’s office made headlines again last year after security experts disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed until six months after it was first reported to election authorities. Personal data were again exposed for Georgia’s 6.7 million voters, as were passwords used by counties to access files.
Kemp spokesman Candice Broce blamed Kennesaw State University, which had a contract to manage the system. “It was not our system. It was not our equipment. It was not our network,” Broce said.
Nichole Jacobs went to Sandy Springs Christian Church to vote Tuesday for Kemp, citing his stance on immigration. Jacobs sends both of her children to private schools and feels her affluent Atlanta suburb is overrun with “illegal immigration.”
“People are moving out of Sandy Springs to get into a better school district or putting their kids in private schools,” Jacobs said.
Ron Rosen, 80, has lived in Sandy Springs for more than four decades where he is a doctor. He cast his vote for Cagle because he wasn’t impressed by Kemp’s ads. Rosen felt that Kemp’s advertisements were too focused on mudslinging rather than on what he was going to do for Georgia if elected.
“Cagle did come up with positive things,” Rosen said. “I wanted to hear about what someone was going to do.”
Information for this article was contributed by Brinley Hineman of The Associated Press.