The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Both parties’ next goal: Healing internal rifts
Close races give way to fence-mending as focus moves to November.
Georgia Republicans are trying to present a united front after Brian Kemp’s blowout victory in the battle for governor, along with closer races down the ballot. But it won’t be easy for some to let bygones be bygones after a nasty contest that led Casey Cagle to say definitively that Republicans would lose in November if he’s not the nominee.
Democrats have their own fence-mending ahead after close races this week for competitive U.S. House seats. The party is hoping to contrast its diverse ticket with the GOP’s slate of mostly older white men, aiming to energize voters with a new political approach.
The party consolidation is plenty easier when both top nominees won landslide victories. Kemp beat Cagle by nearly 40 percentage points, and Democrat Stacey Abrams won by an even larger margin over her rival back in May.
But setting aside bruised egos is still complicated business. One of Cagle’s top supporters, state Sen. Renee Unterman, told reporters she won’t back Kemp until his campaign apologizes for questioning her mental health. It has yet to do so.
And down-ticket rivalries still breed uncertainty. Former state Rep. Geoff Duncan defeated state Sen. David Shafer by a razor-thin margin, Tuesday night’s only cliffhanger. But Shafer, once the front-runner, hasn’t conceded defeat, and his
supporters are demanding a recount. Neither Republican attended the party’s unity rally Thursday.
The focus at the rally was on moving past the poisonous talk of the runoff. A tide of Republican figures who endorsed Cagle or stayed neutral in the race promptly backed the secretary of state. Among them was Gov. Nathan Deal, a Cagle backer who gave Kemp a vote of confidence, and U.S. Sen. David Perdue, who didn’t publicly take sides.
“The Democrats keep doing us favors — they’ve given us a target who is the most radical, liberal, progressive candidate in Georgia history,” Perdue said. “We need to lay down a marker tonight that the march to socialism will not come through Georgia.”
Also on the stage was Cagle, who during the runoff campaign unleashed escalating attacks on Kemp as he fell behind in the polls and was snubbed by President Donald Trump, repeatedly saying there was “no question in my mind” that Kemp will lose to Abrams in November.
Still, he quickly endorsed Kemp after his defeat — and got a hearty applause from the hundreds of Republicans at Thursday’s event for showing up. Speaking briefly to the crowd, he said he’s “confident and convinced that Brian Kemp is the right person to carry this torch forward.”
“We always win, as Republicans, on ideas. Let’s not ever forget that,” he said, adding that Kemp can win “but we all have to come together to fight this fight.”
That led to snickering from national Democrats, who are poised to invest millions in the contest. The Democratic Governors Association released a highlight reel of Cagle’s most biting attacks on Kemp and predicted that “Georgia voters won’t be fooled by this phony photo-op.”
Asked about the Republican attacks during a campaign stop in Pooler, Abrams pivoted to a newly unveiled proposal to boost the number of apprenticeships.
“My mission is to win this election by talking to every Georgian,” Abrams said. “It doesn’t really matter who else is doing this because I’m running for Georgia.”
Democrats quickly worked to patch things up after combative races to take on Republican incumbents in two competitive suburban U.S. House districts. They are among dozens of seats across the nation that Democrats are targeting this November to flip the chamber.
David Kim speedily backed Carolyn Bourdeaux in her bid to defeat U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall. And Kevin Abel urged his supporters to line up behind Lucy McBath, who won the nomination to face U.S. Rep. Karen Handel.
Even so, Abel displayed a tinge of regret over the tone of the campaign in a memo, lamenting that he was pilloried for musing about the potential creation of a moderate third party.
“I am saddened that party primary politics has a way of suppressing such messages of moderation; how the very word ‘moderate’ connotes such a vile response from those who prefer to play in the end zones,” he wrote. “But I am a realist and a pragmatist and I know that change doesn’t come with one swing of the bat.”
Progressives up and down the ballot won big victories during the nomination process, with a notable exception: John Barrow, a moderate former congressman, is running for secretary of state on a platform of securing the state’s election system and fighting gerrymandering.
Democrats hope a new strategy of appealing to a base that demands a more aggressive response to Trump’s policies will help them retake state offices they haven’t held in more than a decade.
“We have not been successful running campaigns to where we looked to validation from moderates and conservatives who may cross over,” said Michael Owens, the Cobb County Democratic chairman. “Now we have enough Democrats in this state to actually win these elections.”
Kemp welcomed the rival party’s tilt to the left, saying it will be easier to draw a contrast with a Democratic ticket “backed by billionaires and socialists who want to turn Georgia into California.”
“This isn’t about me and my big truck. This is about us,” Kemp said. “This is about fighting for literally the soul of our state in the fall. It’s about our values and the beliefs that make this such a great state to live, work and raise a family.”