Pence stumps for Kemp
DALTON, Ga. — Led by Vice President Mike Pence, Republican leaders came here Thursday to preach the importance of walls. First, a theoretical wall. A big, conservative wall, fortified to reject liberal politicians. Construction of that wall, they said, will occur Tuesday, when Republicans vote Brian Kemp into the governor’s seat over Stacey Abrams. A Kemp victory sends a signal to Democrats across the country that Georgia is not in play.
“Stacey Abrams [is] being bankrolled by Hollywood liberals, sending their support into the state,” Pence told the crowd at the Dalton Convention Center. “Some of them have come into the state. I heard Oprah’s in town today, and I heard Will Farrell was going door to door the other day. Well, I’d like to remind Stacey and Oprah and Will Farrell, I’m kind of a big deal, too. And I got a message for all of Stacey Abrams’ liberal Hollywood friends: This ain’t Hollywood; this is Georgia.”
Said U.S. Sen. David Perdue: “The billionaires in California and New York have decided that the road to the White House in 2020 rolls through Georgia this year. They’re trying to buy this governor’s race.”
Lieutenant governor candidate Geoff Duncan: “We’re going to win by a big enough margin that guys like [George] Soros and [Michael] Bloomberg wake up on the seventh and decide
they never want to send another dime to the state of Georgia ever again.”
Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston: “We’re going to say to Mr. Soros, ‘George, you should have kept all of that money.’”
Kemp: “We will build a red wall around this state to stop the so-called blue wave.”
This attack line has been Kemp’s ammunition since he won the Republican nomination July 24, and he will ride it on the last stretch of the race. Over and over, he has referred to Abrams as a left-wing extremist, hellbent on changing the culture of the state. Republican politicians — including Pence, of Indiana — are happy to echo that line.
Money is the most obvious evidence. Through Sept. 30, Abrams raised $10.2 million. Of the donations that could be tracked — donations of at least $100 — about 53 percent came from outside the state, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis. Kemp, for his part, has relied on familiar Georgia businesses and lobbyists.
Abrams became a national political darling this year by taking a different approach than most statewide Democratic candidates. Like other southern states, Georgia has gone mostly Republican in national races since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 14 presidential elections, Democrats have won just three times: Jimmy Carter twice and Bill Clinton in 1992.
But, like other southern states, Democrats in Georgia held on to power for decades by running as moderates in local and statewide races, distancing themselves from the national party. The governor’s seat remained blue until 2002, when Sonny Perdue defeated Roy Barnes. Since then, some Democratic candidates for governor — including Barnes again in 2010 — have run as that old-style candidate.
Jason Carter and Michelle Nunn, the state’s Democratic candidates for governor in 2014, famously skipped a visit by President Barack Obama in September of that year, two months before the election.
Not Abrams. She worked on a registration drive targeting minorities and has run on the strategy that she can inspire unlikely voters to turn out this year. She also has campaigned alongside national Democratic figures, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. She endorsed progressive stances from Medicaid expansion to making the HOPE Scholarship available to undocumented immigrants who are protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.
Past voting patterns show Abrams has an uphill climb in this area. In the 2014 governor’s race, Republican Nathan Deal earned 69 percent of the vote in northwest Georgia’s Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade, Gordon, Murray, Walker and Whitfield counties. But overall, the race seems tight. The forecasting website FiveThirtyEight rated the election as a toss-up. A new poll released by Cygnal put Kemp up by 2 percentage points.
Abrams has come to Dalton twice in the last three months. During an Aug. 1 visit at the Convention Center, she said she hoped to pick off enough voters in conservative areas to make a difference in the big picture.
“We have to run in every county, no matter where we are,” she said at the time. “I want every vote that I can get. What I see in Dalton, what I’ve seen in Whitfield County, what I saw in Catoosa County and in Dade County, is that these are areas of the state that are hungry for attention and hungry for investment.”
In the final stretch of the race, national stars are descending into Georgia. While Pence spoke in Dalton, Oprah Winfrey took the stage in Marietta. Former President Barack Obama will stump for Abrams Friday. On Sunday, before his stop in Chattanooga, President Donald Trump will headline a Kemp rally in Macon.
During his stop in Dalton — the first of three appearances on Thursday — Pence also railed for the second wall. The physical wall that Trump has promised to build along the United States’ southern border. Like Trump has at other rallies for Republican candidates in this midterm, Pence turned his attention to the caravan of migrants traveling on foot through Mexico.
National Republicans are using the event as a flashpoint for why voters need to side with their party next week. Pence tried to tie the issue to the governor’s race, though federal officials dictate policy on the border, far from Georgia.
“The thousands of people that are coming north for the sole purpose of violating our laws and attempting to come in to our country illegally are nothing short of an assault on our country, and it will not be allowed,” he said, as a crowd in red hats with Kemp signs erupted.
“Truth is, these caravans are being used by leftist groups, organized by human traffickers with no regard for human life. … With Brian Kemp as your governor, President Donald Trump in the White House, with renewed Republican majorities on Capitol Hill, we’re going to build that wall.”
Pence’s speech came the day after Trump posted an ad showing Luis Bracamontes, who came to the United States from Mexico illegally and killed two police officers in northern California in 2014. The ad reads, “DEMOCRATS LET HIM INTO OUR COUNTRY” and “DEMOCRATS LET HIM STAY.” (According to an Associated Press fact check, Bracamontes had been arrested in the United States while both Republican and Democratic presidents were in office. There is no clear evidence of government officials letting him stay.)
“Democrats don’t want to build a wall,” Pence said. “They don’t want to secure our border. They don’t want to close immigration loopholes.”