Abrams-Kemp slugfest in Georgia promises to be pricey, long and ugly
ATLANTA » Georgia voters didn’t get much of a break from election talk on the day after the Tuesday primary in which Republican Gov. Brian Kemp demolished GOP challenger David Perdue and Democrat Stacey Abrams finally clinched a nomination waiting for her after no other members of her party jumped in.
The Republican Governors Association, a key contributor to Kemp’s victory, launched a television ad attacking Abrams Wednesday. And the state Democratic Party announced the launch of its coordinated campaign that seeks to grab victories in November for Abrams, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock and others.
Those were opening moves in what will be a brutal slog of a governor’s race between Abrams and Kemp, a contest that Republican strategist Ryan Mahoney estimated could cost $250 million overall after campaigns and other groups finish spending.
Kemp’s romp, where he won nearly 75% of the Republican vote despite former President Donald Trump’s support of Perdue, made headlines worldwide as proof that Republicans could defy Trump and thrive. And Abrams, once unknown, vaulted to first rank of national Democrats with her 2018 loss to Kemp and subsequent advocacy for voting rights.
Kemp is eager to tie Abrams to President Joe Biden in this year’s rematch, seeking to drag her down with the weight of the Democratic president’s unpopularity.
“She has embraced the disastrous Biden agenda at every single turn,” Kemp told supporters Tuesday in his victory speech.
Abrams, meanwhile, wants to make the campaign all about the shortcomings in Kemp’s record, repeating multiple times in a Tuesday news conference that Kemp “doesn’t care about the people of Georgia.”
Kemp, Perdue, Abrams and their supporters combined to spend more than $20 million in the primary. A new Georgia state law allows individuals to make unlimited contributions to Kemp and Abrams, which could bring saturate screens with a summer of negativity, as each tries to blacken the other’s reputation.
Georgia politics, once sleepy and Republicandominated, have never settled down since 2018, and the intensity is clearly driving voter interest. More than 1.9 million Georgians cast ballots in the primaries. Republican turnout of nearly 1.2 million topped the previous 2020 record, while Democratic turnout of more than 700,000, despite few compelling races, topped the 2018 midterm record, but not the 2020 record.