Gov. Kemp on Perdue, Abrams, his race for a 2nd term
EDITOR’S NOTE — Times-Journal Inc. staff sat down with Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday to ask about his campaign, record and the issues of the day. Kemp faces former Sen. David Perdue in the May 24th Republican primary. Perdue has been invited for a similar interview prior to the primary. The winner squares off against Democrat Stacey Abrams in the November general election. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why should voters choose you in the primary, and then in the general?
Brian Kemp: Well, No. 1 is, I can beat Stacey Abrams. No. 2 is, I’ve done exactly what I told them I would do over the last three years or so when I was campaigning for governor. And I think that’s something I really pride myself on. And quite honestly, that’s what I’ve been reminding voters of is, what we’ve done the last three years is exactly what I told them I would do. I think a lot of people got sidetracked from that, the media did too, for the last two years, because of the pandemic, the 2020 election, stuff that was going on.
So it’s been refreshing for me to be back on the campaign trail reminding people what we did, even before the pandemic hit, but also what we did while the pandemic was going on. Our mission to complete the task that I ran on never left us, and we’ve got a great record. It’s a great record for conservative Republicans in the primary, but it’s also a record that can beat Stacey Abrams in November.
Q: Inflation is on a lot of people’s minds. You did the gas tax suspension, which will hopefully provide some relief. But what else can a governor do about the rising prices?
A: Well, if you look at the inflation that we’re seeing across the country, you can thank Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams, and all the activists that have been pushing this agenda, whether it’s their domestic energy policy, whether it was blue state governors and this administration convincing people to worry more about the pandemic than their livelihoods — that really drove a lot of this, well over a year ago.
It was long before the war in Ukraine that inflation started going up, gas prices were going up, food, the whole supply chain mess. And if you look back at what Georgia’s been doing, long before that we were the first state in the country to reopen after not closing most things to start with, heavily criticized by everyone in doing that, including Stacey Abrams. …
But if you look at the whole supply chain issue, think about the ports of Savannah and the ports of Brunswick, even when things were as tight as we’ve ever seen before, we were still doing better than most ports. We cleared our backlog in a matter of months because of forward thinking. And it was interesting to me that all of the federal Democrats, including President Biden and Pete Buttigieg and others, tried to take credit for saving Christmas, because they went out to California and announced that they were going to work 24/7 and do all these different things. Well, we had been working on that for months at the Port of Savannah, and we cleared our backlog. I was down there on New Year’s Day and they were already back at normal operations. …
So we’ve had a record of really working for three years to address those issues and a lot of ways before it even started. … I mean, we can’t fix all the problems of Washington, it’s impossible for us to do that. What we can do is try to help our citizens be able to offset that, because of good policies that we’ve had in Georgia, which is passing a tax cut last year, $140 million tax cut in the middle of the pandemic.
This year, my proposal in the budget, which is now signed into law and the legislation has passed to return over a billion dollars to the taxpayers that we didn’t need … our revenues exceeded what our budget expectations were in the amended budget this year. So instead of just spending it on onetime money or pork-barrel projects, we’re giving it back to the taxpayers — $250 per filer, up to $500 for a family filing jointly.
And then on top of that, we also passed the two-month gas moratorium because of excess revenues. It’s helping Georgians cope with just a huge increase in inflation that we’ve had in gas prices, and it’s about 30 cents a gallon … So it’s pretty substantial, just to help Georgians cope with that, try to keep our economy going. …
Q: You mentioned you were one of the first governors to open back up, one of the last to close down. When you look back on that, was that the right call? And is there anything else you’d do differently about the pandemic?
A: Oh, there’s tons I think everybody would do different now looking back. I mean, nobody had ever dealt with a global pandemic. I had a great meeting with Dr. (Kathleen) Toomey yesterday where I just thanked her for being such a great leader to put all the public health options on the table with her expertise. I mean, look, she’s one of the most highly trained epidemiologists in the world, she’s worked all over the world, but she also has a real common sense about her. And she understands that it’s not just about protecting lives, but you also have livelihoods.
You look back a year and a half ago. Her and I both at press conferences were warning about mental health issues, not having our kids in school, the detrimental effects of that on social and physical activities ... and economic viability, and just all those costs. So I think we really did a good job of balancing all that.
Now what we know now, we’d definitely do things different, but I’m not going to go back and criticize her or my administration or anybody else. I mean, we were making the best decisions we could. But I think if you look at where we are, and what we’ve done to fight and protect lives in Georgia, but also livelihoods, we’ve done it as good as any state in the country.
And the thing about it is, you know, I’ve been heavily criticized for that. And I think, to me, that’s another reason that Republican voters should vote for me, because they know I’m gonna stand up for what I believe in, for who I am and what I ran on. …
You think about last year’s baseball season, then going into the fall football season, you had a lot of people calling for reduced attendance and all these other things. We just never wavered on our position, we allowed Georgians to make choices for themselves. We didn’t mandate and cause people to fight and argue over a stupid mask mandate or try to get people to force a vaccination on them. We relied on information that we shared and put out there, and encouragement, but also telling people: go talk to your doctor, you make the best health care decision. And that’s what we’re doing today with our school children not being masked anymore. I mean, it’s past time to move past all that. And, you know, people want to wear their masks, they can, if schools want to have a mask mandate, they can. But parents have an opt-out because they should be making health care decisions for their children, not the government.
Q: There were a lot of voters who stayed home after voting in the 2020 presidential election, they didn’t come back to vote in the runoffs. Many people would say that’s why Georgia now has two Democratic senators. How can those people be encouraged to turn back out?
A: Well, look, I think you got to look back to the 2020 election even before the runoff to answer a lot of those questions, which is why I’m staying focused on my record, telling people what I have done, what direction I want our state to be in the future.
I don’t feel like our federal candidates did a very good job of that in the fall of 2020. … I think not campaigning on their record at the federal level in 2020… I mean look, David Perdue, incumbent U.S. senator, if he doesn’t go into a runoff, the balance of the U.S. Senate’s never in play, and the runoffs don’t matter. So I mean, that’s a question you’d have to ask him. Because if you look at what the state legislators did, running on the issues that we worked on together, running on my agenda of the largest teacher pay raise in state history, not allowing people to defund the police, also passing hate crimes legislation, passing the strongest elections integrity act in the country. After the 2020 election, fixing the mechanical issues that we saw that were caused by two things, No. 1, the pandemic, and No. 2, by others that were taking action, because of public health emergency powers, to do things that were never in the law. Those things needed to be addressed. And I think that’s given a lot of people confidence to go back out and participate in the process.
And we saw that in the November (2021) elections with no issues. And I think people were very glad and satisfied with what we did to secure elections in our state. … I’ve been in this fight for a long time. But I’m also not the secretary of state anymore, and a lot of things that people have called on me to do, I didn’t have the constitutional or legal authority to do. So I’ve also upheld what I told people I would do and swore when I took my oath of office with my hand on the Bible that Marty (Kemp) was holding, to protect laws and the Constitution of this state and that of the United States.
Q: Perdue and Trump have criticized you for not calling a special session following the November 2020 election to try to investigate or overturn the votes. Can you just talk a little bit about why that was not possible?
A: Well, look, I’m just telling people what the truth is. I can’t control what other people are doing. I’ll leave it and hope that you guys would fact check all those statements about the consent decree. I had nothing to do with the consent decree. …
Ordering a signature audit, I had no authority to do that. Now, Secretary Raffensperger could, if you go back and look at the record, I was the first person to publicly call on him to do that, four different times. Because I felt like, as a former secretary of state, that was something that would have given people confidence in the process. … But I didn’t have the authority to order that. I mean, that is a fact. And for them to continue to say that is just a lie.
And to your point of a special session: if you look back at what people wanted in a special session, they wanted to change the rules in the middle of the game. Well, you can’t do that. There’s plenty of law and precedent out there that says that. So, it would have been a fruitless effort that would have cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions in legal fees, then we would have lost. And nobody wanted to do that, including the candidates and the leadership in the General Assembly. So it wasn’t just me that was saying that. And David Perdue knows that.
So I’m gonna be honest with people and I’ve told President Trump that, I said, ‘Look: the way the laws and the process works in Georgia, calling a special session is not the answer. Your lawyers need to go into court because once the election is certified, that’s the only way you can get something to change or order an action. A Superior Court judge would have to do that.’ Well, you know, Rudy Giuliani did a great job of going to a Senate committee and saying all this stuff. But if he had all this evidence, why didn’t he go into the courtroom? Probably because he didn’t want to perjure himself. And so nobody has done that. And I think for David Perdue, especially, to complain about this while he was over in Europe riding his bike and at Sea Island playing golf for 10 or 11 months while we passed the strongest election integrity act in the country, he never asked for a recount. He never contested the election, he never was a party to any of the lawsuits. And a lot of them got thrown out because they didn’t have standing. The reason they didn’t have standing is because the candidate’s name was not on the lawsuit.
But now, after he’s gotten in the governor’s race a year later, he’s saying he’s gonna do this and that I didn’t do anything, which is absurd. But that’s just what the facts are. … Perdue never should have been in the runoff to start with. You look at the legislative candidates, you take all the Republican state Senate votes across the state, compare them to the Democrats. They got 53.7% of the vote. State House candidates got well over 50%, when you add theirs up compared to the Democrats. You had Jason Shaw who ran statewide for Public Service Commission — he had a Democrat and a Libertarian in the race, and won without a runoff.
And so David Perdue’s trying to blame somebody else, because he lost to a guy that had no record whatsoever. His name was on the ballot, not mine. That is his fault. Nobody else’s.
Q: While we’re on the topic of Perdue, this past weekend, there was a rally, people chanting “lock him up” about you, and he’s giving the thumbs up. This is a former ally of yours. How does that make you feel? Did your jaw drop?
A: No. I mean look, they’ve been saying this kind of stuff for a year and a half. And it’s not true. So you know, if somebody thinks they have a reason to come lock me up, they can bring it on. But people have been saying that for a year. I’ve had people saying ‘Hey, you’re gonna be going to jail any day now,’ over a year ago. I followed the law and the Constitution. I know what the truth is. I was secretary of state for nine years. I know what the laws are. I know what the law says. The law says I should authorize the certification … and that’s what I did. It doesn’t say ‘You may.’ It says ‘You shall,’ ‘the governor shall do this, after the election is certified.’
So when the secretary of state certified the election, I followed the law. And anybody that says they wouldn’t, they’re telling voters that they’re not gonna follow the law when they’re governor. If they don’t like the law, we need to work on changing it. But I followed the law, I’m always going to do that. He’s complaining now, a year later, because after blaming others for his loss, he’s now blaming somebody he wants to beat in the governor’s race, and I don’t think people are gonna buy that. But again, I can’t control what other people are doing at some rally. I’m focused on doing what I told people I’d do.
Q: How do you respond to Stacey Abrams and Democrats calling your new election law ‘Jim Crow 2.0?’ Also, if you could touch on the legislation that’s being considered right now, under the Gold Dome —
A: Well look, as far as legislation that’s being considered now, we’re watching that. And there’s all kinds of stuff being considered in the legislative process, we’ll see if something moves out of the Senate or not. And if it does, I’m sure there’ll be differences from the House. And if something does at that point, that’s when we’ll start getting more engaged than we are. We’re just watching that for now. Because I’m very confident in the strongest elections integrity act in the country that we passed last year.
I mean, everybody worked extremely hard on that legislation to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. And that’s what it does. And that’s my message to Stacey Abrams, and Joe Biden, and all these other woke cancel-culture people out there that were trying to scare voters, and lying to them saying it was Jim Crow 2.0, it was suppressive. … I also knew what Abrams’ playbook would be. I knew that she would go say whatever about it. She didn’t care what was in it. They had their messaging built in already. I mean, this is something that they poll tested years ago, and voter suppression winds their base up. And so they’re going to say that no matter what it is. I mean, you look at the bill, it adds days for early voting on the weekends. They were criticizing Republicans for wanting to do away with souls to the polls, when actually, we added the opportunity for counties to add additional days on the weekend, added another mandatory Saturday where people can vote. They call that suppressive, because we implemented a photo ID requirement for absentee ballots, versus a signature match process. Well, the signature match process worked relatively well when I was secretary of state, because you had 5-10% of the people voting absentee. Well, because of decisions that other people made, and because of what the Democrats were doing, absentee voting, and really because you had other Republicans that were voting absentee, because they didn’t want to go out during the pandemic, absentee voting increased to whatever it was — 30, 35% of the vote, so counties got overwhelmed with absentee ballots. The signature match process, because of that, was more arbitrary. …
I’ve talked to a lot of people I’ve worked with over the years at the local elections offices, and they’ve asked around, it’s going to make it easier and more efficient for them. They’re going to have a faster process, but also be more secure. And then for the voter, it’s also going to be faster counting the votes, but it’s also going to be more secure, which is what everybody wants. So for them to say it’s suppressive and Jim Crow 2.0 is just a flat out lie. I pushed back against that, told people what the truth was. I mean, when the All-Star Game got pulled, we continued to do that, even in the face of adversity, even when we knew that Stacey Abrams had pressured Major League Baseball to move the game, then tried to save it saying she didn’t do that, which is the biggest flip-flop since John Kerry.
Q: Since you mentioned the Heartbeat Bill, is there anything else you’d like to do on the abortion front, considering that’s tied up in the courts?
A: I’ve signed the strongest pro-life legislation in the country. … Stronger prolife bill than the Mississippi bill that’s going through the Supreme Court now. And we’re fighting our own court battle to advance our legislation. So we’ll continue to do that. But look, all eyes are on the Supreme Court right now and how they’re going to rule with Mississippi, and we’ll see what they do. But regardless, our law is as strong as anyone in the country. … And I would just say this too, from a life standpoint: we value life at all stages. And that’s what I’ve told people the whole campaign, regardless of where you are on the abortion issue and where your threshold is … it’s a polarizing issue, as you know.
We’ve also done other things that I campaigned and said I would do. We’ve done adoption reform, we’ve done foster care reform. We’re fighting — I mean, we’ve done more than anyone in the country, and we just had final passage yesterday on another piece of human trafficking legislation, that’s seven pieces of anti-human trafficking legislation that we’ve passed in four legislative sessions, every single one of them unanimously, to go after the perpetrators to end this horrible crime, but also to support the victims.
So you look at all of those things. It’s not just ending abortion, it’s about funding pregnancy centers, which we did during the pandemic at unprecedented levels. Just showing people our true value of life. I mean, even if you disagree with me on the Heartbeat Bill, 90% of the rest of the people really appreciate what we’ve done.
I mean, we increased the supplement for foster care parents this year to help them cope with inflation, just another idea of what we’re doing to really help Georgians, which is what I said I would do.
Q: You support a ban on critical race theory in public schools. Opponents are worried that this will have a chilling effect on teaching the civil rights movement, or discussing anything about race, because teachers will be concerned for their jobs. How do you respond to that?
A: That’s just an activist talking point. I mean, that’s not what reality is. When we’re talking to educators, which we have, when we’re talking to superintendents when we crafted all this legislation, they like the idea of transparency. They want parents involved in the kids’ education. That’s one of the biggest problems we have now — we don’t have enough parents that are engaged in education.
And they want people to know what the processes are for all this, they want parents to be engaged in this. So I think that’s just activist, really extreme, radical talking points of people like Stacey Abrams and AOC. … The bigger issue here is they think the government can decide what’s best for your child better than the parents. I mean, that’s really the core issue here. And that’s not the way I feel. I don’t want our kids to be indoctrinated in school. I’ve dealt with this with my own children, so I know why people are upset. Is it widespread and rampant? I don’t believe it is. But is it happening? Yes. So we need to make people aware of the problem. Nobody’s going to get fired because they’re teaching about civil rights, or Dr. Martin Luther King, or C.T. Vivian, or Andrew Young, that’s insane. What people are gonna get in trouble are is when they’re teaching kids to kneel during the national anthem or trying to, you know, teach one theory on what happened during the civil rights era or the Civil War era, or during the Vietnam era, versus teaching what the history was. I don’t want the schools teaching my kids what their values should be. I mean, they learn values at school, but they shouldn’t be indoctrinated.
Q: Another issue that’s happening in a lot of states — transgender sports, what’s your position on that? And how much of an issue do you think that is?
A: Well, I think it’s a big issue now, because of what happened with the Penn swimmer. Now, I don’t think anybody thinks that’s right, in any sense of the word. I mean, we need to have fairness in school sports, it’s a pretty black and white issue to me, just on where the lines are clear.
Q: Is that something the state should be getting involved with here?
A: It is, because we’re fixing to pass a bill to make sure that we have fairness in women’s sports.
Q: One of the questions on the Democratic ballot, one of these non-binding questions is, should the state expand access to health care for half a million Georgians by using federal money to expand Medicaid? What do you think about that? Your Medicaid proposal is also in the courts right now, the work requirement.
A: Well let’s be clear, what I think is what I’ve already done: passing the Patients First Act, where we got a 1332 waiver to help us lower private sector health insurance costs by doing a reinsurance program. It was approved, we’re implementing that. We’ve gone from having four insurers in the individual marketplace to where now we have 11. We’re seeing costs go down because of competition and because of the reinsurance plan that we’ve done. … On the Medicaid side, we had a plan that passed with bipartisan votes to get more access to Medicaid, but also a pathway to permanent stability on private sector plans, that would ask people to simply work 20 hours a week, volunteer 20 hours a week, be in job training 20 hours a week, or be in educational programs for 20 hours a week. So they could learn hard skills, soft skills, trades and other things where, when they got a better paying job, they wouldn’t get penalized for higher pay and get kicked off Medicaid, they could continue to have the Medicaid benefit, allow their employers to contribute to their plan once they move to the private sector plan … have ways that people could be sustainable, and not have to fall back in the trap of ‘I’d be better sitting at home just getting federal benefits.’
Well, the Biden administration … when they got in, they blocked that. And so now we’re having to sue over that. So it’s the Democrats that are blocking more people from having opportunities to be on Medicaid.
The other thing they don’t ever talk about is, how much is it really going to cost? How much are they going to have to raise your taxes to pay for it? What are they going to do when the federal matching money changes because of the enormous federal debt and spending that’s been going on under this administration? They never tell you that. … I mean, look, doctors can’t take Medicaid patients now because they can’t make the numbers work. We also don’t have enough doctors and healthcare professionals to take Medicaid patients. They never talk about that. Well, we’re actually doing something about that. We have in the budget this year money for 1,300 additional slots for health care workers that we think will be created, especially in rural Georgia. 136 new residency spots for more doctors in rural Georgia. We have 500 slots for nursing programs at (Technical College System of Georgia) and higher education, and then more slots for allied health workers. … We’re making a lot of progress. And they’re just throwing out the buzzword that polls well, quite honestly. But it’s not going to work well.
Q: And you can beat Stacey Abrams because why?
A: Because I got the record to beat her … and people know who Stacey Abrams is now. They didn’t know who she was the last election. … She has the agenda of what you’re seeing in Washington, D.C. right now. She’s the person that criticized me for opening the economy. She’s the person that criticized me when we started getting our kids back in school. She would be the person that would close our churches in the middle of the pandemic, which I never did. She’s a person that’s not stood with our men and women in law enforcement. And I have. She’s a person that would ruin our economy, day one, our economy would start tanking. Whereas I have kept us the No. 1 state in the country for business.