KEMP, ABRAMS TO SQUARE OFF IN NOV.
Ga. governor easily defeats challenger picked by Trump
Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia won the Republican nomination for a second term on Tuesday, resoundingly turning back a primary challenge that had been engineered by Donald Trump and delivering the former president his biggest electoral setback of the 2022 primaries.
Seeking retribution for Kemp’s decision to certify the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, Trump had personally recruited former Sen. David Perdue to run for governor, worked to clear the field for him, recorded television ads, held a rally and even transferred $2.64 million from his political accounts to help him.
It didn’t matter. Kemp won by a wide enough margin — he was leading by nearly 50 percentage points when The Associated Press called the race — to avoid a runoff after Perdue had anchored his candidacy on promoting falsehoods about the last election, blaming Kemp both for Trump’s defeat and his own loss in a 2021 runoff that gave Democrats control of the Senate. The outcome Tuesday exposed the limits of Trump’s hold on his party’s base.
Kemp’s victory sets up a rematch of his 2018 battle with Stacey Abrams, who won the Democratic nomination unopposed Tuesday, in what will be one of the most closely watched gubernatorial races in the nation this fall. His most urgent imperative
is reuniting a Republican Party fractured by the divisive primary.
In Georgia’s U.S. Senate race, Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia football star who was also recruited by Trump, won the Republican nomination and will face Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in November. The matchup in the fall, the outcome of which could tip control of the Senate, is a rare general election contest in the South pitting two Black candidates against one another.
While Walker glided
through the primary, his tumultuous past — including accusations of domestic abuse and his exaggerated and false claims about his business success — is expected to receive a more thorough airing in the general election.
Both parties expect Walker to be the subject of coming commercials questioning his competence and credentials. His Democratic opponent, Warnock, one of the best fundraisers in the nation, has been on the television airwaves for months already, focusing largely on
positive messages.
With nearly 200 endorsements so far, Trump has set up the 2022 primary season as a rolling referendum on his influence in the party. He has scored notable big successes, such as J.D. Vance in Ohio, and suffered defeats in Nebraska and Idaho. But no state so far has been as much a focus for Trump as Georgia, where he not only set out to oust the governor but also Kemp’s allies across other statewide offices.
In the secretary of state race, Brad Raffensperger, the Republican incumbent
whom Trump pressured to “find” the sufficient votes to overturn the election in early 2021, was significantly ahead of a Trump-backed challenger, Rep. Jody Hice, hovering right around the 50% threshold needed to avert a runoff.
The secretary of state serves as Georgia’s top elections official, and the winner in the fall will have great sway over how the 2024 presidential campaign will be conducted in a key battleground state.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the right-wing firebrand, handily cast aside a more moderate challenger, carrying more than two-thirds of the vote.
While Georgia received top billing Tuesday, several other states held primaries.
In Texas, the last scion of the Bush political dynasty, Land Commissioner George P. Bush, was defeated in the state attorney general’s race, losing to the scandalplagued incumbent, Ken Paxton. And in a Democratic contest along the border, Rep. Henry Cuellar, one of the most moderate Democrats in the House, was deadlocked against a progressive challenge from Jessica Cisneros that has drawn national attention.
In Alabama, three Republican candidates were vying to make the runoff to succeed retiring Sen. Richard Shelby: Rep. Mo Brooks; Mike Durant, the helicopter pilot portrayed in “Black Hawk Down”; and Katie Britt, a former chief of staff to Shelby. Trump had initially endorsed Brooks early in 2021. But as Brooks sagged in the polls, he rescinded that endorsement.
Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama was seeking to avoid a runoff against two right-wing challengers.
And in Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former White House press secretary and the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, has mostly coasted through a Republican primary for governor. Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas was pushing to clear 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff against Jake Bequette, a former football star, in a race that has seen more than $7 million in television ads.