Deal joins Kemp at start of campaign bus tour

JEFFERSON — Gov. Nathan Deal has been heard more than seen on the campaign trail, invoked in a string of ads and campaign speeches by both major-party candidates in the governor’s race but rarely appearing in person.

That changed Monday, when he joined Republican Brian Kemp for the kickoff of Kemp’s final campaign bus tour to a string of stops in northeast Georgia.

Deal told a crowd of several hundred in Jefferson that Kemp will extend his pro-business legacy and keep Georgia “the No. 1 place in the nation to do business.”

“There’s a surge on the other side unlike anything we’ve encountered before,” Deal said. “All that really does to us, though, is show how important our votes are.”

Kemp eagerly welcomed the support, saying that Deal has “gotten Georgia working.”

“And I’ll keep Georgia working,” Kemp said.

Despite Deal’s high approval ratings — polls show he’s the most popular politician in Georgia — the governor has until recently played an understated role in the race for his job. Aside from a few campaign fundraisers and the filming of a TV ad, he hasn’t been a forceful presence on the campaign trail, at times even gently chiding both candidates.

Kemp’s opponent, Democrat Stacey Abrams, has cast herself as the true inheritor to at least a part of Deal’s legacy. She’s praised his economic agenda while blasting Kemp for supporting a version of the “religious liberty” measure that Deal vetoed. But she’s most effusive about Deal’s criminal justice overhaul that she says embodied “pragmatism that led him to be willing to work across the aisle but also to push back on his own people.”

Abrams says Trump not her main concern

When told that President Donald Trump will campaign with Kemp this weekend, Abrams said her concerns are more with the people she has met while campaigning across the state.

She reports having visited more than 60 counties in the past 12 days.

“I’m focused on who we have in the state of Georgia and those who are standing up and speaking out and casting votes in ways they’ve never done before,” she said. “That to me is a signal of the progress that we are making in Georgia, and it’s a signal of the direction we’re taking.”

Trump’s re-election campaign confirmed Monday that the president will rally with Kemp at Macon’s Middle Georgia Regional Airport at 4 p.m. Sunday.

Abrams has her own big name coming: former President Barack Obama, who will campaign with her Friday at Morehouse College.

Carter urges Kemp to exit office

Former President Jimmy Carter is wading into the governor’s race with a personal appeal to Kemp: Resign as secretary of state to avoid damaging public confidence in the outcome of his hotly contested matchup with Abrams.

Carter, who has endorsed Abrams, made the request in an Oct. 22 letter.

Similar calls for Kemp to step down as the state’s top election official have followed him ever since he won the Republican primary runoff in July.