In Battleground Georgia, Republicans and Democrats Each Find a Star

Mario Parker
·5 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Georgia's drama-filled elections of the past two years have thrust a new star from each party onto the national stage: Democratic US Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Governor Brian Kemp.

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Warnock is the first Black man to represent Georgia in the Senate and got there by coming out ahead in four elections over the past two years. Kemp is also a rare creature — a Republican who defied Donald Trump and survived. As he put it: “Reports of my political death have been greatly exaggerated.” Kemp won attention after the 2020 election for steadfastly refusing then-President Trump ’s demand for a special legislative session to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Enraged, Trump backed a Republican primary challenger to Kemp -- who not only won but then routed Democratic voting-rights activist Stacey Abrams in a rematch of their bitter 2018 race. Kemp also won about 200,000 more votes than Warnock’s GOP opponent, Trump-backed Herschel Walker in November.

The US Senate runoff that Warnock won unofficially kicked off the 2024 presidential campaign season, officially closing the US midterm election cycle, one in which Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans fared far better than expected.

A distinctive aspect of how the politics have unfolded in this most fiercely-contested state has been how Warnock and Kemp have effectively courted each other’s base voters. Their success has ushered them into discussions of future presidential candidates at a time when both party camps are looking to build up a bench of talent beyond 2024.

“They definitely are the winners in Georgia and they have a lot in common,’’ said Kevin Harris, a Democratic strategist and chief of staff for Biden’s presidential campaign in Georgia. “A huge chunk of voters looked at both of them and some of them voted for Kemp and then some of them in that same breath also voted for Warnock.”Warnock’s performance in the 2020 primary, the 2020 general election, the 2021 runoff, and the 2022 runoff in a two-party state like Georgia puts him on any future presidential lists, Harris says.

Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, disagrees. She said that it's "premature" for Warnock to be put in that category. Gillespie added that Kemp's prospects are different because he will have been in office for six years by the time 2024 rolls around. He stood up to Trump and won reelection against a more formidable opponent.There is, however, a strong case for Warnock, strategists say. In a state like Georgia, where 52% of people say they are religious, Warnock inoculated himself from charges that Democrats are hostile toward Christians with his post as a minister at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famed Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. “He supersedes that,” said Mark Rountree, a longtime Georgia-based Republican strategist. “He doesn’t hide that he’s a Christian.”While no exit polling is available for the Dec. 6 runoff, data available from the Nov. 8 contest show that Warnock drew slightly more conservative voters and college-educated White people than he did in the 2021 runoff, when he defeated Trump-backed Senator Kelly Loeffler.

Warnock capitalized on Walker’s scandal-ridden candidacy, diminishing the nostalgia for the former Heisman Trophy winner’s days as a University of Georgia Bulldog. Handpicked by Trump, Walker was dogged by rhetorical gaffes and allegations of domestic abuse. An outspoken opponent of abortion rights, he was accused of having paid for women to have the procedure, accusations he denied.

But the former president and his candidates underestimated the lingering antipathy toward Trump, who made the state a central focus of his false stolen 2020 election claim. State Republicans refused to play ball with a defiance seen nowhere else in the US, including among GOP House members hiding during the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6. Georgia’s top elections official, Brad Raffensperger, made an angry speech about Trump’s interference, and also won reelection last month.

Kemp routed Trump’s handpicked challenger, former Senator David Perdue, by more than 50 percentage points in a May primary. He defeated Abrams in a landslide last month, after registering a narrow victory in 2018.

He kept Walker at a distance in the general election, but then he partnered with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s super political action committee in the runoff by offering up his voter turnout apparatus, campaigning alongside Walker and cutting an ad for him.

While Walker’s baggage dragged him down, Kemp now joins Republican governors like Ron DeSantis in Florida, Larry Hogan in Maryland and Asa Hutchinson in Arkansas as those mentioned as possible White House candidates, said Rountree, who is friendly with Kemp.

“It’s fair to say he has entered the chat room as governors who can do this job,” Rountree said.

Like Warnock, Kemp also expanded his electorate in the most recent election. He stepped up outreach to minority voters that helped increase his share of votes from 2018 of Black and Hispanic voters, exit poll data show. He narrowed his loss in Fulton County, which includes most of Democrat-friendly Atlanta. Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist, said that Kemp and Warnock's victories underscored the certainty both parties will be vying for the state in 2024.

"They also put Georgia into play for both parties as a key swing state for 2024," she said. While Warnock's win raised his national profile and stature, among Democrats, Kemp in some ways showed how "the Republican Party is at a real crossroads" where it has to decide whether to follow a blueprint the Kemp exemplified that has a strong chance at winning or cling to Trump, himself or a variation, with DeSantis, she said.

Rusty Paul, mayor of suburban Sandy Springs north of Atlanta, joked that he’s so Republican that he has the GOP elephant logo tattooed on his chest. He attributes his own reelection with some 70% of the vote in a GOP city because he didn’t talk about Trump and “stolen elections.”

“Donald Trump single handily changed the dynamic,’’ he explained. “You’ve got about 200,000 voters, give or take, who will vote Republican, probably prefer to vote Republican, but will not vote Republican if there’s a Trump taint to the candidate.”

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