Kemp won all 159 Georgia counties in primary; he'll need the Trump vote in rematch vs. Abrams

Gov. Brian Kemp didn’t get former President Donald Trump’s endorsement for re-election.

Clearly, he didn’t need it.

Tuesday’s election results saw Kemp get 71% of the vote in the primary, a decisive trouncing of Trump’s pick for the race, former U.S. Sen. David Perdue. For Georgia Republicans, the choice was apparently clear as day.

Perhaps the most surprising part of Kemp’s victory was how absolute it was. The votes for this race are counted as a statewide total, but Perdue didn’t receive more votes than Kemp in a single Georgia county. All 159 counties in the state voted majority Kemp.

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Compare that with the secretary of state race, where Trump-endorsed Jody Hice was the candidate of choice for a cluster of about 30 counties around the Augusta and Central Savannah River Area, and it illustrates Kemp's popularity among Georgia Republicans.

The rest of the state, spare a couple of counties, voted for Brad Raffensperger. Raffensperger managed to avoid a runoff, finishing the night with a less decisive victory than Kemp, but a victory nonetheless.

So how did Kemp, who has fended off more Trump flak than any other primary candidate in the state, manage to win over the majority of Republican voters in every county in Georgia?

As he said many times in debates leading up to the primary, look at his record.

Kemp’s conservative record resonates

Kemp is a fiscal conservative’s dreamboat. Not only did he steer Georgia through the COVID-19 years, but the state also ended the fiscal year 2021 with a $3.7 billion surplus, filling Georgia’s rainy day fund, leaving $2.3 billion in additional undesignated surplus.

Many conservative lawmakers credit Kemp’s opening of the state with this fiscal bump. Georgia was the first state to lift its shelter-in-place order and business restrictions following the initial COVID-19 surge in spring 2020, a decision Trump himself criticized from the Oval Office.

Not only that, Kemp made effective use of the powers of the incumbency during campaign season. He used that surplus to send additional refunds to those who filed taxes in Georgia in 2020 and 2021 — $250 for single-filers, $500 for joint filers. The money hit most accounts just a couple weeks before the election.

Additionally, he funneled some of the surplus into a gas tax holiday to combat rising prices at the pump when Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent prices soaring. That measure is scheduled to end May 31, the week after the election.

On the campaign trail, Perdue called these moves “a desperate attempt to win votes.”

The biggest difference, ideologically speaking, between Kemp and Perdue’s politics is Trump himself. Kemp refused to take steps to overturn the state’s election results in 2020, despite pressure from Trump.

But aside from that, Kemp’s social agenda fits right into the modern conservative zeitgeist. 

He signed a high school transgender sports ban this year. He signed an anti-“divisive concepts” bill targeting critical race theory. He led the charge for Georgia’s 6-week abortion ban, the “Heartbeat” bill in 2018. He signed a constitutional carry firearms bill into law. 

If there is any lesson to glean from Kemp’s definitive win on Tuesday, it’s that Trump’s “Big Lie” isn’t enough to win a race in Georgia on its own. Over the course of the campaign, that’s mostly what Perdue talked about.

Will Perdue supporters vote Kemp in November?

As of Wednesday morning, Trump’s Georgia scorecard stands at 4 wins, 4 losses, one runoff and one potential runoff.  But of those four wins, only one was in a competitive race, and Trump’s candidate was Walker, arguably the most famous UGA football player of all time.

But his pick couldn’t beat Kemp. And Trump does not like Kemp. At a rally in 2021, Trump jokingly endorsed Abrams as a jab aimed at Kemp.

"And Stacey Abrams, who still has not conceded, and that's OK," Trump said last year. "Stacey, would you like to take his place? It's OK with me."

" ... Of course having her, I think, might be better than having your existing governor, if you want to know what I think. Might very well be better."

The question for Georgia’s Republicans now becomes: Will Trump’s supporters rally behind Kemp in the midterms, even if Trump still doesn’t like him?

Opinion: Free of Trump? Georgia primary results show GOP ready to break from former president

Abrams vs. Kemp: Round 2

The much-anticipated rematch of the 2018 governor’s race between Abrams and Kemp will likely elevate Georgia’s November election to the national political conversation once again.

It’s a far cry from four years ago, when both Kemp and Abrams were relatively unknown candidates. Kemp was the secretary of state heading into that race and was the underdog in the Republican primary. Abrams was the former Georgia House minority leader, known best for her voter registration efforts.

Now, Kemp is widely considered by Republican lawmakers to be one of the best governors in recent memory. Abrams’ grassroots push to register 800,000 voters before the 2020 election is often credited for Georgia’s historic 2020 vote, which sent the state’s Electoral College votes to President Joe Biden, the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in two decades.

In four years, the two went from relative unknowns to household names, and their November contest will likely be one for the history books.

Unlike Trump, Perdue conceded on Tuesday — without any unfounded cries of election fraud or deep state meddling — after results began to be released. Perdue vowed to support Kemp in the November general against Abrams.

“Tomorrow morning you are going to hear me going to work to o make damn sure Stacey Abrams is not the next governor of Georgia,” Perdue said in his concession speech.

Will Peebles is the enterprise reporter for Savannah Morning News. He can be reached at wpeebles@gannett.com and @willpeeblessmn on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Brian Kemp will need Trump vote in rematch with Stacey Abrams