Source: Politics<\/p>\n
JEKYLL ISLAND, Ga. \u2014 Few Republicans have taken more abuse from Donald Trump than Brian Kemp, the Georgia governor whose resistance to overturning the November election results in his state enraged the former president.<\/p>\n
As a result, much of the state\u2019s pro-Trump base is in open revolt against Kemp. On Saturday, Republicans booed him at their state convention.<\/p>\n
But what didn\u2019t happen at the party gathering may ultimately matter more. Convention delegates did not censure Kemp, even as they formally rebuked another Trump enemy, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia\u2019s Republican secretary of state. <\/p>\n
Kemp\u2019s standing with the rank-and-file has, improbably, improved, according to interviews with more than 30 party officials, strategists and activists here. And in his partial rehabilitation \u2014 the product of a relentless focus on so-called election integrity issues and culture war staples to excite the base \u2014 Kemp may serve as a model for dozens of Republicans elsewhere who have incurred Trump\u2019s public wrath and are seeking to regain their standing with Republicans at home.<\/p>\n
Kemp\u2019s fate looms especially large in Georgia, a swing state where Trump not only was defeated by Joe Biden but saw Republicans lose both U.S. Senate seats in the state\u2019s runoff elections in January. Fearful that Trump\u2019s frequent criticism of Kemp could lead to a damaging primary and depress Republican turnout in a close general election \u2014 potentially a rematch with Democrat Stacey Abrams<\/a> \u2014 several Georgia-based Republicans and Republicans with ties to the state have privately appealed to Trump to hold back, according to multiple sources familiar with the conversations.<\/p>\n \u201cI think he wins [next year\u2019s GOP primary] with 65, 70 percent of the vote,\u201d Robert Lee, a Georgia-based Republican strategist, said in a crowded hall shortly after Kemp spoke on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n That assessment \u2014 widely shared here \u2014 is one that Republicans blistered by Trump elsewhere could learn from. Earlier this year, Kemp\u2019s polling had fallen off, GOP activists in several counties reprimanded him<\/a>, and it was unclear whether the governor, seeking his second term next year, could even survive a primary challenge.<\/p>\n On Saturday, Kemp was met by a cheering section to compete with the booing. Then, he lingered for several hours in the convention halls \u2014 shaking hands and posing for photographs.<\/p>\n Clint Day, a former state senator who just months ago was far more pessimistic about Kemp\u2019s prospects, said, \u201cI think he could be reelected.\u201d<\/p>\n The proximate cause of Kemp\u2019s improved standing is the controversial voting law<\/a> Kemp championed, which, among other restrictions, makes it more difficult to cast absentee ballots. Signing it in March not only reaffirmed his conservative credentials on voting access but cast him as a central figure in the GOP\u2019s war over the issue with Democrats and corporate America.<\/p>\n Joel Allen, a party official in suburban Atlanta\u2019s 6th Congressional District, said \u201cKemp really did a service to himself with SB 202<\/a>,\u201d referring to the voting bill.<\/p>\n And while Republicans may have been disappointed in Kemp they gained a common foil in Major League Baseball, which announced that it would move its All-Star Game out of Atlanta in protest of the legislation. Condemnations by two Georgia-headquartered companies, Coca-Cola and Delta, gave Kemp another platform to push back against perceived excesses of corporations and the left.<\/p>\n Kemp has also directly inserted himself into the GOP\u2019s broader culture wars. In fundraising appeals in recent weeks, he has seized on leading wedge issues, saying critical race theory \u201chas NO PLACE in our Georgia classrooms,\u201d while pillorying \u201ccancel culture\u201d and \u201c\u2019Defund the Police\u2019 nonsense taking hold in liberal strongholds and with the Democrats in Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the governor has significantly relaxed<\/a> coronavirus restrictions in the state, while issuing an executive order late last month<\/a> banning state agencies from requiring Covid-19 vaccine passports.<\/p>\n By April, Kemp\u2019s approval rating among Georgia Republicans had climbed 15 percentage points<\/a> from its post-election low, according to Morning Consult, settling at 74 percent. Internal campaign polling showed improvement from earlier this year, as well.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m in a lot better standing than what the media wants to tell people I am,\u201d Kemp said on Saturday, while otherwise declining to comment.<\/p>\n At a rally at the Westin Jekyll Island on Friday night, Vernon Jones, a former Democrat-turned-Trump-supporting Republican who is Kemp\u2019s most prominent opponent so far, called Kemp a \u201cRINO,\u201d and Jones\u2019 supporters were among the most vocal booing Kemp the following day. Debbie Dooley, a founder of the Tea Party movement in Atlanta who is supporting Jones, called him \u201cthe Donald Trump of Georgia,\u201d and a vocal contingent of Jones supporters crowded around him in the convention halls.<\/p>\n But Jones\u2019 own history as a Democrat, in addition to the rich opposition research file on him<\/a>, is disconcerting to many Republicans in the state.<\/p>\n \u201cIf his opponent\u2019s Vernon Jones, I think Brian Kemp\u2019s going to be the nominee,\u201d said Jay Williams, a Georgia-based Republican strategist. \u201cHe\u2019s a former Democrat, man \u2026 Vernon Jones is the crazy uncle we\u2019ve known for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem for the GOP, said Donna Rowe, a party official from Cobb County in the Atlanta suburbs, is that \u201cwe eat our own in the primary.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re still going to win it, but it\u2019s going to be a bloodbath,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Kemp is not yet \u201cout of the woods\u201d with the base, Allen said. That was evident in the cacophony of boos he received during his remarks at the convention, a gathering that typically draws a state\u2019s most fervent activists. The convention, one of the most widely attended in state history, featured many first-time delegates who had joined the convention largely because they believe the lie that the election was stolen from Trump.<\/p>\n Yet even among that far-right audience, Kemp has fared better than some other Georgia elected officials who refuted Trump\u2019s baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud. One of them, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who along with Raffensperger did not attend the convention, recently announced he would not seek reelection. Another, Attorney General Chris Carr, was nearly drowned out by boos when addressing the crowd on Friday.<\/p>\n Raffensperger, however, has seen the worst of it \u2014 he not only repudiated Trump\u2019s claims that the election was stolen, he was also closer in his office to the counting of ballots than Kemp. One of Raffensperger\u2019s primary opponents, David Belle Isle, the former mayor of Alpharetta who Raffensperger defeated in a 2018 runoff for the nomination, distributed literature at the convention depicting Raffensperger with devil\u2019s horns on his head. Rep. Jody Hice, who defended Trump\u2019s effort to overturn the election and is running with his endorsement, distributed boot-shaped pins that read, \u201cBoot Brad.\u201d<\/p>\n The state party on Saturday overwhelmingly passed a resolution to censure Raffensperger.<\/p>\n Bruce Thompson, a Georgia state senator who had called for additional reviews of the November election, said Raffensperger is \u201cdone.\u201d But he said the calculation surrounding Kemp has changed.<\/p>\n Though \u201cthe base is still pissed off,\u201d he said, Kemp \u201chas managed this as well as he could, as far as the pandemic and getting us open, being a governor \u2026 Brian has done a good job since the election with the economy and signing SB 202. And he\u2019s traveling the state.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a formula that isn\u2019t lost on Republicans who have angered Trump in other states. In Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey, similarly reviled by Trump \u2014 and censured by Republicans in his state<\/a> \u2014 cheered conservatives when he issued an executive order<\/a> in April banning the use of some \u201cvaccine passports.\u201d <\/p>\n Just as with Ducey, Trump derided Kemp as a \u201cRINO\u201d at the height of their post-election feud, when the former president pledged to campaign against Kemp<\/a> in 2022. As late as April, Trump was asserting that Kemp \u201ccaved to the radical left-wing woke mob.<\/a>\u201d He said he was \u201cashamed<\/a>\u201d he endorsed Kemp in 2018.<\/p>\n But the governor\u2019s rebound may limit Trump\u2019s options in the state. Former Rep. Doug Collins, a Trump ally, said in April<\/a> that he would not run for governor, after Trump floated him<\/a> as a potential contender.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Brian Kemp keeps doing what he\u2019s doing, which is the election law stuff, getting through another session with Dems saying he\u2019s a terrible person,\u201d Williams said, \u201cI think he\u2019s probably one really big issue away from kind of ensuring his nomination.\u201d<\/p>\n