Kemp faces possible primary fight as President Trump steps up attacks

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) is facing down the threat of a primary challenge in 2022 after he rejected President Trump’s demands to overturn the results of the November presidential election.

Kemp, who was elected in 2018 after aligning himself closely with Trump, has found himself on the receiving end of the president’s attacks in the weeks since President-elect Joe Biden’s upset victory over Trump in Georgia.

Trump said late last month that he was “ashamed” to have endorsed Kemp in his gubernatorial run in 2018. And on Saturday, the president went even further, encouraging Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), a staunch political ally, to mount a campaign for the governor’s mansion in 2022.

“Doug, you want to run for governor in two years?” Trump said at a rally in the southern Georgia city of Valdosta, adding that Collins would “be a good-looking governor.”

With Biden’s roughly 12,000-vote win in Georgia last month, Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate since 1992 to lose the state. But he has refused to concede the race to Biden and has repeatedly spread false claims that widespread voter fraud and systemic irregularities marred the election results.

With his options for contesting Biden’s win waning, Trump and his allies have demanded that Kemp call a special session of the Georgia state legislature in an attempt to undo the outcome of the presidential race — a request that Kemp has rejected as unconstitutional.

Kemp certified the results of a recount in Georgia on Monday night, reaffirming Biden’s win and guaranteeing that the state’s 16 electors will cast their votes for the former vice president when the Electoral College meets next week.

But that vote certification — a routine part of Kemp’s official duties as governor — has put him at odds with many in his party, who see Kemp’s defense of his state’s elections as a slight against Trump and his ultra-loyal base of supporters.

“People are pissed off. There are conservatives who would vote for pretty much anyone over Kemp right now,” one Republican operative in Georgia said. “All I’m hearing from people is that he didn’t stand up for the president when he needed to and they’re ready to get back at him.”

Kemp has not yet announced whether he will run for a second term in 2022. But that has not stopped Trump’s allies from launching a flurry of attacks casting him as a traitor to the president and his party.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tore into Kemp during an appearance on Fox News’s “Hannity” on Monday night, repeating the president’s demand that he call a special legislative session to “allow signature match” of absentee ballots, despite the fact that the process was already completed last month and cannot be repeated.

McEnany compared Kemp to Stacey Abrams, his former Democratic rival for the governor’s mansion, saying that by declining to call a special session of the state General Assembly, the governor had effectively acquiesced to Democrats’ demands.

“Gov. Kemp is no different than Stacey Abrams right now,” McEnany said. “She did this consent decree, and by not doing this, Gov. Kemp is Stacey Abrams and that is despicable.”

There are already signs that the sustained assault on Kemp by Trump and his allies has taken a toll on the governor. A Morning Consult tracking poll released over the weekend showed Kemp’s approval rating among Georgia Republicans dropping nearly 10 points, from 86 percent to 77 percent since Election Day.

While Kemp has defended his state’s elections process, he has aligned himself with the president on other fronts.

He has said that he supports auditing ballot signatures and has blamed Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, for not ordering such an inspection. Kemp has also repeatedly encouraged Trump to pursue legal challenges in an effort to resolve his election disputes.

Georgia’s voting systems manager, Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who has been critical of Trump’s efforts to sow doubt about the election results, said that the president’s stoking of tensions within the GOP was harmful to the party’s long-term political prospects.

But he dismissed the notion that Kemp is in serious trouble if he faces a primary in 2022, noting that Collins, whom Trump encouraged to run for governor, finished third last month in the state’s special Senate election, running behind Democrat Raphael Warnock and Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.).

“I think the governor would win any such primary at the end of the day, but the infighting is unnecessary,” Sterling told The Hill in an interview on Tuesday, adding: “If there’s a primary, he’s going to be fine.”

Still, the looming threat of a primary challenge in 2022 adds to the already-complicated political climate for Republicans in a state that has emerged as one of the fastest-changing and diverse battlegrounds in the country.

Democrats have staged increasingly competitive challenges to GOP dominance in the state in recent years. Abrams came within 1.5 percentage points of defeating Kemp two years ago. But Biden’s win in Georgia last month served as the clearest sign yet for Democrats that the onetime Republican stronghold is undergoing a political sea change.

The changing political dynamics in the state combined with Trump’s iron grip on the GOP and its voters have raised concerns among some Republicans that a bitter and divisive GOP gubernatorial primary could give Democrats a path to the governor’s mansion in 2022.

“Anyone who’s been paying attention to what’s happening on the ground knows that we can’t afford to screw-up here,” a veteran Georgia Republican strategist said. “So it’s a little surprising that the president is going as hard as he is on Kemp. Nothing good is going to come out of a primary and I hope he realizes that.”