Kemp, Abrams Pose Very Different Visions for Georgia’s Future

Incumbent Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and former state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who wants Kemp’s job, head into the final stretch of their campaign with very different programs in mind for the state should they win.

The race gets national attention. After her narrow loss to Kemp in 2018, Abrams became a national figure, was considered for the vice presidency in 2020, and has been said to be a Democratic leader of the future. In early 2019, she delivered the Democrats’ televised rebuttal to former President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.

Kemp also put himself in the spotlight by separating himself from Trump’s election fraud claims. He’s been subpoenaed to testify before a Fulton County grand jury investigating Trump’s attempts to investigate the 2020 elections in Georgia. But a judge has allowed him to delay his appearance until after the November election.

Meanwhile, though, he’s conspicuously thumped an opponent that Trump backed in a move to counter Kemp’s perceived lack of support. “Of all the Georgia Republican officials on Trump’s wrong side, none was as much a target of the president’s fury as Republican Gov. Brian Kemp,” wrote Greg Bluestein in Politico in March 2022. Kemp still won his May primary over Trump’s candidate, former Sen. David Perdue, by a nearly three-to-one margin.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp won the Republican primary in convincing fashion despite defying Donald Trump, in part by delivering what Republican voters wanted in his first term. Here he speaks in Atlanta, Ga., on May 24, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Abrams has not been able to turn her national stature into a lead in the polls, despite a steady influx of new voters, many from blue states—ones Republicans fear tend to bring their politics with them. About 50,000 more people a year were moving