ATLANTA — Brian Kemp, the 59-year-old son of an Athens farmer who was once trampled by a 750-pound bovine in a cattle chute, has developed a way of casting calm in the fiercest of storms.
Six months after soundly defeating Democrat Stacey Abrams in their second matchup in four years, he remains undaunted by everything that has happened to him in the past few years, from Abrams refusing to admit she lost that race four years ago to the strident national media criticisms of how he handled COVID-19, MLB's meltdown over his state’s new voting laws, the money spent to undo him as well as the pressure former President Donald Trump put on him to overturn the Georgia election results, President Joe Biden’s assertion he was enacting Jim Crow 2.0, and Trump’s return last year to campaign against him in the state’s primary.
Now, as the presidential primary contests loom without Kemp as a candidate, the governor talked to the Washington Examiner about his plans for Georgia as he enters his second term, his thoughts about Trump, and whether he has presidential ambitions of his own.
WHAT THE GOP WORK REQUIREMENT PROPOSAL WOULD REALLY DO
Washington Examiner: You defied Trump, but you kept the favor of your state — not in a squeaker but with an overwhelming victory. You upheld democracy without throwing your conservative beliefs under the bus. So why aren’t you running for president?
Gov. Brian Kemp: Well, I just got reelected to governor, and if you think about it, I mean, I got reelected in November. Soon as that was done, I had to put the budget together in our legislative agenda, get ready for the inauguration, gala, all the things that go into that, because that literally started the second Monday in January. Then we have a 40-day legislative session, where I was determined to do what I said I would do, which is what’s got me this far, and we just finished that up. It hasn’t even been a week since the last day that I had to sign or veto bills and do the final completing and then sign off on the budget stuff. I mean, we just have gotten to where we’re through with all of that. And so I’ve just tried to really stay focused on that and get out of just the campaign mode that [my wife] Marty and the girls and I were all in and take a breath and really be able to think through things. So we’re just now doing that.
Washington Examiner: So it comes down to your obligation to your state, then.
Kemp: Well, I mean, look, we live in a great state, and I’m really excited to get to serve a second term. And I’m excited that this last legislative session, we accomplished every single thing that I campaigned on for the reelect. So we’ve accomplished a great deal already early in my second term. Just today, we announced that we have a $800 million project coming to Bainbridge, Georgia, which is in southwest Georgia: 400 jobs. I mean, that is a massive project of regional significance in some ways to really a rural part of our state. And so I’m committed to doing those type things, but I’m also committed to making sure that we win the White House in ’24 and that we’re electing good Republican governors around the country and obviously engaged with the Republican Governors Association. I’ve been speaking at some national events, RNC and others, about what we got to do to win in 2024. And so I’m keeping my powder dry, as we say down South. Also staying focused on my day-to-day work here in Georgia, which is what people expect out of me.
Washington Examiner: But given everything you’ve faced in office, aren’t you an example of how to answer the questions facing your party?
Kemp: I think it also just goes to what were my gut instincts at the time of a lot of really tough things that I had to deal with, whether it was civil unrest, COVID-19, reopening of small parts of our economy, taking a lot of grief in regard to that from the president at the time, but also from the Democrats and the national media. I mean, I remember, at that point in time, most people in politics would say I was a dead man walking. Nobody thought I was getting reelected. Nobody thought I could win a primary. But I was doing the right thing. I was doing what I felt like people in our state wanted me to do, and I got rewarded for that.
But it was also because we worked hard and we held our position and we fought for it. I was willing to stand up in a respectful way and disagree with people and tell them what my position was. And I think the longer that things went on and the farther we got away from the election and from COVID, people realized that I was being a true conservative. I was following the law and the Constitution, and I simply gave people their right to choose to open their business or go back to work. And I fought for them when a lot of other people wouldn’t, and they remembered that. And I think that’s why a lot of people that maybe didn’t vote for me the first time did the second time, because they said, “Really, I may have a governor that I don’t agree with all the time, but at least I know he’s going to try to do the right thing and he’ll be fighting for me.” And a lot of ways, I think that’s what the country needs right now.
Washington Examiner: You never took the martyr stance [when attacked by Trump]. Let’s talk about that part of your character.
Kemp: Really, all elected officials are victims to political situations that sometimes define their career, sometimes it wrecks it, and a lot of those things you can’t control. I mean, you can’t really control a global pandemic happening while I was governor or the sitting president getting mad at me. But I could control the way I reacted, the way that I governed, and standing by my principles and conservative values and just doing the right thing.
But Salena, this is kind of my point to the RNC donor retreat was we have to be for something and we have to tell people what we’re for. We’ve got to give people a reason to vote for us, and we’ve got to stay focused on the future. And that’s what I did, and that’s why I got reelected — because I had done what I promised people, and I stood up and fought for them and told them what I was going to do if I got reelected. And that’s what I did.
And my last point to the RNC donor conference and to the Connecticut GOP that I spoke to on Thursday night was you can’t govern if you don’t win, and so we have to win. And my message to people has been the way you win states like Georgia and other swing states is you got to be for something, you got to focus on the future, and you got to win. And there isn’t going to be a win in the White House unless we win Georgia. That math just doesn’t add up. But the road to the White House is coming through here. And I think the way that we push through the primary and the general shows people a blueprint for how you can win in tough states around the country.
Washington Examiner: Is Georgia still a Republican state?
Kemp: Well, we’re really, I think, a 52-48 Republican state. Certainly not like it was when Gov. [Nathan] Deal got reelected [in 2014] or when Sonny Perdue got reelected [in 2006]. So it’s definitely a tougher environment here, but I think there’s a lot of reasons for that. I think one of the reasons that it’s been so in play here is we didn’t have a good ground game, and I’ve been working on that. And we did that in our campaign, which is one reason that we did so well. But if you really look at the state races, we ran on our record and we told people what we were for and what we were going to do if they voted for us, and overwhelmingly, they did. I mean, every single Republican down-ballot had a Libertarian in the race. We still all won convincingly without a runoff. So it was an overwhelming victory for the state candidates.
And despite the troubles that Herschel Walker had, and I won’t rehash all of that, but I mean, if you look at the results in November, you add up his votes and the Libertarians' votes, it was well over 50%. So we really had a great opportunity to knock off [Raphael] Warnock — we just didn’t do that. But I mean, even down-ballot races that people don’t pay attention to, the Republicans won with the Libertarian in the race, and nobody got put into a runoff.
Washington Examiner: Trump has lost in your state several times over, either personally or with the people that he backed. Is he someone who would get your endorsement in Georgia again?
Kemp: Well, I know a lot of the people that are in the presidential race, have been talking to a lot of them, and I’m going to be involved in that process and helping our nominee win Georgia. We just got to see how that plays out. But I think, again, to my point, we got to have somebody that’s going to be focused on the future. Rehashing the 2020 election is not going to be something that is going to get the people that we need to be able to win the state. And we got to … be focused on the future. And I think if you know any candidate’s willing to do that, they have a chance of winning. But if they don’t, I think they’re going to have a very hard time, at least in Georgia, anyway.
Washington Examiner: You are heading overseas to attract instate economic development?
Kemp: Well, we had a trip planned to Israel right before COVID hit. I had been to South Korea for my first international trip, and we were going to Israel and that got sidelined. So we’re leaving this Friday, going to Israel. We’re taking a whole delegation from Georgia. The speaker of the House is going with us, members of the Senate, the chairman of the Board of Regents, our university system. And so we’re going to be visiting with a lot of companies over there about doing business in Georgia, also learning about different things that they’re doing. And so we’re looking forward to that. And then we’ve got some other international travel. But it’s really in tune with what Georgia governors have done in the past to recruit business to come to our state and visit companies that are doing business here and continue to have a great relationship with really trade going both ways, which makes for vibrancy on both sides of that relationship.
Washington Examiner: When you talked to the donors at the RNC or any other different Republican conservative groups, what are some of the other things you discuss? Do you encourage mail-in balloting? Do you talk about a comprehensive voter registration?
Kemp: Well, that’s really what I’ve been talking to the donors around the country about, and I spoke about this at the RNC donor event, was that we spent $15 million on a ground game, getting people registered to vote, knocked on 2 million doors, did 2 million phone calls, and we have to do that to be able to win. That’s one reason I think we lost in 2020. We didn’t have a good message from our federal candidates, and we didn’t have a ground game. And so we went after nontraditional voters, and we also put together, along with other people, robust voter registration efforts for young people, Hispanic, Latino voters, Asian, Indian, and we just have to do more of that. We can win those voters. We can win. And we saw that. The problem was we lost a lot of voters in the middle in 2020, even though we gained with some minorities. So we can’t do one or the other. We have to do both.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Washington Examiner: Final question. If you decide ultimately not to run and you were asked to serve as vice president, would that be something you would consider and/or serve in a Cabinet?
Kemp: Well, I wouldn’t want to try to go to speculating on. I have not thought on that, either. There’s a long way to go. I’m very happy in the job that I have. It’s a great job, and I’m going to keep doing it and see how this thing plays out.