ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp defeated former U.S. Sen. David Perdue to score a GOP primary victory that showed the limits of Donald Trump’s endorsement in Georgia and set up a rematch against Democrat Stacey Abrams in November.
The first-term Republican easily fended off a challenge from Perdue, who entered the race with Trump’s blessing but struggled to win the former president’s ardent supporters despite a campaign message that centered on his falsehoods about election fraud.
The governor leveraged the powers of incumbency to thwart Perdue, who echoed Trump’s efforts to paint him as insufficiently conservative. Kemp signed legislation atop the GOP wish list that cut taxes, rolled back gun restrictions and brought culture wars to the classrooms.
And Kemp drew support from establishment figures and Trump’s former allies in the closing weeks of the race, culminating with a Monday pre-primary rally headlined by former Vice President Mike Pence. Even some of Perdue’s most trusted deputies when he was in the Senate sided with Kemp.
It was an epic collapse for Perdue, a former CEO who scaled back his campaign as chances of squeaking into a June runoff in the five-candidate race narrowed. Even Trump downplayed Perdue’s chances while warning the Georgia GOP is doomed with Kemp atop the ticket.
After starting his political career with an insurgent outsider-themed Senate victory in 2014 that fueled talk of a potential White House run, Perdue’s record in public service is now capped by a pair of humbling defeats to Democrat Jon Ossoff in 2021 and Kemp a year later.
With a short speech surrounded by dejected supporters, Perdue conceded defeat and pledged to support Kemp in the November election.
“I am fully supporting Brian Kemp,” he said. “Tomorrow morning you are going to hear me going to work to go to work to make damn sure Stacey Abrams is not the next governor of Georgia.”
It was also a stinging blow to Trump, who put Kemp atop his revenge list after blaming the governor for his 2020 election defeat in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. He pleaded with Perdue to challenge Kemp, saying at a September rally in Perry that he’d rather Abrams win than see the governor reelected.
And Trump took more steps to support Perdue than any other of his endorsed candidates in this cycle. He recruited Perdue to run, pushed a rival candidate to another race to give his ally a clearer shot at Kemp, held several rallies for the candidate and spent $2.6 million from his PAC to finance a blitz of pro-Perdue ads.
Local and national Republicans eager to move beyond Trump’s brand of politics are certain to frame Perdue’s loss as the former president’s biggest political defeat since his 2020 reelection loss since the two were so closely intertwined.
Perdue opened campaign appearances with footage of Trump’s endorsement and parroted his lies about systemic election fraud, even starting televised debates by falsely maintaining that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen.”
The governor will now focus on a rematch that he has expected since the end of a 2018 campaign that culminated with the Democrat’s refusal to concede to Kemp even as she acknowledged that the Republican would be governor.
Since that famous nonconcession speech, Abrams has prepared to tangle once more with Kemp. She built the powerful Fair Fight Action political organization that promoted voting rights, lobbied for Medicaid expansion and courted donors and key political figures to advocate other policy priorities.
And she refused entreaties from senior Democrats to run for the U.S. Senate so she could take another shot at toppling Kemp. Now a fundraising dynamo with a national following, Abrams quickly narrowed Kemp’s financial edge after entering the race in December.
The Democrat has revived many of her core issues from the 2018 campaign, starting with a vow to work with the Republican-led Legislature to expand Medicaid. She also promised to increase school funding, enact new gun restrictions and build a more equitable economy.
And she’s brought more attention to a pledge to protect abortion rights after the leak of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion suggested the impending demise of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
The party’s successes in Georgia’s last election, when Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992 and Ossoff and Raphael Warnock swept runoffs that flipped control of the Senate, has only solidified her ambition.
“When people win, they start to believe that winning is not a fluke, it’s inevitable,” Abrams said in an interview. “And what I’m seeing on the ground as I go around the state is more people who believe we can win, who believe that Democrats are on the ascendancy.”
Though Kemp’s campaign is still dogged by Trump’s opposition, he enters the general election phase with fresh momentum and a plan to keep conservatives energized while appealing to a November electorate with broader policies.
High on his list are plans to tout a record budget that includes teacher pay raises and call attention to a pair of recently announced auto plants slated to bring 16,000 jobs to Georgia.
But the central theme of his reelection campaign is unlikely to shift. His opening and closing message to voters on the campaign trail is that he’s the only Republican who can block an Abrams victory that would jump-start her rise to the White House.
“Make no mistake: My focus is on making sure that Stacey Abrams is not your governor,” Kemp said at one of his final campaign stops. “We’re going to beat her again.”
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