Trump called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp a 'turncoat' and fought to defeat him. Here's why he won anyway.
ATLANTA – "Turncoat." "Coward." "Total disaster" — and Trump vanquisher?
Former President Donald Trump angrily targeted Brian Kemp, the sitting Republican governor of Georgia, this primary season. He unleashed insults, personal attacks and all the drama he could muster.
He failed.
Georgia's wild primary election got even wilder this week when Trump targets Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger handed him some of his biggest political embarrassments by beating the rage Trump, futilely, hurled against them.
"The vitriol here has been bad," said Robert Trim, 53, a realtor who drove over to Kennesaw United Methodist Church to cast his ballot for Kemp.
For a former president who is weighing another presidential run — and who has worked to reshape the party in his own image — the losses expose potential weaknesses, both for him and, perhaps, for the GOP as a whole.
Trump now needs to change tactics and endorse the governor – especially if the former president is serious about seeking the White House again, Trim said. "If he wants to run for president in 2024, he needs to fix this."
Georgia primary:Kemp beats Trump-backed Perdue, historic race between Walker, Warnock
Primary takeaways:Trump's revenge tour falters in Georgia as Kemp, Raffensperger crush GOP rivals
'A turncoat, a coward'
The Georgia primaries were strikingly different this year: An ex-president attacked a sitting governor and secretary of state from his own party for, essentially, refusing to break election law on his behalf.
Trump is now under investigation by Atlanta prosecutors over those demands.
More: Remember Trump’s call to ‘find’ votes in Georgia? Meet Fani Willis, the DA who could charge him
Trump recorded ads for his favored candidate, challenger David Perdue; headlined rallies and authorized more than $2.6 million in campaign spending to defeat Kemp — unprecedented involvement.
And then there were the personal attacks.
During a rally in March, Trump lashed out at Kemp as "a turncoat, a coward, and a complete and total disaster." He added that, if Kemp won the nomination, "he will go down in flames at the ballot box" and lose in the fall to Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.
At one point point in a notably nasty campaign, Trump even appeared to endorse Abrams. During a Sept. 25 political rally in Georgia, Trump said of Abrams and Kemp: “Of course, having her I think might be better than having your existing governor, if you want to know the truth... Might very well be better."
Yet Kemp shellacked the Trump-backed Perdue and won with more than 70% of the vote.
"I've talked to Republicans in Georgia a month ago saying, 'Even David Perdue's cousin isn't voting for him,'" said J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor of the Crystal Ball, a political analysis newsletter at the University of Virginia.
Text with the USA TODAY newsroom about the day’s biggest stories. Sign up for our subscriber-only texting experience.
'The biggest rebuke to Trump since he left office'
Republicans in Georgia say Kemp – and Raffensperger – prevailed by working around Trump or casting him as an interloper and playing up their own anti-tax, pro-business stances. Meanwhile, they appealed to Trump backers by stressing the things that unite them as Republicans.
Coleman said carrying Trump's water took a backseat to Kemp's own conservative record in the state mixed with anxiety about beating Abrams and the Democratic voting rights machine she's built.
"This is gonna be a very big black eye in terms of the Trump endorsements," Coleman said. "This was probably the biggest rebuke to Trump since he left office."
Bad night for Trump: Kemp, Raffensperger win GA primaries, Brooks in Ala Senate runoff
'I keep Trump in my prayers — that he'll stop doing this'
From a church polling place to the Kemp victory party at the College Football Hall of Fame, Republicans said they resented Trump's interference in the election.
Betty Kelso, 75, a retiree from Kennesaw who attended a Kemp rally at an airplane hangar in Cobb County, said she likes Trump but was "disappointed" by his activity in Georgia.
Battle for the GOP soul: The Brian Kemp-David Perdue primary has turned into a Donald Trump-Mike Pence feud
As country music blared over the speaker, Kelso said: "You don't come down here and tell us what to do. You know what? I keep Trump in my prayers — that he'll stop doing this."
Her daughter, Carolyn Penner, 49, a middle school theater teacher from Kennesaw, said she is hopeful the Republicans can surmount all the drama.
"I can't be on anxiety meds because of what's going on," she said. "I have to have faith."
Democrats grab the popcorn
Certainly Georgia Democrats are enjoying the Trump-Kemp spectacle; they believe the lingering friction will help Abrams in November.
“The Republicans are totally disorganized right now,” said Quintin Kreth, 29, a Georgia Tech grad student and Democrat at an election-night party Georgia Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath hosted at the Hilton Atlanta Northeast hotel. "I think that Donald Trump has done a lot of damage to Georgia Republicans by making them fight amongst themselves before the election in really nasty, ugly primaries that have been all over TV.”
Kreth agreed with Republicans who said that candidates should move on from what happened in 2020.
He added: “Rehashing the 2020 election is not going to be a winning issue for Democrats or Republicans."
NC primary fallout: What's next for NC's Madison Cawthorn after his GOP primary loss?
Niles Francis, 20, a Democrat at McBath's election-night party, said Tuesday’s primaries may prove that Trump’s hold on the Georgia GOP is not as strong as it once was.
“If these primary results are any indication, his grip on Georgia Republicans appears to be waning," Francis said.
Francis also highlighted that if Trump supporters are upset and choose not to vote in the fall, that could cost Kemp his race.
“Elections in Georgia tend to come down to a few thousand votes,” he said. “Neither candidate has any room for error in a state like Georgia.”
Some Republicans revel in Trump's defeat
Some national Republicans who have clashed with Trump clearly saw the Georgia race as a chance to take shots at the ex-president — supposedly the head of their own party.
A parade of Republican governors and ex-governors – including Doug Ducey of Arizona, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and Chris Christie of New Jersey – visited Georgia to stump for Kemp.
Kemp, Pence, Trump:In Georgia, the Brian Kemp-David Perdue primary has turned into a Donald Trump-Mike Pence feud
After Kemp's big win, Christie took to Twitter to gloat over Trump, using his initials: "Enormous win tonight for @BrianKempGA. I am so proud of and happy for my friend—and just as importantly for the Georgia GOP and the people of Georgia. They were not going to kick out a great Governor or be willing participants in the DJT Vendetta Tour."
On primary eve, Kemp brought in the pièce de resistance: Mike Pence, Trump's former vice president.
CNN political commentator Scott Jennings, a GOP consultant, said what happened in Georgia could be a blueprint for the former vice president, and other Republicans, who are thinking about a White House bid in the coming years, even if Trump tries to get back to the presidency.
"If I were Mike Pence, and I were in that exact same boat, I would be thinking this was a positive benchmark," he said.
The Georgia outcome, he said, demonstrates that among conservative voters there is an ability to distinguish between Trump's personal grudges and his policy views.
"Over time he complains about people or picks on people, but it happens so often... at some juncture, you become numb to it," Jennings told USA TODAY.
A message to Trump: 'Stay out'
Trump has lost other races – six of his candidates have gone down, including Perdue, in primaries this year so far – but his views and his aggressiveness are practically Republican orthodoxy.
Kemp is not exactly anti-Trump. He and other candidates who have been opposed by Trump are supportive of what he calls the Make America Great Again agenda.
Even as Kemp and Raffensperger won their races, uber-MAGA Senate candidate Herschel Walker easily won a Republican Senate nomination. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., easily won her primary.
"It's not that Georgia is less Trumpy," said Sarah Longwell, the executive director of the Republican Accountability Project, who studied Georgia voters in the run-up to the primary.
Pa. GOP Senate primary: Why Oz and McCormick race may not be decided before June
"Based on several focus groups in the state with Georgia GOP voters, Kemp prevailed because he’s an incumbent who voters see as having handled COVID well," Longwell said. "And he also passed an 'election integrity' bill that voters saw as him proactively tackling their concerns about the 2020 election."
As the bar closed and the Kemp celebration wound down on primary night, several Republicans cited a bottom line: Trump shouldn't have been messing around in other people's business.
Pete Gibson, 54, a union organizer from Waycross, Ga., said Kemp's victory sends Trump a message: "stay out of Georgia politics."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump lost to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. What now?
