In Georgia primary, a test of Trump’s influence

David Perdue smiles reassuringly into the camera as he tries to explain to Republican voters in Georgia why he’s challenging their party’s sitting governor, Brian Kemp.

“Look, I like Brian. This isn’t personal,” the former GOP senator says in a campaign video. “It’s simple. He’s failed all of us and cannot win in November.”

It may or may not be personal for Mr. Perdue. But for Donald Trump, his main backer, it almost certainly is. Since the former president lost Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes in the 2020 election – and then tried unsuccessfully to convince Governor Kemp and other state officials to overturn the results – Mr. Trump has made it a top priority to see those Republicans voted out of office.

He’s endorsed candidates up and down Georgia’s ballot for the May 24 primary, including a challenger to GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who resisted Mr. Trump’s demand to “find” more votes for him in 2020. The biggest target, however, is Mr. Kemp, whose primary opponent was directly recruited by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Perdue has centered his campaign almost entirely on the former president’s disproved allegations of widespread voter fraud. In a televised May 1 debate, he said he got into the race because Governor Kemp had “sold us out” in 2020 and wouldn’t be able to unite the party to defeat Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor.

Yet if Georgia represents one of the starkest tests of Mr. Trump’s ability to exercise his will over his own party, the former president’s efforts here appear to be coming up notably short.

For months, Mr. Kemp has been comfortably ahead of his rivals in the polls and raising far more money. Indeed, many GOP operatives are baffled that Mr. Perdue ever agreed to try to unseat a popular conservative governor at the behest of a defeated president. The wealthy businessman now faces potential humiliation at the polls, a year or so after losing his Senate seat in a runoff.

“When you have an incumbent governor who’s been very successful, it’s just unfathomable to me why you’d get in the race,” says Eric Tanenblatt, who was chief of staff for Sonny Perdue, a former two-term Republican governor and cousin of David Perdue.

Mr. Perdue’s lackluster campaign also may say something about Republican voters’ desire to move on – despite the widespread suspicions many still hold about the 2020 election. While Governor Kemp is running on his record, Mr. Perdue seems stuck on 2020, says Mr. Tanenblatt, who raised money for a pro-Perdue PAC in that electoral cycle.

“Elections are about the future and people are ready to look ahead to the future,” he says. “David Perdue’s campaign seems to be based on the past.”

A mixed endorsement record 

Governor Kemp has defended his handling of the 2020 election by emphasizing his lawful duty to certify the results after Mr. Trump’s legal challenges had failed. He also talks up Georgia’s sweeping 2021 election law that restricts absentee voting and drop boxes, among other changes. Democrats say the law erects barriers to voting and could suppress minority turnout.

Mr. Trump has held campaign rallies and mobilized money for Mr. Perdue, while repeating his claim that Governor Kemp is “too weak” to win in November. But he has also hedged on Mr. Perdue’s chances, possibly with an eye on his endorsement score card.

“David is a good man. I hope he’s going to win it,” he told a conservative radio show in April. But he added, it’s “not easy to beat a sitting governor. Just remember that.”

Mr. Trump’s record in GOP primaries has been mixed so far. In the open-seat Ohio Senate race, his backing appeared to boost “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance enough to win the nomination in a crowded field. Likewise, North Carolina Rep. Ted Budd, who won the GOP Senate nomination there this week, called Mr. Trump’s endorsement of him a “huge” factor. In Pennsylvania, however, the Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz is now in a too-close-to-call Senate race that’s likely headed for a recount. And against popular incumbents, Mr. Trump’s endorsements haven’t seemed to carry much weight at all. In Idaho last week, the sitting GOP governor cruised to renomination by more than 20 points, even though the former president had backed his opponent.

Despite Mr. Trump’s enduring popularity among Republicans, voters can hold two things to be true at the same time, says Mr. Tanenblatt. “People know Donald Trump has an issue with Governor Kemp. But they also know that Governor Kemp is doing a good job in Georgia,” he says.  

Analysts say Mr. Trump’s dislike of Mr. Kemp stems partly from his belief that the governor owed him for his support in 2018, when Mr. Kemp faced a runoff primary against Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle. After the president tweeted a surprise endorsement for him, Mr. Kemp handily won that election and went on to defeat Ms. Adams, the Democratic nominee, in November. (Mr. Trump later told the Daily Caller he had endorsed Mr. Kemp on the advice of Sonny Perdue; Mr. Trump also reportedly liked Mr. Kemp’s macho campaign ads.)

Personal loyalty – along with vocal support for Mr. Trump’s election fraud claims – seems to be the common denominator in Mr. Trump’s primary endorsements, says Tammy Greer, assistant professor of political science at Clark Atlanta University. Otherwise, it’s hard to categorize the candidates he’s backed in Georgia, which include Herschel Walker, the football legend who seems certain to be the GOP nominee to challenge Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock – although Mr. Walker probably didn’t need the former president’s endorsement to win the primary in football-mad Georgia. 

In-your-face politics

Mr. Kemp has doled out plenty of fare to please his base, from transgender sports bans to allowing Georgians to carry a concealed gun in public without a permit (at that bill signing, the governor bought his daughter, Lucy, her first firearm). He’s worked with Georgia’s GOP-run legislature to cut income taxes and raise pay for teachers and state employees, policies that have commanded the media spotlight.

“He’s taken a lot of positions that [Republicans] like, and he’s emphasizing it in his campaigning. The only thing Perdue is running on is that Kemp should have somehow stopped Biden from winning Georgia,” says Alan Abramowitz, a politics professor at Emory University.

Last month, Mr. Kemp’s political offensive brought him here to central Georgia, where the governor held a mobile bill-signing ceremony at the White Diamond Grill, a barbecue joint. Employees cleared tables from the checkerboard floor to make room for reporters to witness the signing of the tax-cut bill – a made-for-TV moment that just happened to be at the very same restaurant Mr. Perdue famously used as a backdrop for ads during his 2014 Senate campaign.

It was “gangster politics,” marvels Professor Greer. “It’s like going into someone’s home and taking their things. He intentionally went to David Perdue’s home county, and David Perdue’s favorite restaurant.”

Servers at the restaurant, which first opened in 1949, say the former senator, who now lives in coastal Georgia, isn’t a regular. (His cousin Sonny, who served as Mr. Trump’s agriculture secretary and owns farmland in the county, is more likely to stop by.) 

After the bill-signing ceremony, TV cameras followed Mr. Kemp to the groundbreaking of a new food processing factory. On hand to introduce him was Sonny Perdue. Earlier this year, he was named as chancellor of the University System of Georgia, a prestigious appointment with an annual salary of $523,900 that the governor had all but sealed for him.

Asked by reporters which candidate he was supporting in the primary, Sonny Perdue declined to say.

The turnout question

One question for Republicans is what happens if, as seems likely, David Perdue loses on May 24. Having failed to oust Mr. Kemp, will Mr. Trump fall in line behind the governor in November’s midterms when Georgia has a critical Senate seat in play? Or will Republican voters, convinced by his “stolen election” claims, decide to stay home rather than vote for establishment candidates?

At a campaign stop last week, Mr. Perdue told supporters that the party comes first. He pledged to support whoever becomes the GOP nominee for governor.

“I got in here to keep Stacey Abrams from being governor,” he told a small group in a county seat in northern Georgia. “If you want a Republican in the White House in ’24, and you want to get the majority back this year in the Senate, you got to win this governor’s race.”

Mr. Perdue knows well the risks of campaigning with a disunited party.

In the messy aftermath of the 2020 election, the former senator faced a runoff election against Democrat Jon Ossoff. Many analysts believe Mr. Perdue’s campaign was undercut by Mr. Trump’s complaints about Georgia’s electoral system, which may have convinced some Republican voters there was no point in casting a ballot. 

Both he and GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler lost their runoff races on Jan. 5, 2021 – handing control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats. GOP turnout was down, with the biggest drops in counties where Mr. Trump had held rallies.

Asked by the Monitor about Mr. Trump’s impact on the runoffs, Mr. Perdue says the president never told anyone not to vote. But he believes all the talk of “vote rigging” was a factor. “I heard from ordinary people around the state during that runoff that [they’d] just lost confidence, and ‘why should I vote?’” he says.

This time, he says, Republicans need to be crystal clear in their messaging: “I tell people if you don’t vote now, it is in effect a vote for the other side.”