In the age of social media, it’s not uncommon to see targeted campaign ads leading in to a YouTube video or on Facebook scattered among the posts in your feed. But even in 2018, if you want to win a primary in Georgia you’re going to have to get your hands dirty and do some good old fashioned retail politicking.
The three leading candidates in the race to replace Governor Nathan Deal, Casey Cagle, Hunter Hill, and Brian Kemp, have all embarked on bus tours of their own, criss-crossing the state in an attempt to get face to face contact with the Republican voter base that will head to the polls on May 22nd.
Cagle today finishes his second bus tour, wrapping up a 40 community tour in North Georgia. The Lt. Governor has had to weather a barrage of attack ads from his rivals, each seeking to emerge into a runoff with the GOP frontrunner.
Hill, not to be outdone, has traversed the state in his own bus, speaking to dozens of Republican groups over the past two months on his “Battle-Tested Leadership Bus Tour” that has included stops at such classic campaign stops as BBQ joints and airplane hangars.
Then there is Kemp, beefing up his rural Georgia bonafides on a bus tour of his own on his “Putting Georgians First Bus Tour.” The Secretary of State has put a focus on all of Georgia, not just Atlanta, as a core tenet of his campaign, traveling to all 159 counties on a tour that ended in March.
While the majority of the hefty war chests wielded by the top Republican candidates will go towards TV airtime over the last three-ish weeks of the campaign leading into the primary, there is simply no replacement for face to face campaigning to secure their portion of the party base. Expect to see those buses back on the road for which ever two candidates emerge on the 22nd, and expect the winner of that slugfest to keep burning rubber across the state through the summer and into fall for the general election against either Stacey Abrams or Stacey Evans.
