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They held a debate between the two major candidates for the GOP gubernatorial nomination on Sunday night. I have no idea what the ratings were, and kudos to my onetime WSB- TV colleague Justin Farmer for allowing the candidates to actually debate. Well done.
Matt Towery
But in reality few voters actually watch or care about local debates. That is good news for Gov. Brian Kemp, who was clearly off his game as he faced an aggressive and defiant former U.S. Sen. David Perdue. Don’t get me wrong, even on a bad day Kemp is pretty darn good. He’s the guy we all like and his demeanor, even when on the defensive, is still appealing. But Sunday was not his night.
But did a debate that probably was lost in the end of spring break and on the verge of summer really move the political needle? Probably not.
Yet the same apathy towards televised debates, which saved Kemp, is bleeding over to the primary itself. That is a national trend, save Virginia. The nation is suffering from election burnout. Our InsiderAdvantage surveys tell us, at least as of today, that excitement over the upcoming primaries in Georgia is equaling historical lows. That is where things get interesting.
Contrary to the conventional polling in the GOP gubernatorial contest, the race is much tighter. You only get there if you place the proper “screens” (questions that weed out the folks who say they are voting but don’t) from a survey. We have not conducted our latest full survey for Fox5 Atlanta, but our tracking tells us that the race between Kemp and Perdue is basically Kemp hovering at 50 percent and Perdue at around 41 percent.
Case closed, Kemp wins without a runoff, right? Not so fast.
Yes, Kemp had about as good of a legislative session as an incumbent can have in Georgia. Add to that he has a boatload of cash to overwhelm Perdue with ads as we head into the campaign’s last month. He is still the favorite to win the nomination, but not by much.
As the headline suggests, what if you held an election and nobody showed up to vote? You’re about to see that happen, and the results will shock you.
Up until three weeks ago, everyone in Georgia thought that a “SuperPAC” supporting Perdue had an amazing $5-8 million coming in to lift Donald Trump’s chosen candidate to victory. But the PAC had already blown its money on pathetically weak ads–and it never had the big money that rumors suggested.
That’s when things got very interesting.
The former president cut an ad where the screen goes blank and he says, in essence, “sorry, I just stole your TV signal.” And he put $2 million behind it. Trump put his money where his mouth and endorsement was– behind Perdue. And as popular as Trump is in Georgia with Republicans (he polls miles ahead of any other GOP name, dead or alive—and that that means a lot), his ad is about the 2020 election. That’s old hat, right?
Ha!
The Atlanta newspaper and the media covering this election write that all claims of election hijinks in the 2020 election cycle have been “debunked” and are “false.” The problem is, according to all credible polling in Georgia, most GOP voters do not accept those findings.
One PAC supporting Perdue aired actual videos of alleged “mules” (apparently that is the term for hired folks who drop absentee ballots into drop boxes, allegedly for a fee) doing their thing. And even Kemp admitted in the debate that there is fraud in every election.
He is right. But to his credit it could never be quantified in Georgia.
To his detriment most Georgia Republicans, post 2020, felt he didn’t do enough to try to quantify it, or to stop it before the January 2021 U.S. Senate runoff. The good news for Kemp is that memories fade quickly.
And there we are. Who remembers the 2020 election cycle and who still cares? Who wants to “get even” and how many are there?
Probably enough to get David Perdue a good 43-44 percent of the vote. Enough to win? No…but darn close. (And remember there are lesser-known GOP primary candidates who could perhaps take 4 percent of the vote.)
Arguing there remains Critical Race Theory in schools and a substantial increase in crime, particularly in Atlanta, could push Perdue into a higher share of the vote and Kemp into a runoff. But that takes money and ads and (absentee) voting has technically started.
The real questions are: Will Trump ante up one more time with another round of ads that paint Kemp as a do-nothing on crime and a “woke Republican in disguise”? Will Perdue peel off enough of his own money to make up for that PAC that was supposed to save the day for him?
Also, will Kemp’s team spend the money they would like to keep in their pocket to scorch the earth with anti-Perdue ads? “Time’s a wasting” in a race that has most Georgians yawning.
I can’t predict how this will all go. But with a statewide electorate more interested in an Atlanta Hawks score (which is not much) than this primary, I can promise you this, it will be no blow out. Every time the Atlanta media harp on “debunked election claims” that will likely push another Republican to get out of a lounge chair and decide to vote… for Perdue.
U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker has been blasted by the media for not debating his primary opponents. But Walker will nonetheless likely win his GOP primary.
Kemp chose to rumble with Perdue. The ultimate question: Will Perdue and Trump put just enough spice in the contest to get to a June runoff? Because in Georgia, runoffs are fatal to frontrunners.
When everyone else wrote Kemp off two years ago, I did not. And I’m not doing that now. But, hold on folks, it is going to be one heck of an unwatched, uncared for race in the end!
Matt Towery is the chairman of InsiderAdvantage Georgia and James magazine.
