There’s good news and bad news for Georgia Republicans this year. The good news: Among their crop of statewide hopefuls are some interesting, experienced, and relatable candidates.
The bad news is you may never know it from the hoops they’ll have to jump to be “Trump enough” for today’s Trump-hungry GOP primary voters.
The AJC’s May poll heading into the current campaign season showed the needle Republican candidates are going to have to thread in order win both a GOP primary in the summer of 2022 and then, if they survive that gauntlet, Georgia’s general election five months later.
The poll showed a majority of Georgians with a dim view of the former president and just 45% saying they have a favorable opinion of him. But, and this a big “but,” Trump was still the most popular politician in Georgia among Republican voters, with a whopping 87% approval rating.
The pro-Trump data has held up consistently in internal polling for Republicans across Georgia. It helps explain the tough-talking, fraud-busting, anti-Marxist-Socialist-Communist personality transplant some of the most mild-mannered Republicans in the state seem to be undergoing, at least in their external communications, to win over the former president’s still die-hard fans.
Gary Black is the exceedingly friendly state Agriculture Commissioner. Black has been generally well-regarded inside the Capitol by members of both parties during his 11 years in office.
But his message to Herschel Walker in his Senate campaign earlier this month was that “It takes more than pretending to change your car tags,” to run for the Senate.
Huh? Black coupled that statement with a video that responded to Texas-resident Walker teasing his possible Senate run in front of, yes, expired Georgia tags.
“Move here, pay taxes here, register and vote in some elections, and learn what Georgians have on their minds,” Black said.
It’s easier to imagine Gary Black cliff diving than taunting his fellow UGA alum Walker in real life, but welcome to 2021 for a GOP candidate.
David Belle Isle, too, was previously more blue blazer than hot rage.
I moderated the 2018 runoff debate between the former Alpharetta mayor and Brad Raffensperger, when the biggest fireworks of the day were Raffensperger’s insinuation that Belle Isle raised money from businesses in Alpharetta and his name sounded French.
But the fireworks from Belle Isle started right off the bat in 2021, with a parody video painting Raffensperger as the devil who went down to Georgia and gave the 2020 election away to Stacey Abrams — who was not on the ballot.
“Stacey print your ballots and play the victim’s card, cause votin’s loose in Georgia and Brad Raffen deals the cards,” the Charlie Daniels look-alike sings.
Is Belle Isle, the man who brought Alpharetta moms a J. Crew by approving the Avalon shopping complex, really a Stacey-Abrams taunting fiddle fan? It seems like a stretch.
And what about John King? The Georgia insurance commissioner is a Major General in the National Guard who came to the United States from Mexico as a child. After serving as an Atlanta police officer, he went on to be the consensus-building police chief of Doraville.
But even King has jumped the shark with his fundraising appeals heading into 2022.
“Crime rates have NEVER been higher, and yet the Leftist leaders want you to believe that guns are to blame,” a recent King fundraising email said. “Are these WEAK leaders not to blame? Is it a COINCIDENCE that crime is at an all-time high NOW? Of course not!”
Can you feel your blood pressure increase as you read that? That’s what it’s for — to raise your temperature, enrage your senses, and get anyone who reads it to want to do something about it. In this case, that means donating $25.00 online, or voting in next summer’s GOP primary.
And it’s just a preview of what’s to come. Because while every Republican in Georgia can’t get Donald Trump’s endorsement to run, they’re going to need his voters to win. And that means convincing Republicans they’re the most pro-Trump, pro-conservative candidate in the race.
The irony of this approach is that it’s not authentic to some of the Republicans’ most viable general election candidates — and it just didn’t work in 2020.
Kelly Loeffler was introduced to Georgians as a smiling, farm-raised Atlanta success story. But by July she was sporting a checked shirt and cowboy boots, launching every bomb she could find against her GOP opponent, Doug Collins, and Democrat, Raphael Warnock.
She hammered Collins for not being a real conservative and called Warnock a “radical liberal” so many times in one debate it became the stuff of legend.
But it also left voters wondering, “Who is this person?” Was Kelly Loeffler a woman who had wanted opportunities beyond her family’s Illinois farm and moved to Georgia to find them? That’s something people could relate to. But a pre-programmed, pro-Trump quote machine? That didn’t sell.
Contrast that with Warnock, whose message usually matched his biography and whose ads, complete with a puppy that wasn’t even his, were like a vacation on a deserted island compared to the hate flying out of Georgians’ televisions and computers by the end of the campaign.
Warnock’s approach worked — and not just on Democrats.
I will never forget meeting Robert Roberts at a Donald Trump, Jr. rally. Speaking at an indoor shooting range in Cobb County, he told me that other than Trump, there was one candidate who had caught his attention.
“You know that guy Warnock? Politicians need to take a look at how he’s running his campaign, his advertisements,” Roberts said. “The guy looks sharp. I’m sorry. He looks sharp. I would not vote for him, but he’s staying as positive as possible. I worry about him because we’ve got Loeffler and Collins going at it. A little bit too much.”
Robert Roberts, Georgia agreed. It was, and is, a little bit too much.
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