Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp won the state’s Republican primary for governor on Tuesday, beating back former President Donald Trump’s hand-picked challenger in a contest that demonstrated the limits of the former president and his conspiracy-fueled politics in a key swing state. Kemp will face Democrat Stacey Abrams this fall in what will be one of the nation’s most closely watched governor’s races. Despite the stinging setback in the night’s top contest, Trump’s preferred Senate candidate, former NFL star Herschel Walker, easily prevailed in his primary, while a Trump-backed candidate to serve as Georgia’s chief election officer was still in the running. And in Republican primaries in Alabama and Arkansas, dozens of conservatives were likely to win their primaries after embracing Trump’s lies about his 2020 election loss. But Trump’s chief focus this primary season was the race for Georgia governor. The former president personally recruited former Sen. David Perdue to challenge Kemp, whose only sin was to reject the former president’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. Kemp emerged as a powerful fundraiser with a list of conservative accomplishments to blunt Trump’s opposition. In the final days of the campaign, he unveiled plans for a $5.5 billion, 8,100-job Hyundai Motor plant near Savannah. Perdue’s allies braced for a lopsided defeat, the only question being whether Kemp would win the 50% majority he needed to avoid a runoff election next month. “We’re not going to have a runoff,” said Matha Zoller, a longtime Republican activist and northeast Georgia talk show host with ties to both Trump and Perdue. “It’s going to be embarrassing.” The results could raise questions about where power resides within the GOP. While Trump remains deeply popular among the party’s most loyal voters, the opening stage of the midterm primary season has shown they don’t always side with his picks. Other prominent Republicans, meanwhile, are growing increasingly assertive. Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, rallied with Kemp in the Atlanta suburbs on Monday evening. “Elections are about the future,” he told the crowd, adding that “when you vote for Brian Kemp tomorrow, you will say yes to a future of freedom here in Georgia. You will say yes to our most cherished values at the heart of everything we hold dear.” Trump, meanwhile, held a telephone rally for Perdue, describing him as “100% MAGA.” Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats elsewhere were grappling with ideological and strategic divisions that will determine what kind of candidates to nominate and which issues to prioritize for the November general election. Democrats were especially focused on a runoff election in south Texas, where longtime incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar was facing a fierce challenge from progressive Jessica Cisneros in a race where abortion was a prominent issue. Cuellar is the last anti-abortion Democrat serving in the House. Republicans were deciding a series of lower-profile primaries. In Arkansas, former Trump aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders was expected to claim the Republican governor’s nomination. And in Alabama, conservative firebrand Rep. Mo Brooks was running to represent the GOP in the race to replace retiring Sen. Richard Shelby. Brooks, a leading figure at the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol attack, initially won Trump’s endorsement, although Trump rescinded it after watching Brooks struggle in the polls. No state had more consequential elections this week than […]

The post BLOW TO TRUMP: Kemp Wins Georgia GOP Gov’s Race in Stinging Rebuke of Trump appeared first on The Yeshiva World.