Georgia: Ticket-Splitting On Our Mind (with Molly Ball) 20:04

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we are talking about Georgia, the state most likely to determine which party controls the Senate, which makes the impact of recent revelations that Hershel Walker allegedly paid for an abortion all the more high stakes in his attempts to unseat Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock.

We're going to hear swing voters discuss how Walker's controversial past is influencing their thinking about this race. We're also going to explore the lost art of ticket splitting. We've seen some of this in Arizona, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, but Georgia may be ground zero for the 2022 ticket splitter.

Republican Governor Brian Kemp is probably on track to beat Democrat Stacey Abrams again. He's leading by five and a half points in the latest 538 average, which is practically a landslide in narrowly divided Georgia these days. There was actually a poll out this week from the University of Georgia that has Kemp leading by 10 points. That seems too high to me, but point is he's up.

My guest today is Molly Ball, national political correspondent for Time magazine. She had a great piece recently for the magazine titled Brian Kemp's Revenge. So who is Kemp getting revenge on? All of his haters. And isn't that what we all would like? That's the dream. That's the dream. Well, but specifically former President Trump, who thought he was going to get his revenge on Brian Kemp.

for refusing to help him steal the election. But that's not how things went down, as people probably remember. And Trump tried very hard to unseat Kemp in this past primary back in May. Kemp did the work, won extremely decisively by about 50 points. And now, as you said, he looks like he's going to cruise to reelection. And so as I put it in the piece, he may be the only Republican candidate to have used Trump better than Trump used him.

Yeah. Right. Like Trump was able to essentially choose his person in most races and the Georgia race where he handpicks Purdue, he even handpicks Congressman Jody Heist to run against Brad Raffensperger as secretary of state. He,

He sees them other than Liz Cheney kind of public enemies, one and two, goes hard at them. And the whole thing is just a total flop. Like Kemp wins by such a margin in this primary that he drags Brad Raffensperger over the finish line, who everybody thought was dead in the water because he wouldn't find Trump has 11000 votes. Like, how did he pull that off? Like, what did he do?

Well, he worked very hard for it. And I would say that, yes, when somebody wins a primary by a 50 point margin, it looks like that was probably always going to be the case. But it was not at all a foregone conclusion. And something I think people don't appreciate enough about this race is that, you know, Trump issues a lot of endorsements, but he doesn't actually, people will be shocked to hear this, doesn't actually put in a lot of work for the candidates he endorses. He tends to believe that just that piece of paper ought to be enough and they should be happy with it.

Only in the case of Brian Kemp and Liz Cheney did he actually spend money to try to defeat those candidates and get his candidates elected this cycle. So in light of that, I think it's all the more remarkable that Kemp was able to survive. But so it was a function of, I would say,

Basically three things. Number one, Kemp is an experienced politician and he did the political work to sew this up early. He went to all of his donors, the sort of power players in the state, locked them down, got them to commit to him early. So by the time Trump's begging succeeded and former Senator Perdue got in the race, he couldn't raise any money.

Even his own cousin wouldn't endorse him, former Governor Sonny Perdue, because Brian Kemp had just given him the chancellorship of the state university. So clever political plays like that, number one, to lock down a lot of Republican support in the state.

And then number two, just, you know, his performance as governor. As I write in the piece, you know, he didn't suddenly turn into a squish when he got on Trump's bad side. He never responded to Trump's attacks. He would say, you know, she would have won the election in 2020, but he didn't.

But other than that, you know, declined to engage with any of Trump's attacks and continued to pick fights with Biden, with Stacey Abrams, with liberals and public health experts. So if you're a Republican who likes to see your Republican elected officials trigger the libs, he could make a case that he's still your guy. And then thirdly, particularly as it gets further and further in the rearview mirror,

The 2020 election is just not as much of an obsession to rank and file voters as it is to Trump. And...

Again, I think that that becomes more and more true as more time elapses. This monomaniacal obsession that Trump has with the election that he lost and then tried to overturn. Yeah, a lot of Republican voters agree with him and think the election was stolen, mistakenly, of course. But increasingly, you know, voters are looking to the future for who is going to govern them and set policy for them. And they concluded that they wanted a little bit more than just being obsessed with 2020.

Yeah, I think that's totally right. All three of those points. That was the thing about Perdue, right? Is he basically only ran on that, right? His only pitch was, I think the election was stolen. And that just wasn't enough to get people pumped about him. And like, I mean, I just thought it was all over the focus groups.

from like six months ago, loved how he handled COVID. You know, he took the voting integrity seriously. Like he had just done so much to neutralize it. And now these people that we were talking to in this focus group, you know, there are swing voters. They voted for Trump in 16. They voted for Biden in 20. Now they see the fact that Kemp stood up to Trump as a big benefit. Let's listen.

That took a lot of guts at that moment. Because see, it's easy now looking in the back. But at the time, that drum was beating hard to be able to be a conservative governor and stand up against that. It's pretty phenomenal.

To me, it gave Kemp a lot more credibility. Before that, I thought he was just a hardline Republican and kind of Trump's puppet, one of Trump's puppets, let's just say. But to me, it made him seem like more of his own, that he doesn't have to always go with the Republican Party, even though he knew he was going to get some backlash and that he's a free thinker.

I really like him. It's hard to fault him given the constant hurdles we've had to jump through as a state of Georgia, being in a spotlight for the Trump election fraud debacle. He did stand his ground and I think he's done a great job. Because there was even things that Trump wanted Kemp to do that he didn't do. So Kemp is not just a Republican toy. Like he really does what's right for his state.

campaign. He's trying to help small businesses, trying to regulate the gangs here in Atlanta. Also, he's working on reducing the cost of medication, the health care. So based on that, I really like it. So I want to say something about this group because this group was interesting.

in that it had three Black women in it. I think the oldest person was 42 and the youngest was like 24. And something that happens in the focus groups, as you're looking for people who are kind of undecided at this point, now that you're sort of three weeks out from an election, you do get people who aren't

quite as plugged in. And so I would say this was a group of people who were on the younger side who were not following things super duper closely. And their reaction to Kemp was like, yeah, dude's doing a good job. He's fine. And so the fact that Kemp succeeded in spite of Trump's wrath is

Why do you think he's not taken more seriously as a national GOP figure? Like everyone's talking about DeSantis. DeSantis was also that's his big claim to fame is he was very good on COVID, according to voters in his state. Why don't people think of Kemp as like like somebody who could run in 2024 and win?

It's a good question. I would say, you know, he hasn't really done a lot of work building a national profile. And when I've tried to engage him on some of these questions, either about whether he has further ambitions, which most of the people around him tell me that one of the only times they've ever heard him curse is when somebody asks if he has any interest in running for president.

But he didn't tell me no. He just said, I've got to get reelected and that's all I'm focused on. And that was also his answer to any questions about whether Trump would or should run or would have his support in 2024, whether someone like DeSantis or Glenn Youngkin, who was just out there campaigning with him, should be the 24 candidate. So that's part of it is he has been so focused. And like you said, he has successfully conveyed to voters this impression that he is very focused on governing the state of Georgia, which...

Sounds simple, but it turns out that's really important to voters. And so the fact that he hasn't been out there a whole ton, you know, speaking at CPAC and trying to tell the rest of the country what a great job he's done in Georgia, I think that's been intentional. And I think it's been good for him politically, particularly since part of the case he's trying to prosecute

Against Stacey Abrams now is that she's sort of too much of a national candidate that he accuses her of, you know, wanting to run for president immediately and just wanting to sort of boost her brand. So, you know, the fact that he sort of conspicuously hasn't done a lot of that, I think, helps him make that case.

Well, let's talk about Stacey Abrams. As you say, back in 2018, she was sort of one of the breakout stars of that cycle. But then she lost. And, you know, she didn't exactly admit that she lost. It wasn't the same thing as what Trump did, obviously. She didn't tell anybody to storm the Capitol over it. But...

She did say that the election was rigged. So the people in our focus groups, they were OK with Abrams. But she seemed to have sort of two main problems. As you say, she's too big of a national star. And then just the benefits of incumbency for Kemp. They just like him. Let's listen to what they had to say about Stacey Abrams. I like Stacey Abrams because she's, you know, she's African-American. She's the woman.

But I feel like Kim has been making good decisions. So I might stick with him. We know Stacey Abrams is a female, an African-American female such as myself. So I always felt like some type of obligation to her. But really, I don't have a problem with Kim. She does seem like she's more commercial. But I do like that. It seems like she is for the people. But at the same time, it seems like it's so commercialized that I'm not sure she would be as effective.

As Kemp is already. I have seen more for Abrams as far as advertisements. Yeah, I like her too, but I think it's hard to find fault with what he's done. He's done a good job. I haven't seen much on advertisement, but I see the proof in the pudding. I got to tell you, I was surprised. There were three Black women in this group and none of them were going to vote for Stacey Abrams. Like it was a clean sweep across this group for Kemp. Were you surprised to see that?

A little bit. But, you know, I thought it was also interesting that they all had a pretty positive impression of her. Black, white and everybody else in the group, because it's been a very negative campaign. If you've been paying attention, which, you know, undecided voters, maybe not so much. You know, both of these candidates have been going after each other very hard and the airwaves have been absolutely saturated with ads, many of them very negative. And yet they basically had

a positive impression of both candidates and just felt like no reason to switch courses mainstream if, you know, Kemp hasn't done anything to piss people off. But there's also this sort of fascinating irony, right? This is now the second Georgia gubernatorial election in a row that has, if not centered on, at least had a very important theme about elections.

the election process itself, whether it was, you know, Stacey Abrams criticizing Kemp's work as Secretary of State, the voter purges that he employed, the actions he took prior to the 2018 election that were very controversial. And then, as you said, her refusal to concede based on her view that the election was tainted by those actions. And then, you know, fast forward four years later, once again, we are having an election, one of whose significant themes

is election integrity and who really won an election that was called for a certain candidate.

So they just seem to be continuing to have this debate in sort of an endless loop about how to run elections. But, you know, for these voters, number one, they don't see anything that Kemp's done to alienate them or make them feel like a change is necessary. His pitch is very much the status quo is good. The status quo is working. Things are going well in Georgia. The economy is good. We don't need to change. And she is obviously trying to see the incumbent. She's the change candidate, obviously.

And that has just been a hard case to make when people are pretty happy with him and they see him as independent because of how he stood up to Trump. It's a really interesting point about the fact that the elections are like central again. But I guess is it fair to say that like the moral high ground in some ways has been reversed? Because like the first time, right, the accusations were all at Kemp.

because for like not running things cleanly, purging voter rolls. And Stacey Abrams was really to use that to be on offense. But now you're in a situation where like when she didn't concede the last election, she was doing it to raise a point about voter suppression and those issues. But to have then a couple of years later, the whole like charge of anti-democratic act

activity at the Republicans is over refusal to concede an election. And again, not the same in terms of at all degree, but like Kemp was one of the people who stood up and did sign and certify the election in that moment.

Well, I do think someone in this focus group mentioned the voter purges. It was one of the things that they knew about Kemp from before. At least it was mentioned in passing. But yeah, I mean, at the very least, it makes it a little bit harder for Abrams to prosecute this case against Kemp that he's a racist voter suppressor, which is very much a part of the case that she wants to make. But it's harder when he can say that he's been independent. Look, Abrams and plenty of other Democrats have

nationally and in Georgia, see the quote unquote election integrity law that Kemp and the Republican legislature passed last year, which was the source of so much controversy. But it's become a much harder case to make now that he can point to having safeguarded the 2020 election when the going really did get tough and he stood up. And the other part of it is, you know, with political candidates

it helps to have a consistent image, right? Where everything you do sort of feeds into an idea that people have about you. And Kemp is someone who has stood his ground

Whether you're talking about on the election, standing up to Trump, whether you're talking about COVID, you know, that's really the core of his reelection message is remember how much crap I took for keeping the state open back in 2020. In retrospect, that looks like a good decision to a lot of people. People are grateful that he kept the schools open. People are grateful that he allowed businesses to open permanently.

earlier than any other state. And that's another thing he can point to and say, I took a huge amount of criticism for this, but in retrospect, aren't you glad I stood my ground? And I think it's similar with the election law, where there was this massive controversy and the baseball all-star game was moved and all of these corporations said they were going to boycott the state. And once again,

Brian Kemp dug in, did not give an inch and did not go back on the thing he decided to do. So whether you see that as stubbornness or sort of admirably standing his ground, he has this consistent image of being someone who's able to take decisive action and then stick with it.

Yeah. And you have to sort of be like pretty deep, I think, inside of the voting issues to like have a strong point of view on that bill. And I think for the average voter, it did more to help him look like he took, you know, election integrity seriously and kind of shore him up with that group than it did hurt him with kind of independent voters. I do have a last question about Stacey Abrams, though.

She was this breakout star, but like, what does she do now? Like if she loses a second time, she's clearly got some real political talent. She's very good, you know, when she's on TV and she's great to listen to. The Democrats want her to be a national figure, but how do you roll into like national figurehood after losing twice?

Yeah, it's tough. You know, and I think a lot of red state Democrats have this problem, right? Whether you're Pete Buttigieg or Beto O'Rourke or one of the Castro brothers, right? You're a star Democrat in a red state, which means...

It's very, very, very, very, very difficult to get elected statewide. So what do you do in that situation when, you know, there sort of isn't any upward mobility for you politically? And that's the situation she finds herself in. I don't think there's any question that she's going to stay on the national stage and continue to be a Democratic star. She's a very compelling speaker, very compelling candidate. She clearly has the power to communicate with voters in a way that a lot of other candidates just do not have.

But, you know, she certainly isn't talking about it now, right, because she wants to win the governorship. But I have no idea what she'll do. Will she give speeches and write books? Will she try to serve in the administration and, you know, continue up the political ladder that way? I really don't know. But I think there's very little chance that she goes away. And, you know, in the interim between her two gubernatorial elections, she's

what she's been doing in addition to just being a star or whatever, is that she has done a lot of work on voting rights and on these democracy issues that have become so hot and so important right now. So I would expect that she would also continue with that work. She gets more credit than anybody for the turnout apparatus she helped build that led Georgia to pick up those two Senate seats. But

I don't know, maybe she goes and runs the DNC or something like that. Like there's going to be a lot of energy around her as a strategist, like as a person who is helping the Democratic Party with its turnout. So, yeah, no way she just fades. But it will be interesting to see what she does next. Or maybe, you know, maybe she'll shock us all and win. But that is not what it sounded like from this group. So let's turn to the Senate race.

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