Brian Kemp

And once that countdown is over, that's it, right? You don't have a chance to make another phone call, knock another door, and so you have to leave it all out in the line.

For Stacey Abrams' campaign in particular, at the time, we were running against Brian Kemp, who was the Secretary of State in Georgia.

And the Secretary of State gets to determine election rules, election law, and election administration.

And so you had this bizarre conflict of interest.

When you talk to Rick Jackson's campaign, they are talking about 2022 voters, 2020 voters.

They are looking at what worked, especially for Brian Kemp.

How did he have a seven point win in a state that is a pure battleground? How did he do that? Which voters came out for him? Why did those voters come out? Why did some Democrats support Brian Kemp and Brad Ravensburger for that matter? So what can they do to get those same voters out to the polls? When you talk to when I talk to Josh McCoon, he's not talking about 2022.

He's talking about either 2018.

Brian Kemp won by just about 50,000 votes.

He's also talking about 2024.

He is looking at the race that he was a part of the GOP leadership.

So you wrote something that's getting a lot of chatter and I'm sure a lot of feedback from readers.

And so you shouldn't think about it as like, a huge advantage or something and that's the reason we you know have these other categories that we think are maybe easier for people to sort of swallow to begin with like toss up and lean and likely um but let's start uh with let's go back to georgia because i think georgia is maybe the biggest race and there are a lot of questions i think about about you know is keisha lance bottoms actually able to to win the governorship in georgia georgia obviously has become kind of a critical swing state she's facing rick jackson who won a highly contested republican primary and primary runoff and and has a lot of money uh but you know right now um we we this is kind of narrowly in our lean d category because bottoms has a 63 chance of winning And this seat would have all kinds of ramifications, I think, for things like I mentioned redistricting.

It's like if you get into a situation where Republicans, for some reason, are not able to redistrict the state, which under Brian Kemp, the current governor, I think it sounds like they're probably going to try to have a special session after the election, like in the lame duck period.

But, you know, things happen.

Maybe they're not able to put it all together.

I would say that, A, it's a very good national environment for Democrats.

It looks like right.

B, Brian Kemp is term limited and can't run.

Once again, Brian Kim is a very, very popular governor within Georgia.

If he's at 52 or 53, Paxton doesn't win.

That's my analysis, but it's my analysis based on how Herschel Walker underperformed Brian Kemp, how the AG candidate in Virginia, when Virginia governor – remember, we had an AG candidate who ended up winning.

He was the guy

threatening his techs.

And so you do have that tightrope walking.

Um, uh, I am based in Atlanta, and in 2022, you had this same thing where Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said, "Look at how great the economy is because of what I did as governor." And in a Senate race there, you had Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee, say, "Look at how bad the economy is-

Mm

... because of Democrats." And people sitting at their kitchen tables in Georgia said, "You know what? The economy's great.

Brian Kemp, I believe you." And it was a little bit harder sell.

Well, Biden did the same thing.

I mean, we knew that the markets were going up, and we knew from a macroeconomic standpoint in the global context, we were doing better than other nations, but people weren't feeling it, and he was saying, "We're doing fine." So that also wasn't resonating.

One more on that, and then we'll let Tia close it out.

But Congressman, do you feel like, at least in state races, those issues are taking up less space? Because I'm looking at the race for governor, and I'm not hearing even Republican Rick Jackson talking about the culture war issues, whether it be transgender restrictions, whether it be guns, abortion, that we heard four, eight years ago from Brian Kemp, and certainly we heard from Nathan Deal and Sonny Perdue during their campaigns.

Well, I'm not running for governor.

I