Thompson: Gubernatorial election observations

But 39 is not 50, plus one, and the extra two months added to the race proved politically devastating for Cagle, who lost the July 24 runoff by almost 40 percentage points to Secretary of State Brian Kemp who garnered 69.45 percent of the vote.

A look at vote totals shows Cagle lost almost exactly 58,000 votes — down from 236,987 in May to 178,950 last week, while Kemp’s support level skyrocketed from 155,189 to 406,859. Those results were reflected in Barrow County, as Cagle plummeted from 1,731 to 1,129 while Kemp shot from 1,706 to 4,492, earning just under 80 percent of the vote here.

Kemp had some boosts along the way by getting endorsements from former also-rans Hunter Hill and Clay Tippins, but by the end of the race, it was clear Cagle had a substantial trust problem with Republican voters around the state. He was irreversibly damaged by the surfacing of secret recordings in which he said he backed “bad public policy” for political gain and said the GOP primary had become a contest of “who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck and who could be the craziest.”

That’s probably the truest thing the lieutenant governor said throughout the whole process. Primaries on both sides have for too long been all about partisan purity. In this case, with little substantive ideological differences, the race between Cagle and Kemp had become, by the end, a battle of who would be a more loyal friend to the NRA, who could use the most demonizing language about immigrants and who had the least bit of shady business deals in their past. The last debate that aired between the candidates a week before the runoff was all about who was the least trustworthy. Seldom did we hear about a vision for how we grow our state’s economy, how we improve our school systems without abandoning public education, how we address issues of health care access and poverty in rural Georgia, and so on.

Yes, Cagle was right. This primary went way off the rails. But when audio evidence of him saying so was presented, he ran away from it. He didn’t own it and he proved he was more than willing to participate in the verbal shoving match. That shows a lack of sincerity.

On the other hand, Kemp was unapologetic. If you wanted a politically incorrect conservative, that was him. His biggest controversy was his television commercials, which turned out to be a massive hit with conservatives and his advantage. And the final nail came when President Trump weighed in and publicly endorsed Kemp, which completely overshadowed outgoing Gov. Nathan Deal’s backing of Cagle and showed that the president remains exceptionally popular with his base.

ON TO NOVEMBER

And so that sets us up for November’s general election, a contest between two starkly different candidates in Kemp and longtime rival Democrat Stacey Abrams. The race carries plenty of national implications, both for this year and in 2020.

This year’s midterms are seen as a referendum on President Trump, and Georgia Democrats are hopeful that any potential “blue wave” will pave the way for an Abrams upset. I’m not so sure of either of those happening, but Georgia’s demographics are changing, the state is beginning to trend toward purple battleground status and if Abrams keeps it close, Georgia will have a much larger spotlight on it come the next presidential election.

It will be interesting to see how Kemp approaches the general election; whether he ditches the deportation truck for more talk about growing small business and the advantages/disadvantages of opening the state’s pocketbook to Amazon; and if increasingly bad headlines for Trump lead to a distancing of sorts.

One thing we definitely can expect is ample comparisons from Kemp — and maybe “Jake” in the commercials — between Abrams and Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. That strategy worked like gold for the GOP and Karen Handel against Jon Ossoff in last year’s Sixth Congressional District special election.

Abrams, though, doesn’t appear to be running away from the label. Rather than run a more moderate campaign in the mold of Jason Carter, she is aiming to rally the base to the polls and promote a more progressive/liberal vision for the state toward other voters. The big national money is flowing in, prospective hard-left 2020 candidates like Sen. Kamala Harris are coming to Georgia to offer their support, and Abrams seems content with that.

Abrams’ candidacy is a historical one at a pivotal time in our country’s history. There have been very few black governors and there has never been a black female governor elected. Is Georgia, even with its changing demographics, really going to become the first state to do that in 2018 — especially one as liberal as Abrams and especially when it hasn’t voted for a Democrat for governor since Roy Barnes in 1998, hasn’t had a Democratic senator since Zell Miller in 2005 and hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since Max Cleland in 1996?

While she could win much of the suburban Atlanta vote, will Abrams’ candidacy resonate enough with voters in the state’s rural areas outside of the urban liberal bastions?

While the race may wind up “closer than the experts think,” I can’t see her pulling it off without some sort of massive scandal enveloping Kemp or a crippling blow to the Trump presidency that by extension takes Kemp and other Republicans down with him.

Until then, look out for plenty of “We don’t need another Trump as governor” commercials vs. more “Say no to Stacey Pelosi” sound bytes from Jake.

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Scott Thompson is editor of the Barrow News-Journal. He can be reached at sthompson@barrownewsjournal.com.