Primary election: Kemp and Raffensperger will win Georgia GOP primaries, CNN
The Trump-backed candidate in the Republican primary for Georgia attorney general, John Gordon, will also lose to incumbent Chris Carr, CNN projects.
The governor made no explicit mention of Trump in his victory speech Tuesday night.
“Even in the middle of a tough primary, conservatives across our state didn’t listen to the noise,” the governor said to a few hundred supporters at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta. “They didn’t get distracted; they knew our record of fighting and winning for hard-working Georgians.”
Kemp thanked Perdue, whom Trump had recruited to run against him, for a gracious concession call and his pledge to work together to keep the governor’s office in Republican hands.
“Everything I said about Brian Kemp was true, but here’s the other thing I said that’s true: He is a much better choice than Stacey Abrams and so we are going to get behind our governor,” Perdue said Tuesday night. “Let’s take a few hours, lick our wounds, and tomorrow morning, you are going to hear me going to work for Brian Kemp and making damn sure that Stacey Abrams is never governor of Georgia.”
Kemp devoted the majority of his victory speech to assailing Abrams.
“Tonight, the fight for the soul of our state is to make sure that Stacey Abrams will not be our next governor or next President,” Kemp said.
Former Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican, said the results of the gubernatorial primary show that Republican voters appreciate Kemp’s accomplishments in his first term and demonstrate the limits of Trump’s influence.
“Georgia Republicans have spoken about how they feel about Trump,” said Chambliss, who served two terms in the Senate.
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