‘we Have To Be A Big-tent Party’: Georgia’s Governor Sounds The Alarm On The Gop’s Purity Tests

AUGUSTA, Georgia — Hello, friends.

Was there any other lede for a dispatch from the Masters? Of course not.

The tournament is, as Jim Nantz says, a tradition unlike any other, and I had a sense that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was not going to miss his state’s signature spring event in his last year as governor.

The point of “On The Road” is to marry politics, food and place and, let me tell you, all three converge at Augusta National.

Well, not necessarily on the grounds of the course itself. The Masters is Mardi Gras for the quarter-zip set only with a lot more rules. So, unless I borrowed Nantz’s CBS blazer, they weren’t about to let us film on site.

Thankfully, though, the famous clubhouse concessions are largely portable.

So I sat down with Kemp Thursday over barbecue, pimento cheese and egg salad sandwiches that all held up well — the barbecue comes in a Chick-fil-A style sandwich bag — and peach ice cream sandwiches that held up well enough.

The governor was eager to wrap our conversation and get over to the club for day one. But he was even more eager to make the case for his preferred Senate candidate, Derek Dooley, and said he’d do everything possible to get Dooley into a runoff after the first round of primary voting next month.

You Senate watchers will recall that Kemp was perhaps the most prized 2026 recruit-who-got-away for Republicans. Had the popular, outgoing governor run against Sen. Jon Ossoff this year, his party would be in a much stronger position to retain the Senate in November.

President Donald Trump has to date stayed away from the intraparty contest, though, leaving a bit of a muddle. Trump may feel gun-shy because of the party’s well-documented, recent unpleasantness in Georgia Senate races.

Or, as Kemp put it to me: “We have been down the road where we didn’t have the right candidate and we got our ass kicked in the general election.”

For his part, all Kemp has done is win: Outside of Georgia, he’s best known for being one of the few Republicans who confronted a Trump-backed primary opponent and lived to tell about it (Yes, Kemp recited his exact margin from that 2022 whipping he delivered to David Perdue).

First elected to the State Senate from an Athens-area district in 2002, a watershed year for Georgia Republicans, he has served continuously in state government during a period of GOP dominance (Kemp is more Larry Munson Athens than Michael Stipe Athens).

It’s fitting that Kemp was first elected in George W. Bush’s initial midterm because he recalls the sort of center-right and business-friendly Republican that once flourished in governor’s races.

We also talked about the ICE raid on the Hyundai plant near Savannah, whether he’d find Ossoff or Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) more formidable were he a Democrat and the future of the GOP. “We cannot be a party of one or a party of one ideal,” he told me. Oh, and why feral hogs may help him sell electric trucks to Georgia’s good ole boys.

May he run for president in 2028? Kemp thinks there will be a robust primary — it’s already shaping up, he noted — no matter how much Trump attempts to execute a coronation. For now, as he repeated to the point of irritation, he’s focused on the midterms.

Partial excerpts of our discussion are below. You can watch the entire conversation on YouTube or listen to it as a podcast.

We should say up front that by way of confession, I’m not a golf guy. You’re more of a hunter than a golf guy.

Yeah, definitely, but I played a little bit of golf.

We want to be transparent with folks here going forward about our golf interests. But this is a cool tradition, though. I read today: 70 million bucks in merchandise revenue alone. That’s just the merch.

Well, I can tell you that my wife and children have been a big part of that. I have stood in line just about every year, especially in my term as governor. What’s really interesting about Augusta National and the Masters is just the quality of everything they do. They want to be the best.

And one of the cool things is the food here, and this wouldn’t be “On the Road” if we didn’t have a good spread. Apparently, they haven’t changed their prices for decades on some of this food. And they’re famous for their barbecue. They got the peach ice cream, pimento cheese sandwiches, and it’s like two bucks a pop, right?

Yeah. It’s unreal. If you’re on the course and you get to go into one of the concession stands, you’ll see the line, it’ll be people everywhere. And you’re thinking, man, it’s gonna take me an hour to get through this line. It literally takes five minutes. It’s a well-oiled machine.

Our friend Greg Bluestein over at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said that in your first seven years, you’ve rewritten Georgia’s abortion laws, expanded gun rights, cut taxes, engineered a Medicaid alternative and pushed through civil litigation overhaul — it’s a pretty sterling record on the right. Isn’t that the record of somebody that naturally would look at running for president at the end of their tenure?

I would say that my record is definitely conservative, but it’s also been dealing with the issues that people in our state wanted us to tackle. You’ve got to remember, I ran against Stacey Abrams where we were running to be governor in ’18 when it was an open seat, and she was for Medicaid expansion. None of this stuff has worked. We keep doing the same thing over and over again, it’s not working. So, we did something different. We got waivers that had work requirements and other things, which is now what the national model is. We were the first state in the country to do that. We had to sue [Joe] Biden to get it done after we got it approved in the Trump administration.

Some of the other things that we’ve done, like tort reform and civil litigation reform, that’s a big part of our business environment. You got people now pushing in other states to go, “Hey, y’all need to do what Georgia did.” I’ve tried to stay focused on what the kitchen table issues are in our state, and that’s what I’m gonna stay focused on because I still have nine more months left in office and we’ve got the midterm election.

But this is my point — I just rattled off the record, you articulated it yourself: The politics that you and I grew up in, that would be the obvious material for somebody. Big state, longstanding record, incredible campaigns in ’18 and ’22 and obviously a story to tell nationally. Wouldn’t that be a platform to then run for the next level?

I’ll let you and other people speculate on that.

Are you open to it?

I am focused on 2026. I’ve told a lot of Republicans out there that a midterm election with a Republican president is tough enough already, no matter who that president is, and we’d better stay focused on 2026. You look at what’s happened in our state. If you go back to the ’18 election, that was a good year for Democrats, and I barely won that race. If we don’t stay focused like we were back then — because it’s going to be very close to re-win our governor’s race in Georgia, to get back our U.S. Senate race. That is what we need to focus on. I’m not focused on anything other than that right now.

But you’re not ruling it out though, either.

You’re trying to paint me in a corner on this.

You’re right, I am. Get over here, c’mon man!

I’m not getting distracted and nor should any other Republicans. Even JD Vance is saying, “Hey, I’m not focused on 2028.” We all need to focus on 2026 to hold the House, hold the Senate. We want to get our Senate seat back in Georgia. I’m supporting Derek Dooley. I think he gives us our best chance to do that. We have to retain the governor’s office in Georgia, so I’m going to be focused on that.

Take Brian Kemp out of it for a minute. I’m not gonna press you anymore, even though I think you are open to it. But take Brian Kemp out of it for a minute.

You know Donald Trump a little bit. He doesn’t want to have a big, long primary that’s gonna take away attention from himself. He wants to do a coronation. He wants to decide what the ticket’s going to be in ’28. That’s why he always says, “Well, we got JD, we got Marco.” Doesn”t Trump wanna short circuit this thing and just create his own ticket in 2028?

I haven’t talked to the president about ’28. I don’t know how he’s thinking on ’28. You probably know better than I do on that.

You think we’ll have a primary in ’28 regardless?

Oh, for sure. I mean, you already got people — not me — but you got other people that’s already running for president in 2028.

Like who, Ted Cruz or Rand Paul?

All kinds of people are posturing and positioning, and you guys are writing every week about what the Democrats are doing. I’m just reading that going, “They’re getting distracted on what they should be focused on, which is 2026.” I’ll tell you, in politics, it has served me well to stay focused on the job I got and the immediate task at hand. When you try to start looking past and finagling out past that, good things do not happen when you do that.

But we’ll have a full-fledged primary in ’28 on your side? 

Well, I don’t know what we’ll have. I can’t really speculate on that, I think it’s way too early to even talk about that. I think after ’26 gets done, you’re immediately gonna start seeing people posturing and talking, and that’ll be fine. But for me, for what we’re facing in Georgia, we gotta stay focused on what we got going on right here. We can help the Republican cause around the country if we can win our Senate seat back, which is what I’m motivated to do.

There’s a big race this year to succeed you and also a high-profile Senate race. You’ve endorsed a guy named Derek Dooley in the Senate race. Will you campaign actively for Dooley and maybe even appear in some ads to try to get Dooley at least into the runoff here?

Yeah, well I already have done that.

Will you do more of that going forward?

Yeah, I think we start next week back out on the trail with him.

Why hasn’t he gotten more traction so far, do you think?

I think he’s getting a lot of traction. In the last public polling I’ve seen, and some private, he’s moved into second place, so it shows he is moving. He’s been very smart on the campaign side of things, of just holding their resources.

Look, there’s been $80 million spent in the governor’s race already because you’ve got three self-funders. So it’s sucked a lot of the oxygen out of every other race, whether it’s the lieutenant governor’s race, attorney general, secretary of state, certainly the U.S. Senate race. And so I think just now people are starting to pay attention, but I really feel good where he is.

I can just tell you, being on the ground with him, he’s exactly what we need. People are seeing that. You can see them connecting with this political outsider that wants to bring a new dynamic to Washington, D.C., that’s a problem solver. He’s supporting term limits. He’s not gonna take pay during the government shutdown. He’s not gonna trade stocks and crypto.

Have you encouraged President Trump to endorse him?

Well, I’ve talked to President Trump a lot about this race, trying to build a consensus around one person, which we were never able to do. Not just because of him, but I think a lot of the other political leaders didn’t want to engage like some of them had done in the last cycle. But yeah, I’ve talked to him. I told him what I thought about the candidates in the race and why I thought Derek was our best chance of beating Jon Ossoff.

What’d he say?

Well, he met with Derek. They had a great meeting. I think he likes him a lot. I don’t wanna speak for the president, but I’ve had great conversations with him, also with the team. I think they’ve appreciated how forthright I’ve been. And I’ve told them, I said, look, I’m just being completely honest with you about the way I feel about the race, because I want to win. We’ve messed up two prior Senate races, really three. So this is an opportunity for us to get one of our seats back to help hold the majority in the Senate, which is very important to the president. And I’m committed to doing that. And I feel very strongly that Derek is the best candidate to do that.

That’s why he’s got trepidation, by the way. He’s gotten burned before on these Senate races down here, right?

Well, I think he’s got a lot of his eggs in the Burt Jones basket, too, in the governor’s race. So he’s already engaged there. He endorsed Clay Fuller, who won in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat. I appointed Clay to be district attorney up there. He is a great guy. He’s going to be a great congressman. I think it was great that the president supported him

You mentioned this is going to be a tough cycle. Every midterm is tough for the party in power, and boy, this one looks like it’s going to be a load for you guys.

You mentioned the special election in MTG’s seat. I was looking at the returns, and it’s obviously a deep-red North Georgia district. But some of those counties — for example, the county where Rome is — this is Trump country. He carried that county by 41 points two years ago. The Republican running only carried it by 12. That’s a pretty big gap. Does that worry you?

That race doesn’t worry me as much as some of them in the past that we’ve seen — some of the legislative seats and other places. I mean, special elections, Democrats have been overperforming in the state.

Well, they have the energy now, though, right? How do you overcome that?

Well, they got the energy. They’ve been overperforming. Also, it’s spring break here, so I think a lot of the Republican base was just gone, didn’t vote, whatever. Not motivated. Clay’s gonna win. It’s a heavy Republican district. So I try not to read too much into that.

But also, I’m not sticking my hand in saying, “Hey, everything’s going to be great in November.” This is going to be a tough cycle for us. We’ve got to have candidates that really stay focused on the issues that people care about. It’s why also, I think we need something different at the top of the ticket to help...

For Senate?

Just for the whole Republican ticket in Georgia. I think we need something different at the top of the ticket: a political outsider that’s a happy warrior. That’s kind of a new breed. A Republican bringing a new dynamic, new vigor, new energy. And I think Derek’s gonna provide that for people.

Well, speaking of that, there’s an upstart candidate [billionaire Rick Jackson] in the governor’s race.

Well, you see how that plays. Of course, having $50 million can help you bring new energy.

You mentioned President Trump endorsing Burt Jones. Is that a race where you think money could actually trump Trump’s endorsement?

Well, I think the amount of money he’s talking about spending — it’ll depend on where Burt spends and kind of how things play out. A lot of people ask me about that race right now, and I’m just like, you just got to let that thing play out.

Is it going to be a runoff?

I would think so. We’ll see how that plays out.

Do you have a preference?

I have a great working relationship with the lieutenant governor [Jones]. We’ve really had a great team with him and Georgia Speaker of the House Jon Burns. Rick Jackson’s been a good supporter of mine.

He’s a donor. 

Yeah, he’s a donor. He’s got a great story. I’ve kind of felt like, for really two years now, that that race and the Senate race were ripe for political outsiders, especially somebody that could sell fun.

But it’s fair to say that whoever emerges, whether it’s Dooley or somebody else in that Senate race, they’re the underdog against Jon Ossoff this cycle.

Yeah. We want to run as the underdog. We need to be running like we’re 10 points behind.

But isn’t that incredible, though, that in Georgia the incumbent Democrat is the favorite to win a Senate race? What’s happened here you think?

He’s an incumbent senator that’s raised a lot of money. He’s gonna have the Democratic billionaires…

But it’s Georgia!

Yeah, I know. But Georgia’s a tough state. I mean, it’s a generic 52:48.

So, this is barely a red state.

Yeah. I mean, you have good candidates, good operation, good message — you can beat a Stacey Abrams who raised more money than I did by probably $25 or $50 million. But we beat her by seven points. The power of incumbency was important.

Which of those two do you think, by the way, has presidential timber on their side? Because you know both of them well: Sen. Raphael Warnock or Sen. Jon Ossoff?

Oh man. I’d probably say Warnock, but Ossoff would be probably the liberals’ choice. The problem Ossoff has got and the reason that I think this seat’s winnable is [because] he voted 98 percent of the time with Joe Biden, and not just Joe Biden, but Joe Biden’s people who were just pulling him so far to the left. I don’t even think that was the real Joe Biden, and that’s not where Georgia is.

Let’s say that it’s [Josh] Shapiro or [Gavin] Newsom or [JB] Pritzker on top of the ticket, and they pick Raphael Warnock as their running mate — he’s the VP. You get phone calls from some of your buddies in Washington, and they say “Governor Kemp, should we be worried about Warnock being on the ticket?” What do you say?

As a VP? I wouldn’t really think that’d matter too much, especially if you got Newsom or Pritzker on there. Them defending their record…

It wouldn’t matter as much.

No.

You think Warnock on top of the ticket could be a pretty strong candidate for them, huh?

Well, I think Warnock would excite a lot of people in the Democratic primary. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I’m also not very worried about that. I’m not worried about Warnock. I’m worried about beating Ossoff, and right now we’re worrying about beating Warnock in 2028.

Two final things for you, governor, and I’ll let you get over to the course. A few months ago, when the feds raided the Hyundai plant over near Savannah, what was your reaction, and what did you tell President Trump about that?

What was my reaction? I was like, “What the hell?” I wasn’t completely surprised that they were checking the construction site because you always get a lot of complaints of foreign workers taking the locals’ jobs and that kind of thing. That’s not just in Georgia, that happens all over.

There were some of those people on that site that were there illegally. Not many people talked about that, and it was on the LG facility, not on Hyundai. Hyundai’s the parent for the overarching site, and this is basically a joint venture they have for the battery plant, but it was actually LG’s facility. But the Koreans that were working there kind of got caught up in all of this, and it was just a mess, quite honestly, and the president knew that too. I give him, the Department of State and his team a lot of credit for helping us smooth that over and get things righted and back on track. Because we do need those workers, and the president really understands that.

How fast did you call them?

We were talking to them pretty quick. You know, there’s a certain amount of these workers that we do need that are doing specialized things for a very short period of time.

I talked to [the president] about a 90-day visa idea, manufacturing visa, because the Koreans that were over there, they were setting up equipment, they were calibrating equipment, or they were training somebody how to run equipment that would be Americans, that would be having those jobs after the plant opens up, and then these people go back home. They are not there permanently. They’re there for three months, maybe.

MTG has just said on television that the results in her former seat are a big warning sign about the challenges that your party faces statewide going forward this fall. Is she right about that?

I think everybody knows what we’re facing going into the midterms. I told Clay Fuller, I congratulated, I said, “Keep chopping.” This is not over. You gotta run again and win another primary. You cannot take anything for granted in this environment. He knows that. I kinda like the position that we’re in because everybody’s basically saying we don’t have a chance, and we do.

Last thing, and we’ll end with this. If you look at the primaries here, you are one of the most popular figures in your party in the history of this state, not just currently. But these guys aren’t talking about Brian Kemp, they’re talking about Donald Trump in every damn commercial. It’s more of a persona than a policy thing right now, fair enough to say?

I also would say that if you look at all those candidates, I’m not sure how many of them have run statewide yet.

But here’s my question, though: When the Supreme Court last month issued its ruling on the president’s tariff power, basically empowering Article I, empowering Congress to have a say, do you think that was a good day for the cause of conservatism in your party going forward?

I was in the room when the president got the news about that.

What was the reaction? He was thrilled, wasn’t he?

He was actually pretty funny because he answered a couple of questions, and he said, “I have to go, I know you can’t tell it, but I’m seething right now. I got to go talk to the media.” But he kind of laughed about that. But, they already had a plan for how they were gonna deal with that. The president, it’s obvious he believes in tariffs.

You don’t, though. You’re a free market guy.

I am, but I also have my own opinion on things. But I also do think a lot of things the president’s done — he needed to upset the way world trade was working, and he’s the first person really that called China out and has reset the trade. It’s been a lot better than a lot of people thought it was going to be. It’s what people have to deal with, and that’s what business is good at. They’re good at dealing with something as long as they know what it is, and you’re not moving the needle every day. So I think we have to give people consistency.

But regardless, I think for Republicans, we cannot be a party of one or a party of one ideal. We have to be a big-tent party. I think there are a lot of folks that get shortsighted and go, “You weren’t with the president on this one issue, or you weren’t with whoever on this one issue,” and we gotta give people a little grace. The Democrats are good at doing that. People have different principles. I can disagree with somebody as long as I know that they’re disagreeing on principle, and then we’ll move on and work together on the next issue.

No purity test?

We cannot afford to do that. If the Democrats get back complete control, it’s going to be a bad day for our country. That’s what Republicans need to stay focused on — to hold the House and hold the Senate. That’s what we need to stay focused on in Georgia and make sure we win the governor’s race and get our Senate seat.

The reason that Biden and Trump have governed by executive orders is because there’s been dysfunction in the legislative process up there, and until Congress sits down and says, “Hey, we’re going to tackle and solve these problems,” that’s what the president’s going to keep doing.