ATLANTA—After a close race four years ago that Democrats claimed was stolen, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, convincingly defeated Democrat rival Stacey Abrams in a rematch Tuesday.
Georgia voters gave Kemp a victory of 54% to Abrams’ 45% in unofficial results, with 84% of the vote counted. That’s a significant improvement on Kemp’s narrow win, 50.2% to 48.8%, during the Democrat wave election four years ago. Unlike then, this time Abrams conceded her defeat.
Abrams never conceded her loss to Kemp in 2018, claiming instead without evidence that a massive “voter suppression” effort prevented her from winning. Abrams did acknowledge that Kemp would be the next governor, but during public remarks she routinely claimed she won.
“I did vote for Kemp, because I cannot for a moment even comprehend the idea of Stacey Abrams as governor of Georgia,” Tia Severino, a resident of Tucker, told The Daily Signal after exiting a polling site Tuesday. “I’m from California. She has most of her support coming from Hollywood and Silicon Valley.”
Severino said she is an independent voter who voted twice for Democrat Barack Obama for the presidency.
“I think she would be terrible for Georgia,” Severino said of Abrams. “It is really interesting, for all we’ve heard since 2020 about election denialism, that nobody has said a word about Stacey Abrams running around refusing to concede the loss in 2018 to Kemp and saying the election was stolen from her.”
Abrams’ nonprofit group, Fair Fight Action, filed a federal lawsuit against Georgia alleging voter suppression in the 2018 race. However, earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Steven Jones, an appointee of President Barack Obama, threw out the Fair Fight Action case.
Mimi Obong, a voter from Norcross, said she thought Abrams would bring needed change.
“In the governor’s race, I voted for Abrams. I like the platform that she is standing on,” Obong told The Daily Signal after exiting the recreation center where she cast her ballot. “I want to see some change. I think we need change. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. We’ve done the same thing for a while. We haven’t gotten different results. So let’s try something different.”
During the campaign, Abrams frequently criticized Kemp for signing into law an election reform measure, Senate Bill 202, that extended voter ID requirements to absentee voting. She referred to the new law as “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Georgia voters, however, turned out in record numbers during early voting.
Kemp’s general election triumph over Abrams comes after a massive victory in May over former U.S. Sen. David Perdue in the Republican primary. Perdue had the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, while Kemp had the endorsement of former Vice President Mike Pence.
During the course of the campaign, Kemp and Abrams clashed on major issues such as abortion, gun control, and how to handle a state budget surplus.
Kemp signed a law to ban abortions at six weeks—when a heartbeat typically can be detected in an unborn child.
Abrams criticized the law and drew national attention when she said: “There is no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks. It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman’s body.”
“Kemp kept our state open during COVID-19,” Sheri Mitchell, a Gwinnett County voter, told The Daily Signal. “I don’t agree with him 100% of the time. I don’t agree with anyone 100% on everything. But I’m happy with his performance on education. He fought critical race theory in schools and kept our economy open.”
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