In one of the country’s most high-profile races for governor, Democrat Stacey Abrams is trying to end 16 years of GOP rule in Georgia, with Republican Brian Kemp in a position to affirm his party’s dominance. Both campaigns are bringing in the “big guns” (as one Peach State politico put it) in the final days of the campaign—Oprah Winfrey and Mike Pence are in Georgia Thursday to campaign for Abrams and Kemp, respectively. Barack Obama will appear at a rally with Abrams in Atlanta on Friday, while Donald Trump is coming back to the state to stump for Kemp on Sunday. For both parties, the result of Georgia governor’s race will be an indication of where this big, increasingly purple state goes in the coming years.
But Georgians may not have a final result after the polls close Tuesday, thanks largely to the presence of Libertarian party candidate Ted Metz. With Metz consistently pulling down just a couple of points of support, no poll of the race so far has either Kemp nor Abrams breaking 50 percent. State law requires the winner to receive a majority of the vote, and if neither does, the top two vote getters proceed to a runoff. That’s exactly where the polls and observers in Georgia see things going for Kemp and Abrams.
A Kemp campaign source, who insists the Republican will win on November 6, nonetheless says Kemp has the advantage in a runoff situation. “If there was a runoff, we would be favored to win. We have more voters who participate in run-offs than she does,” the source says.
The race gained national attention early after Abrams, an African-American former state legislator, won the Democratic primary and with it the opportunity to become the first black female governor in the country. Meanwhile, Kemp emerged from the Republican primary (in which he defeated establishment favorite Casey Cagle in a runoff) as an unabashed Trumpian populist. He ran ads calling himself a “politically incorrect conservative” and said things to demonstrate just that.
In recent weeks, a series of lawsuits and claims from Abrams and Democrats alleges that Kemp, the sitting secretary of state and thus Georgia’s chief elections officer, is engaging in racially biased voter suppression. Those allegations, which are largely unfair, have brought another former president into the discussion: former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, who amplified calls for Kemp to resign his current position.
Georgia is no stranger to high-profile runoff elections. In 2008, incumbent GOP Senator Saxby Chambliss was forced into a runoff with Democratic challenger Jim Martin, who had been buoyed by an increased black turnout with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket. Alaska governor Sarah Palin, not slowed by her loss on the GOP presidential ticket, campaigned for Chambliss and helped him win the runoff a few weeks later.
Given the national interest in Georgia governor’s race and the tight polls, voters there might expect to see even more “big guns” making their way to the state after Election Day.
