Republican challengers gang up on Kemp in final gubernatorial primary debate
Four Republican gubernatorial candidates played tag team Sunday night, May 1, attacking incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp for failing to back efforts to overturn the 2020 president election, being soft on crime and letting schools close during the pandemic.
Three lesser-known candidates — Catherine Davis, Kandiss Taylor and Tom Williams — joined former U.S. Sen. David Perdue in going after Kemp in the final televised debate of the Republican primary campaign, leveling many of the same charges Perdue made during the first two debates.
Perdue blamed Kemp for putting Democrat Joe Biden in the White House by refusing to go along with the then-president’s attempts to reverse Biden’s victory in Georgia.
“He let it happen,” Perdue said. “He denied it happened. He’s covering it up.”
Kemp said local election officials, the secretary of state and the State Election Board had jurisdiction over the 2020 elections — not the governor. However, he said legislation he pushed through the General Assembly last year and this year should go a long way toward preventing future election shenanigans by putting new restrictions on absentee ballots and giving the Georgia Bureau of Investigation the authority to investigate allegations of election fraud.
“We’ve tied photo IDS to absentee ballots,” he said. “We’ve secured drop boxes.”
Davis said the police departments in Atlanta, Columbus and Macon are understaffed.
“We should deploy the National Guard to assist our police forces,” she said.
Kemp said when the 41 new state troopers who graduated from the academy on Friday, April 29, get out into the field, the Georgia State Patrol will have the same number of troopers as when he took office.
Taylor, an educator, criticized Kemp’s response to the pandemic’s impact on Georgia schools.
“The schools shouldn’t have been shut for as long as they were,” she said.