THOMASVILLE — Before a nearly capacity crowd Tuesday night at the Exchange Club Fairgrounds, Gov. Brian Kemp said he’s the best candidate to stop Stacey Abrams. 

The Thomas County Republican Party hosted a meet-and-greet for a number of Republicans seeking local, state and federal offices

And Kemp laid out the battle plans — and battle lines — for the upcoming primary and general election.

“We are in a fight for the soul of our state,” he said. “My family and I are getting up every day to make sure Stacey Abrams is not your governor or your next president.”

Kemp defeated Abrams in 2018 in the general election. Abrams announced her decision to run again late last year.  

Kemp faces a primary challenge, most notably from former U.S. Sen. David Perdue, who carries the backing of former President Donald Trump. Trump has assailed Kemp — and incumbent Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — since the 2020 election. Trump lost the state by about 14,000 votes. 

Kandiss Taylor, Catherine Davis and Tom Williams also are challenging Kemp for the GOP nod to face the likely Democrat nominee, Abrams, in November. 

Kemp defended his record as governor, particularly how he and the state handled the COVID-19 pandemic. Kemp said during a fundraiser before Tuesday night’s event, he had a business owner tell him that while Tallahassee, Florida was shut down, and Georgia was open for business, that enterprise thrived.

“I was just doing what I told Georgians I would do when I was campaigning,” Kemp said. “I was listening to our people and giving people an opportunity to fight another day.”

Kemp also delved into his own struggles with his businesses years ago and the lessons he learned from those travails.

“We kept fighting and kept grinding and came out on the other side of it,” he said. “I felt Georgians were in the same boat I had been in many times and that’s not a good feeling. I’ve been through it a lot. That’s why I reopened.”

The national news media and Abrams assailed his decisions to reopen the state, Kemp pointed out.

“She did the same thing when we pushed to get our kids back into the classrooms,” he said.

The data, Kemp countered, showed that children need to be in the classroom. 

”We worked with our educators, we worked with our superintendents, we gave them PPE, we gave them cleaning supplies. They criticized that.”

Kemp also said that other governors, given the power to shut down their states, allowed casinos to open but kept churches closed.  

“We never wavered under the pressure from Stacey Abrams and the national media,” he said. “It should be no surprise we didn’t waver.”

Kemp also said the Heartbeat bill, which passed the General Assembly in 2019, came under attack from the entertainment industry — and Georgia has become a hub for movie and television productions. The bill, which for the most part banned abortions after six weeks, was struck down by a federal judge in 2020.

A further federal judicial review of the law is on hold until the Supreme Court decides on a case involving Mississippi’s law.

Kemp also noted the efforts of voting rights activists pressuring Major League Baseball to pull the All-Star Game from Truist Park in Cobb County last year over a new voting integrity measure. The All-Star Game eventually was played in Denver, Colorado. 

SB 202 was passed and signed into law last year. 

“Hollywood tried to cancel us and I didn’t waver then,” Kemp said. “I didn’t waver when we reopened the economy. And I didn’t waver when we passed the strongest elections integrity act in the country. Even when big corporations, Georgia corporations, and Major League Baseball tried to pressure me. I didn’t bend, because we had a bill that makes it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

Kemp said the state’s lawmakers needed to weigh in on how the 2020 election was carried out.

“It was proper we dealt with drop boxes and made sure they were secure in the future,” he said. “It was proper we tied the voter ID to absentee ballots to make sure we have a secure process for voting by mail in the future. It was proper that we banned ZuckerBucks (political action donations from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg) from coming in from outside our state.”

Though the Braves did not host the All-Star Game in 2021 as had been planned, the Braves weren’t denied hosting the World Series, which they won. Kemp called it “poetic justice.”

He also extolled Georgia’s longstanding ranking as the No. 1 state in the nation in which to do business. The state’s unemployment is the lowest in its history, he boasted, and the number of people in the workforce is the most since 9/11. 

“Our state is flourishing,” he said. 

Last year was a record year for the state in economic development announcements, Kemp said, with 379 projects last fiscal year. 

“I said I would run and strengthen rural Georgia — 74% of those projects were outside the 10 metro counties,” he said. “Half the jobs that came with them were outside the 10 metro counties. We know people need opportunities no matter what their zip code is.”

Kemp also said the state’s income tax cut will result in $250 back to individual tax filers and $500 to family filers. 

“We are sending an unprecedented $1 billion back to taxpayers,” he said. “We just didn’t take your money and spend all of it. That’s going to help you offset the 40-year-high Biden inflation we’ve got right now. Make no mistake — it started long before the war in Ukraine.”

Kemp signed into law Monday a bill that grants tax exemptions to the state’s veterans. There are almost 630,000 veterans living in Georgia, according to veteransdata.info.

Under the law, named after the late state senator and Air National Guard officer Jack Hill, those veterans under age 62 will have a tax exemption on their military retirement income. 

“It is going to encourage our veterans to stay here and it is going to help with our workforce,” Kemp said. 

Kemp also applauded passage of bills that will block the teaching of critical race theory and restrict transgender athletes from competing in girls’ high school sports. 

“We are going to make sure our kids are not going to get indoctrinated in our schools,” he said. “We are going to protect our children from obscene material and we passed a bill that is going to bring fairness to girls sports. 

“There are a lot of people in the national and Atlanta media and the headlines phrase it a different way — make no mistake, all we’re doing is bringing fairness to girls sports.”

Kemp also said the Atlanta news media had questioned him on the prevalence of street gangs in the state capital. But he said the work done by Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds, state Attorney General Chris Carr and others in cracking down on crime has paid dividends.

“In one year alone, we have arrested over 450 people who had outstanding warrants in our capital city, 26 of them for murder,” he said. 

Those efforts also will help stem the tide of human trafficking, Kemp said.

“We’re building a new receiving center for victims of that horrible crime,” he said. “We need more beds, which is a tragic thing to even say. But it’s a fact.”

While Kemp did not address his most notable challenge, Perdue, by name, he did offer his support for the Georgia State Patrol. Perdue has taken flack for saying the GSP was “no longer elite.”

“And I don’t care what anybody says, our State Patrol is elite, along with every other law enforcement officer,” he said.  

Kemp, who had been secretary of state before winning the governor’s seat in 2018, has amassed a war chest of close to $13 million. He told the crowd he has held his campaign promises. He reiterated his stance he is best qualified to take on Abrams in November. 

“We’re doing what I told you I would do — put hard-working Georgians first ahead of the status quo and the politically correct,” he said.