Secretary of State Brian Kemp talks with supporters at Monday's "Meet the Candidates Cookout" at the Burr Performing Arts Park in Dalton. Kemp faces Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle in the July 24 runoff for the Republican nomination for governor. 

DALTON, Ga. — Despite the glaring sun of an early evening in July, area Republicans gathered Monday night at the Burr Performing Arts Park in downtown Dalton for some political talk and some “nanner puddin’.”

Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is in a July 24 runoff for the GOP nomination for governor; Secretary of State candidate and former Alpharetta mayor David Belle Isle; and Public Service Commission incumbent Tricia Pridemore all worked the crowd and gave brief speeches during a “Meet the Candidates Cookout” hosted by the Whitfield County Republican Party and the Northwest Georgia Young Republicans.

Kemp faces Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle in the runoff, with Democrat Stacey Abrams awaiting the winner in the November general election. The stop in Dalton was part of the second day of a week-long bus tour around the state for Kemp, who is seeking to hit 37 counties in seven days. Earlier in the day, he made a campaign visit in Chatsworth at Spring Lakes Golf Club.

The Kemp and Cagle campaigns have been firing away at each other, with supporters of each candidate calling for criminal investigations of the other candidate. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that Kemp received donations from individuals with connections to licensees and companies regulated by the secretary of state’s office.

Kemp responded to the call for an investigation of him in a very Donald Trumpian way.

“Fake news,” he said with a smile. “Look, the guy (Cagle) is desperate. He has been down there as long as I have been married — 24 years. He’s throwing everything but the kitchen sink at us, but we are going to keep running on a positive message. You know, I am the guy in this race that you can trust. It’s clear that you can’t trust him. He made that pretty clear — real clear — on that tape where he’s willing to put politics ahead of good public policy and willing to put campaign donations ahead of good public policy. If that’s not illegal, it should be, and there is an investigation going on with him and so he is just throwing everything he can to see what sticks and nothing will because it is not true.”

According to the Associated Press, Cagle’s campaign was hit hard last month by the release of a secretly recorded conversation in which Cagle “said he backed what he called ‘bad public policy’ for political gain.” On Monday, Kemp released more of that conversation.

“In this 50-second piece, Cagle can be heard candidly discussing the GOP primary’s sharp turn to the right, saying the five-man race came down to ‘who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck and who could be the craziest,’” the AP reported.

Kemp has ridden what he called a “wave” of popularity thanks in part to his television advertising campaign that has received national attention, including one ad that features Kemp questioning a “suitor” for one of his daughters with a shotgun in his lap. 

“Great, great momentum,” Kemp said, noting the most recent statewide polls released by Atlanta media show the race to be even among likely Republican voters. “We have been riding a surge and a wave ever since May 22 when we got in the runoff,” he said. “The polls are tied — the last two polls — so it is ours to win now and we just have to get people to go out there and get it and help us get there and we are working hard to get there.”

Kemp has made several publicized and non-publicized visits to Whitfield and Murray counties since announcing his candidacy, and he said that has paid off.  

“You know, it is great to be in Dalton,” Kemp said. “We have worked this area hard. We are going to keep working northwest Georgia hard. We have got a lot of representation up here from legislative leaders like Steve Tarvin (R-Chickamauga) and other people like Jason Ridley (R-Chatsworth) from this area and they are working hard for us. We are going to keep getting votes and win this thing.”

In the primary, Kemp finished third in Whitfield County with 18.7 percent of the vote, while Cagle was first with 30.9 percent. Hunter Hill, who finished third in the statewide primary, was second with 29.7 percent. Hill, a former state senator from Smyrna, has a connection to Dalton. His mother, Dicksie McCutchen Hill, is from Dalton, and he is the grandnephew of Jack Bandy, one of the co-founders of Coronet Industries.