Trump rallies base for Kemp in Georgia
MACON, Ga. – President Donald Trump stumped in middle Georgia in hopes of firing up his supporters just two days ahead of Tuesday’s midterms, which features a tight race to name Georgia’s next governor.
A spirited crowd filled a hangar on Sunday afternoon at the Middle Georgia Regional Airport in Macon and spilled out onto the tarmac, with many supporters straining to catch a glimpse of the president.
Trump urged his supporters to flock to the voting booth on Tuesday and warned that, if they didn’t, Republican Brian Kemp’s opponent, Democrat Stacey Abrams, would turn “Georgia into Venezuela.”
Trump called Abrams “one of the most extreme far-left politicians in the entire country” and said she would raise taxes “very substantially” and support “a socialist takeover of health care.” Abrams, he said, would turn Georgia into a “giant sanctuary city for criminal aliens.”
“If Stacey Abrams gets in, your Second Amendment will be gone. Gone. Gone,” Trump said to a chorus of boos. “Stacey and her friends will get rid of it. You wouldn’t mind if somebody comes knocking, ‘Please, I’d like to have your guns turned over to government.’”
If she wins the hotly contested race, Abrams would be the nation’s first female back governor.
In about an hour-long speech, the president criticized the Democrats’ handling of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, repeatedly chided the media and commanded a migrant caravan from Central America to turn back.
“The way the Democrats treated him and us, you’ve got to get the polls on Tuesday and you’ve got to vote,” Trump said, referring to Kavanaugh. “The contrast in this election could not be more clear. Republicans produce jobs. Democrats produce mobs.”
Trump’s last-minute visit to Macon capped a star-studded week in Georgia that saw Oprah Winfrey and former President Barack Obama campaign in Atlanta for Abrams. Vice President Mike Pence also campaigned for Kemp in Dalton, Augusta and Savannah.
Kemp had been set to square off with Abrams on Sunday evening in what would have been the second and final televised debate. Instead, Kemp opted to campaign with Trump.
With no debate, Abrams headed for Augusta to meet with supporters there. Earlier in the day, she said during an interview on Meet the Press that she found Trump’s “assessments to be vapid and shallow” when asked about Trump calling her “unqualified” to be governor.
Kemp has not mentioned the president much on the campaign trail, sticking mostly to state issues. But elements of his campaign have mirrored Trump’s politics from the outset, with Kemp embarking on a “Putting Georgians First” bus tour.
And when he took the stage Sunday, Kemp quickly fired up the crowd with this: “I’ve got a question for you: Are you ready to build the wall?”
Kemp told the crowd that Trump’s endorsement in the Republican primary was like “pouring gasoline on a fire” just ahead of the runoff. Kemp won in a landslide then, and he said Sunday that he hopes Trump’s rally will similarly boost his campaign in the closing days of the general election.
But there was also a note of urgency in Kemp’s comments. New polls show a tight race with razor-thin margins.
“This is serious,” Kemp said. “Whatever it takes, we’ve got to get the vote out.”
“If you will spend the next few days in these precious hours that we have left rallying the troops, if you will work from sun up to sun down on Nov. 6, we can build a wall – a big, red, beautiful wall – around the state of Georgia to knock that blue wave down,” Kemp said to cheers.
Kemp’s reference to a wall sparked the crowd to chant “build that wall.”
Many of those who attended Sunday’s rally said they had already cast a ballot during an early voting period that drew more than 1.8 million people.
“I wanted to make sure that, if anything happened to me before the election, my vote got in,” said Gail Long of Molena in middle Georgia, who said she normally waits till Election Day to vote. “That’s how passionate I am.
“I just think – the last 15, 20 years – America’s in trouble, and I think Trump’s trying to get us out of that trouble,” said Long, who said she was distressed about taxes, gun control and illegal immigration.
Several people who were asked about reports of a tight race said they were not worried about a Kemp loss.
“I don’t ever believe the polls. I didn’t believe them when Trump won either,” said Christy Tumlin, a Paulding County resident who voted early, referring to polling that suggested a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016.
Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.
—