Republicans Are Mad Brian Kemp Is Standing by His Georgia Senate Endorsement

Heading into the midterms, Republicans thought Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was their best chance to beat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.

But Kemp declined to run, and is now, much to the befuddlement of national Republicans, supporting a candidate who is in a distant third and could likely force the GOP primary into an expensive runoff.

After Kemp decided last year against a Senate run, he ventured out to Trump National Golf Club in Virginia for a meeting with President Donald Trump.

The two reached an agreement to work together — along with the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund — and find the right candidate to take on Ossoff the following November, as NOTUS previously reported.

That didn’t happen, and as the likelihood of a runoff increases, the White House and Republicans are miffed that Kemp endorsed and continues to support former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley.

Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican from Georgia, told NOTUS that the race is “definitely going into a runoff” because he doubts one of the three candidates will win the more than 50% necessary to avoid one.

Clyde expressed annoyance with Kemp but said he wanted to “reserve his comments” when asked if he’s disappointed with how the race is playing out.

“As I understand, there was an agreement between the president and Kemp that they would come up with a candidate that both of them agreed to, and that never happened,” Cylde said.

When Dooley met with the White House and Senate Republicans’ campaign arms about his run, he left a favorable impression on those he met with, sources familiar with the meetings told NOTUS. But, because Kemp pushed Dooley without the express backing of Trump, it didn’t do Dooley any favors.

“You don’t get to go past the Trump team and then turn around and come back to them and say, ‘Hey, can I have your endorsement now?’ Right? It was a strategic mistake,” one Georgia Republican told NOTUS.

In an interview, Kemp told NOTUS that he “very much appreciates” the way the White House has handled the situation and “communicated with me.” He emphasized that his goal was always to find a consensus candidate, but it “didn’t play out that way.”

He argued there appeared to be a lack of urgency from the White House and the national Senate Republican apparatus in finding a consensus candidate to take on Ossoff, and they needed to move quickly. Rep. Buddy Carter announced in May of last year that he would be running and Rep. Mike Collins announced his bid in mid-July. Kemp believed neither of those two had a chance to win and that “political outsiders are the best chance that we have” to win the Senate. Kemp ultimately endorsed Dooley in August.

“Other people were getting in the race and, you know, they wouldn’t move, and I wasn’t going to sit around and wait and have legislators keep endorsing other candidates,” Kemp told NOTUS. “I was doing all I could to get people to coalesce around one candidate. But when that didn’t play out, I’m not going to sit around and do nothing when I have very strong feelings about what kind of candidate that we need to win in our state.”

He said he keeps in touch with the White House and Senate Republican leadership to keep them “apprised of different things that were going on on the Dooley side of the campaign.”

“Brian Kemp promised a fighter and delivered a footnote,” one senior GOP operative told NOTUS. “Nobody knew who Derek Dooley was before this race, and nobody’s going to after.”

Dooley’s father was famed University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley, who, along with his wife Barbara, were “well loved” in the state, according to the Georgia Republican.

“Derek spent most of his time outside the state of Georgia,” the Republican said. “The name hasn’t translated for him.”

Another House member argued that Kemp’s theory on who would make the best candidate to take on Ossoff just hasn’t materialized yet.

“Gov. Kemp’s pitch has been that we need a nominee without a long legislative record, but the voters of Georgia, according to polls, haven’t yet accepted that argument,” the member said.

Republicans are still confident they can win Georgia regardless of who the nominee is. But privately, many admit that it would be easier if Kemp had just worked with them on finding a nominee — or just been the nominee himself.

“I understand that sentiment; it is frustrating because he did say that he would work with us,” another senior Republican operative said. “We all wanted Kemp to run in the first place, and we recognized early on that it was Kemp or bust in terms of finding a candidate to clear the primary field and then be the front-runner against Ossoff.”

“It would be one thing if this guy was well positioned, but literally his biggest liability is that nobody knows him,” the person said.