Brian Kemp's Revenge

How the Georgia governor survived Trump's wrath—and turned it to his advantage.

Not a lot of Republicans have gone toe-to-toe with Donald Trump and lived to tell the tale. But Trump’s No. 1 target this election cycle, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, is a notable exception.

Trump put more money and effort into unseating Kemp this year than any other Republican who has crossed him, even Liz Cheney, the crusading anti-Trump congresswoman. When he turned on Kemp, many figured the governor’s career might as well be over.

But Trump’s attempt to oust Kemp failed spectacularly. The governor clobbered Trump’s handpicked candidate, former Senator David Perdue, by more than 50 points in the May primary. And far from damaging Kemp, the feud with Trump may have left him better off politically than he was before, burnishing his brand with Trump-skeptical independent voters. That makes Kemp the rare—perhaps the only—GOP pol to have used Trump better than Trump used him.

For my latest piece in TIME, I traveled to Georgia and spent some time with Kemp recently, including an interview in the extremely picturesque environs of Charlie Joseph’s chili-dog stand, pictured above. Since getting elected governor four years ago, Kemp has taken a lot of flak, first over his approach to COVID-19, then over his response to the 2020 election. But he tells me he believes voters will reward him for working hard and keeping his promises. His success, I argue, could offer the GOP a model for how to move past Trump’s toxic influence: not going to war with Trump, but consigning him to the past, by ignoring his provocations and giving his voters something else to believe in.

While Kemp mostly declined to criticize the former President, he did take issue with Trump’s claim to have gotten him elected:

“I mean, look, he endorsed me with eight days to go,” Kemp tells me. “There was public polling that had us up 6 or 7 points. And I think it was because I worked hard. I think a lot of people underestimated how well I knew the state. That’s what ended up winning the race for us. Obviously, when Trump endorsed, it made it a blowout. But we were going to win regardless.”

Read on for more, including a rousing Stacey Abrams-themed rap. The piece is here.