THURSDAY, MAY 26 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
Election 2022bato on Tuesday changed his
rating of the race from a toss-up
to “leans Republican,” calling
Kemp’s nearly 52 percentage
point win against former senator
David Perdue “dominating.” Pub-
lic polling has consistently given
Kemp a slight edge in a head-to-
head matchup with Abrams.
Abrams’s allies say she has
become an even more formidable
candidate over the past four
years, emerging as a leader in the
Democratic Party on voting
rights and becoming a massive
fundraising draw. In Georgia, she
started two initiatives that have
eased medical debt for nearly
70,000 state residents, helped
small businesses and helped
bring coronavirus vaccines to
communities.
But she has also shown herself
to be gaffe-prone, handing Re-
publicans material to use against
her, including a comment over
the weekend referring to Georgia
as “the worst state in the country
to live.”
She addressed the remarks
during a recent appearance on
MSNBC, acknowledging that her
comments were “inartfully deliv-
ered.” She added: “I challenge
every Republican to stop focus-
ing on the little bit of rhetoric
and actually show me in your
record.”
A different error is highlighted
in a political ad released Wednes-
day by the Republican Governors
Association, their first general-
election spot of the 2022 cycle.
The ad shows a photo of Abrams
sitting maskless with a group of
young schoolchildren all wear-
ing masks. “Strict mandates on
everyone but herself,” the narra-
tor says. Abrams has apologized
for breaking covid rules.
Democrats are seeking to por-
tray Kemp as a far-right governor
who is out-of-touch with the
state’s values. During a call with
reporters Wednesday afternoon,
state Democrats pointed to his
support for a laws to limit abor-
tions and ease gun rules along
with his refusal to expand federal
health-care benefits.
Allies of Abrams also say his
bitter primary campaign has di-
vided the Republican Party,
which works in their favor. Some
Republicans in the state share
that view, fearing Trump will
continue to work against Kemp
because he dislikes him so much.
In the past, Trump has said
Kemp and Abrams would be
about the same.
The former president is fa-
mously unpredictable. “I think
even Trump understands that a
50-point loss hurts,” one Kemp
adviser said, speaking on the
condition of anonymity to be
candid about the state of the
race.
Still, Perdue — the Trump-
backed candidate and former
senator whom Kemp defeated by
a wide margin — sought to showsome support for Kemp on Tues-
day. “Everything I said about
Brian Kemp was true,” he said
onstage at his election night
event after calling Kemp to con-
cede. “But here’s the other thing I
said was true: He is a much
better choice than Stacey
Abrams.”
Perdue added: “We’re going to
do everything we can to make
damn sure Stacey Abrams
doesn’t take over the state.”
Allies of Kemp say the show-
down against Trump’s hand-
picked challenger shows that he’s
not beholden to the party’s de
facto leader, which they say will
play well among suburban vot-
ers. Kemp has walked a fine line
with Trump, avoiding explicitly
criticizing the former president
to avoid alienating his support-
ers.
The top-of-the-ticket will be
unusually diverse in Georgia:
Three of the four major party
nominees for governor and the
Senate are Black. In addition to
Abrams, Sen. Raphael G. War-
nock (D) faces former football
star Herschel Walker.
On Wednesday morning,
Walker held a strategy session at
the Georgian Terrace hotel in
Atlanta with donors, where his
team told the crowd — which
included former congressman
Jack Kingston, former Trump
Health and Human Services sec-
retary Tom Price, and Faith and
Freedom Coalition leader Ralph
Reed — that he wants to be on
the same page with Kemp.
They also showed polling in
the race to explain how they
planned to campaign, such as
how messages including Walk-
er’s support for law enforcement,
his opposition to Biden, and
Warnock’s economic policies and
a stated desire to stop illegal
immigration improves voters’
views of his candidacy. Also his
biography as an “American suc-
cess story” who overcame chal-
lenges polls well.
In a memo distributed by
Walker’s campaign and obtained
by The Washington Post, Erik
Iverson, the campaign’s pollster,
signaled an interest in highlight-
ing Warnock’s time in politics
rather than his past as one of the
state’s leading clergymen.
“Reverend Warnock is now
Senator Warnock,” Iverson
wrote. Meanwhile, Walker plans
to run as a “political outsider,”
the memo said.
Donors liked what they heard.
“The blue wave has already crest-
ed in Georgia,” said Dan Eber-
hart, a GOP donor who is backing
Walker and attended the meet-
ing. “The days of Georgia having
two Democratic senators are
numbered.”
Some Walker allies say he still
needs to improve how he handles
questions from the news media,
and they expect a deluge of
negative advertisements on mis-takes in his personal life. On
Tuesday night, he appeared to
stumble through a question
about gun control, according to a
video posted by a CNN reporter.
“What I like to do, what I like
to do is see it and everything and
stuff. I like to see it,” Walker said.
Walker’s history includes
chapters that are expected be
widely litigated during the cam-
paign. His ex-wife has said he
held a gun to her head several
times; he wrote in a memoir thathe once drove across town with
the intent to shoot and kill a man
who did not deliver a car on time;
and at one point, police in Texas
confiscated his handgun and put
him on “caution list” due to his
“violent tendencies.” In the past,
Walker has blamed his behavior
on a mental illness for which he’s
sought help.
“Walker enters the general
election already damaged by
months of reporting on his out-
rageous and false claims, includ-
ing lies about his business record
and growing questions about his
readiness to serve Georgians inthe U.S. Senate,” Warnock’s cam-
paign manager, Quentin Fulks,
wrote in a recent memo about
the race.
The Warnock memo focuses
on local accomplishments, in-
cluding protecting a deal to save
about 2,600 jobs at a battery
plant in the state and securing
jobs at the Port of Savannah.
And it seeks to separate War-
nock from Biden: “Reverend
Warnock has stood up to the
Biden Administration’s plan to
cut critical funding for Georgia’s
military bases, including the Sa-
vannah Readiness Center.”BY ANNIE LINSKEY
AND JOSH DAWSEYStacey Abrams refused to con-
cede the Georgia governor’s race
to Republican Brian Kemp four
years ago, even after it was clear
she had lost.
“Concession means an action
is right, true or proper. As a
woman of conscience and faith, I
cannot concede that,” Abrams
told supporters 10 days after
Election Day, alleging persistent
voter suppression allegations,
though state officials certified
the results. “Georgia still has a
decision to make about who will
we be in the next election. And
the one after that. And the one
after that.”
The next election has arrived,
and she has another chance
against Kemp, who on Tuesday
defeated a primary challenger
backed by former president Don-
ald Trump in a landslide. Abrams
has long sought this rematch,
refusing some pleas to run for
the Senate in 2020 and building a
reputation as a leading advocate
for voting rights.
Though the names on the
ballot in November will be the
same, the political landscape has
shifted significantly over the past
four years. The anti-Trump fer-
vor that buoyed Democrats in the
last midterm election and nearly
lifted Abrams to the governor’s
mansion has faded. This time, it’s
Republicans who are eager to
register their displeasure with
President Biden’s policies.
“It’s a midterm election now
with an unpopular Democrat in
the White House rather than a
midterm with an unpopular Re-
publican in the White House,”
said Alan Abramowitz, a political
science professor at Emory Uni-
versity, explaining some of the
head winds that Democrats face.
Kemp has proved to be a savvy
politician during his time in
office, co-opting or sidelining
rivals. The governor and his
allies have focused on Abrams
extensively in recent weeks, and
they are seeking to sharpen the
contrast between them in the
wake of Tuesday’s primary.
Kemp is already using
Abrams’s national ambitions as a
rallying call to unite Republicans
against her, making the case that
she is using the race to spring-
board to national relevance and
is reliant on outside campaign
surrogates and outside dona-
tions. Abrams, who some see as a
potential future presidential
candidate, openly promoted her-
self to be Biden’s running mate in
2020.
“Stacey Abrams’s far-left cam-
paign for governor in 2022 is
only a warm-up for her presiden-
tial run in 2024,” Kemp said
during his Tuesday night victory
address. “Her radical ideas are
meant to please people in New
York, California and Chicago
who are funding her campaign,
so she can head straight out to
Iowa or New Hampshire next
year,” he said, referencing the
traditional early states in the
presidential nomination calen-
dar.
But Abrams’s team says Demo-
crats have dramatically expand-
ed the electorate over the past
four years, pointing to 1.3 million
new voters who have registered
to vote in the state since her
defeat. They say they believe
Democrats hold an advantage of
17 percentage points with these
new voters.
The long embattled party has
been reinvigorated by victories,
they said, including Biden’s nar-
row win in the state in 2020 and
then two Democrats prevailing
in runoff elections in early 2021.
“Knowing that you can win in
a state like Georgia when you’ve
been told that you can’t is very
motivating for Democrats in the
state,” said Seth Bringman, a
senior adviser to the Abrams
campaign. Since 2012, Demo-
crats have improved in each
election year, he noted.
In a show of the difficult road
Abrams faces, University of Vir-
ginia political scientist Larry Sa-
Four years later, Abrams and Kemp hold rematch in politically changed Ga.
PHOTOS BY DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST
DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST
LEFT: S upporters of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) take photos at
his election night victory party in Atlanta on Tuesday, when Kemp
defeated a primary challenger backed by former president Donald
Trump. ABOVE: Stacey Abrams delivers remarks and answers
questions in Atlanta about the Georgia primary on Tuesday.BY JACQUELINE ALEMANY
AND JOSH DAWSEYThe House select committee
investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, at-
tack on the Capitol collected testi-
mony that then-White House
Chief of Staff Mark Meadows re-
marked to others that then-Presi-
dent Donald Trump indicated his
support for hanging Vice Presi-
dent Mike Pence after rioters who
stormed the Capitol on that day
started chanting “Hang Mike
Pence!”
The account of Meadows’s
comment characterizing Trump’s
reaction to his vice president was
provided to the committee by at
least one witness, according to
people familiar with the investi-
gation — but those people did not
describe the tone with which the
comment was made. They spoke
on the condition of anonymity to
be more candid about a sensitive
topic.
The development was first re-
ported by the New York Times.
The committee declined to
comment. In a statement, Trump
claimed the probe was “just anextension of the Democrat smear
campaign.” A spokesman for
Meadows did not respond to a
request for comment.
Meadows was in and out of the
dining room off the Oval Office on
the day of the attack and in
Trump’s presence as the riot un-
folded, according to testimony
provided to the committee by for-
mer White House staffers who
were in the West Wing that day.
The Washington Post previous-
ly reported that Trump vented to
those around him about Pence as
he watched on television as riot-ers besieged the Capitol. At 2:
p.m., minutes after the vice presi-
dent and his family were endan-
gered by the pro-Trump mob and
forced to flee the Senate chamber,
Trump tweeted that Pence lacked
“courage”:
“Mike Pence didn’t have the
courage to do what should have
been done to protect our Country
and our Constitution, giving
States a chance to certify a cor-
rected set of facts, not the fraudu-
lent or inaccurate ones which
they were asked to previously cer-
tify,” Trump’s tweet said. “USAdemands the truth!”
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former
aide to Meadows, was asked by
the committee about the account
and confirmed it, according to
two people familiar with the in-
vestigation. Hutchinson sat for
multiple interviews with the
committee and provided detailed
information about the lead-up to
and happenings on Jan. 6, 2021,
according to these people and
testimony released in court fil-
ings by the committee.
People familiar with the com-
mittee’s work said they viewHutchinson, a longtime Meadows
aide, as a key witness.
Hutchinson h ad extensive ac-
cess to Meadows, one person said.
Her lawyer did not respond to a
requests for comment.
The committee is particularly
interested in Meadows’s role in
Trump’s efforts to overturn the
2020 election, this person said,
and has put together a detailed
account of his behavior during
that period. Some witnesses have
said Meadows used his fireplace
to burn documents, the person
close to the committee said.House panel is told Trump indicated support for hanging Pence during riot
“Georgia still has a decision to make about
who will we be in the next election.”
Stacey Abrams, after her defeat in the 2018 governor’s race in GeorgiaPhilips has issued a recall on a rangeof CPAPs, BiPAPs and ventilators.If you use one of thesedevices, get recall informationand register with Philips.Register now. Philips.com/src-updateCall 1-877-907-7508 if you cannot visit thewebsite or do not have internet access.Importantsafety alert!