Kemp, Jackson rally rural GOP vote in Albany on eve of Election Day

ALBANY — Trailing in early ballots and locked in a governor’s race polling within the margin of error, Georgia Republicans brought their closing argument to southwest Georgia on Monday with a simple message: Rural voters won it in 2018, and they will have to do it again today.

“I’m gonna be honest with y’all, we are down in early votes,” Gov. Brian Kemp told supporters at the Albany Jet Center at Southwest Georgia Regional Airport, one stop on GOP gubernatorial nominee Rick Jackson’s statewide get-out-the-vote tour. “But I’ll tell you this: We were down in early votes in 2018, and like Tim said, rural Georgia turned out on Election Day and sent us to the governor’s mansion and to the Gold Dome.”

Jackson, a Republican businessman who has never held elected office, faces Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, in today’s general election. Bottoms was scheduled to campaign in Dalton, Athens and Augusta on Monday after appearing at several events in southwest Georgia over the weekend.

A record 2,828,147 Georgians cast ballots before Election Day, topping the previous midterm early-vote record of about 2.5 million set in 2022. Republican pollster Mark Rountree of Landmark Communications projected Democrats would carry a cushion of 250,000 to 300,000 votes into today.

The most recent public poll in the race by InsiderAdvantage showed Jackson at 49% and Bottoms at 47% among 800 likely voters, within the poll’s 3.46-point margin of error.

‘We don’t have this in the bag’

Secretary of State nominee Tim Fleming opened the event by urging the crowd to call family and neighbors who had not yet voted.

“Y’all don’t want to wake up Wednesday morning, turn the news on, and hear these words: ‘Governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms’,” Fleming said. “Eight years ago, rural Georgia came out strong, and that’s how Brian Kemp became governor.”

Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper warned against complacency.

“As I’ve traveled the state, I’ve heard from folks that said, ‘Tyler, you got this. We got this in the bag,'” Harper said. “But I’m here to tell you, we don’t have this in the bag, folks.”

Harper framed the race as a question of rural influence in Atlanta.

“If we want agriculture in rural Georgia to continue to have a seat at the table, you’ve got to elect the right people,” he said, “the folks that have the farm values that all of us believe in here in this part of the state.”

Albany’s labor commissioner

Labor Commissioner Barbara Rivera Holmes, an Albany resident whom Kemp appointed and who is seeking her first full term in elected office, called the stop a homecoming.

“It is so good to be home today,” she said. “I know what it looks like to have partners in Atlanta, partners throughout the state who remember rural south Georgia, who remember our Albany.”

Holmes said the governor announced 25,000 new jobs and $35 billion in new investment last month, plus another $4 billion over the weekend, with 75% of projects outside metro Atlanta. 

She closed with a line from her grandfather, who she said came from Cuba with nothing: “Barbarita, hay que luchar pa’lante” — “we have to fight forward.” 

Kemp: ‘A fight for the soul of our state’

Kemp, who is term-limited, cast the race as a referendum on 25 years of Republican control that began with Gov. Sonny Perdue.

“We’re in a fight for the soul of our state, just like we were back in 2018,” Kemp said. “This is a very similar scenario.”

He acknowledged that some Republican-leaning voters are frustrated with national and world events, and urged them not to sit out.

“They need to think about how bad it would be if the other side gets the keys, because they don’t even know where the farm or the forest is,” Kemp said. “We do.”

Kemp pointed to farm relief after Hurricanes Michael and Helene, including what he described as a $150 million cash advance to farmers and foresters after Helene. He said the state would begin sending out property tax relief he described as “a billion dollars”, and cited his recent suspension of the state’s gas and diesel taxes. 

He also said teacher pay rose $9,500 during his tenure after he promised $5,000 on the 2018 campaign trail.

Jackson: ‘Bad mayors don’t make good governors’

Jackson praised Kemp’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and said he would follow the governor’s “roadmap.” He leaned on his biography, telling the crowd he grew up in foster care and could not afford to finish college.

“I grew up in foster care, and I know what it feels like to be forgotten,” Jackson said. “That’s why I will never, ever abandon you as Georgians.”

He said he would keep cutting income and property taxes, continue teacher pay raises and “take on the insurance companies” over coverage denials while eliminating “the middlemen that just drive up costs” in health care.

“I don’t need the money and I don’t need the title. It’s not about me,” Jackson said. “I don’t have anything left to prove in my life. But I do have something left to give.”

Jackson attacked Bottoms’ record as Atlanta mayor, saying crime rose and businesses closed on her watch. “Bad mayors don’t make good governors,” he said.

He ended with a warning of his own: “It is very, very close.”

Questions on taxes, spending and experience

Asked by a reporter how he would replace revenue lost to his proposals to cut the state income tax in half and freeze property taxes — money critics say funds infrastructure, rural hospitals and schools — Jackson said he would not cut “any necessary expenses.”

“My approach in business is that you can’t cut your way to prosperity; you have to grow yourself there,” he said. He said growth would come from job creation, agriculture and timber, and infrastructure, and that the state would “cut some overhead, some inefficiencies, and add some software.”

Kemp added that “just about every single Democrat voted against property tax relief, and that is something you need to remember when you go vote.”

When the reporter noted Jackson had put more than $200 million into the race yet remained deadlocked in polls, Jackson disputed the figure. “Your numbers are wrong about this race, but regardless of that, it’s not half that much,” he said.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Oct. 30 that Jackson had spent about $220 million of his own money on the primary and general election combined. Bottoms raised $23.2 million between Aug. 1 and Oct. 20.

Jackson attributed the tight race to voters’ frustration with Washington.

“In Georgia, the governor’s decisions every day affect your life,” he said. “If we don’t [get out the vote], we will lose. There’s no question about that.”

Asked what he would tell voters concerned about Jackson’s lack of experience in office, Kemp said, “I thank the Lord for political outsiders.” He called Jackson “a self-made man” who “came from nothing, owes nobody anything.”

Today’s vote

By 10 a.m. today, more than 300,000 Georgians had voted at the polls, and the Secretary of State’s office expected more than 1 million Election Day votes.  Early turnout in southwest Georgia lagged the state. About 37.3% of registered Georgians voted early statewide compared with about 24.2% in Dougherty County, 29.6% in Lee County and 30% in Terrell County 

Voters must cast ballots at their assigned precincts today. Polling places are listed on the Secretary of State’s My Voter Page.