Donald Trump was privately stewing over Brian Kemp earlier this year — long before he unloaded on him at a rally in Atlanta this month — offended by the Georgia governor’s absence from campaign events and fundraisers and other perceived slights.
“What’s the deal with Brian Kemp?” Trump asked companions on a flight back to Florida from a fundraiser held in the swing state in April, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion granted anonymity to describe a private matter. After all, Trump said, he’d “helped him get elected” in a competitive 2018 primary.
Kemp had skipped the fundraiser and a Georgia rally weeks earlier. And just days before, Kemp’s wife, Marty, had told a local television reporter — in a clip that no longer appears on the news station’s website — that she planned to write in her husband’s name for president, rather than vote for Trump.
Trump asked an aide on the plane to print off a copy of the news report. He called the Georgia first lady’s comments “terrible,” and asked others on the flight, including Michael Whatley, chair of the Republican National Committee, how he should respond.
Trump’s allies, worried that feuding with the popular swing state governor could hurt Trump’s prospects in the state, encouraged him not to give the comment oxygen. Republicans in Georgia at the time were scrambling to further ease tensions between Trump and Kemp ahead of the November election, including at the April fundraiser luncheon in Buckhead that Trump had just attended.
At that event, Bill White, a Trump donor and longtime friend of the former president, had gone around the room asking high-profile Georgia GOP donors and officials if anyone could “go make the peace with Brian Kemp,” according to a person in the room. Among those in attendance were former Sen. Kelly Loeffler and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher; Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and his father, Bill, former Sen. David Perdue; former Trump aide Nick Ayers; and others.
Publicly, Trump was not saying much about Kemp at the time, though no real progress had been made behind the scenes in reuniting the two men. But by the time the August rally arrived, Trump did exactly what Republicans in both camps had feared: He let loose.
Kemp, the former president said, is “a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor.”
“Little Brian Kemp,” Trump added for good measure.
The eruption unnerved Trump’s Republican allies — and marked a potential turning point in his presidential campaign in a key state. Kemp not only controls a vaunted turnout operation in Georgia but also has a track record of assembling the kind of coalition of traditionalist Republicans and independents that Trump will be counting on to carry the swing state in November.
Following the rally, even Trump’s advisers seemed to know the former president had gone too far. “The Trump campaign was calling around to legislators … asking them to post positive things about the rally on social media and were being told, ‘No,’” said a Georgia GOP operative familiar with these private conversations and granted anonymity to discuss them.
“I think what it does is it puts more pressure on the Trump organization in the state when you’re essentially operating without any help from the incumbent governor,” said another Georgia GOP operative granted anonymity to speak freely. “And so the Trump team’s going to have a lot of pressure in Georgia to get it right.”
That pressure has increased in recent weeks. As in other battlegrounds, Trump has lost his strong lead in polling in Georgia since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket, with Trump and Harris now effectively tied in the state. In response, the Trump campaign is pouring over $20 million into advertising in the state, and the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. is including Georgia as part of a massive $100 million ad buy in battleground states.
But in a close race — and in a state Trump lost by less than 12,000 votes four years ago — Republicans fear Trump’s reignition of his feud with Kemp may damage his prospects.
“I think it’s less about the infrastructure [Trump] has. And it’s just more about the activist class — that is the segment of the activist class that is loyal to the governor — it’s completely going to either sit it out or actively hope the president loses,” said the second Georgia GOP operative.
This operative called Trump’s rhetorical hits against Kemp a “nuclear explosion” that will make the race more expensive and harder to win in November.
Trump’s campaign has created a network of field offices and volunteers across the state, but this cycle is leaning on outside groups like America First Works and Turning Point Action to handle much of the canvassing and door-knocking efforts on the ground. And Trump’s team has not yet asked for help from Kemp’s get-out-the-vote organization, according to a person apprised of the situation.
It may be a missed opportunity. Kemp worked outside of the state party to build his own ground team when he coasted to reelection against Stacey Abrams in 2022. That field team, bolstered by the financial support of his state leadership PAC, is now seen as the gold standard for GOP organizing in Georgia.
Trump’s rollout, meanwhile, has been bumpy. His Georgia team is being run by John George, a Republican operative who is new to campaigns in the Peach State. At the opening of a campaign office late last month, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported police were called when a fight broke out. And Republicans in the state are openly expressing concern about the Trump operation’s ability to match the Democratic Party’s turnout machine.
“Forget the money and ads, the Democrats’ ground game is far surpassing the GOP ground game,” the conservative commentator Erick Erickson, who is based in Georgia, said on X. “They’ve been registering new voters and farming for absentee ballots with paid operatives, some of whom are making up to $40 an hour. The GOP has nothing at that level.”
Kemp earlier this month at Erickson’s annual political summit, The Gathering, said that Trump’s comments will not change his support for the former president.
“Despite all of that noise, my position has not changed,” Kemp said. “I said a long time before the presidential primary ever started … that I was going to support the nominee and we were going to use our political operation to win Georgia.”
He echoed the same sentiment at a private fundraiser for Senate Republicans hosted by Loeffler, Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News. And some longtime GOP leaders in the state suspect Trump and Kemp will see no choice but to work together to avoid another presidential defeat in Georgia.
“Divided, we will fall, and united, we will win. I’m optimistic we’ll get there,” said Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition and a past chair of the Georgia Republican Party. “It’s in both of their interests to get on the same page for the good of the party and the country. Trump needs to carry Georgia, and Gov. Kemp needs to be seen as helping put the state back in the GOP column. Their distinct and separate interests are aligned.”
White, meanwhile, excoriated Kemp for skipping out on Trump’s campaign efforts in the state, and for announcing through news media ahead of time that he won’t be in attendance at various events.
“Where the heck is Brian Kemp?” White said in an interview, noting how other recent Trump rivals, such as Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, made enthusiastic speeches in support of the former president in recent weeks. “He wants to be an obfuscation, but he won’t come out and say that. He just has to make it look like Donald Trump’s picking on him.”
A Trump campaign official granted anonymity to discuss campaign operations said the campaign has opened more than 25 offices across Georgia and has held more than 300 events in the state since July 1. It has also trained over 2,000 captains with “Trump Force 47,” the campaign’s volunteer grassroots network, to target low- and mid-propensity voters and drive turnout in their local area. The campaign also has “highly targeted” lists of voters in Georgia, the official said, that includes data on each voter.
“We feel well-poised to win in Georgia,” the official said. “I think it’s time for the armchair quarterbacks to stay home and the players to get in the game.”
Of concerns about Trump’s feud with Kemp, the official said, “I think the dust will settle in a way that is favorable to everybody.”
Asked about criticisms of the campaign’s operation in Georgia and whether the Trump campaign plans to join forces with Kemp, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told POLITICO that “the Georgia GOP is working closely with the RNC and the Trump campaign to ensure President Trump and Republicans up and down the ballot are victorious in November.”
That’s what some Republicans on the ground in the state insist they see, too. Marci McCarthy, chair of the Republican Party in Georgia’s DeKalb County, said the Trump team’s “really extraordinary” strategy “is to connect with like-minded, low-propensity voters that have been a little more reluctant to come out or inconsistent in their voting practices.”
But there is a risk in that approach for Trump. If he alienates more traditionalist Republican voters aligned with Kemp, that narrows the former president’s path to victory in Georgia because it requires juicing the MAGA base. It worked in 2016, when he carried the state, but not in 2020.
“They can energize all the MAGA folks,” said Eric Tanenblatt, an Atlanta businessperson who was Nikki Haley’s Georgia co-chair. “But the question is, is that enough?”