Trump had tried to make the governor’s race about himself, and Kemp was on the verge of a resounding victory. But in the most recent public polls Kemp has led Perdue by an average of twenty-five points. This sort of antagonism and attention from Trump, among a Republican electorate still largely beholden to him, was supposed to spell political death for any member of the Party who got in his way. Trump has staged rallies here, denounced Kemp and his allies, and backed a prominent loyalist, former Senator David Perdue, to challenge the Georgia governor in the Republican primary. Ever since the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, when Kemp and other statewide Republican officials in Georgia refused to entertain overturning the results and gifting the state’s electoral votes to Trump-as Trump was pressuring them to do, publicly and privately-this state has been a fixation for the former President. “Because if we’re going to be the party of ‘me,’ people aren’t going to vote for that kind of party.”Įveryone knew exactly whom Christie was talking about. “What the Republican Party is gonna be deciding over the next couple of months is: are we gonna be the party of ‘me’ or are we going to be the party of ‘us’?” Christie said. Near Kemp’s campaign bus, a small cluster of reporters arranged itself around Christie. But the meaning of his appearances has changed with time. Christie has been a central figure in American politics for more than a decade, and he still carries himself exactly the same way: the belt cinched tightly above the belly button, the determined stride, the slow metronomic nod as he listens, and the cadenced speech that gives the impression of a shortening fuse. Last week, Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, was in suburban Atlanta, campaigning for the Republican Governor Brian Kemp, seeming a little exasperated with Donald Trump.