On the Georgia trail: Deadline day, a new Nike slogan and Marty Kemp puts her foot down
It's a moment of truth time for candidates up and down Georgia's ballot: The deadline to report how much cash they've raised over the last three months.
Reports are trickling in, but here are some early figures:
- Republican Geoff Duncan, running for lieutenant governor, has raised a total of $2.2 million since entering the race and has $1.2 million cash on hand. He collected $1.2 million since July 1.
- Democrat Lindy Miller, a candidate for Public Service Commission, has said she'll report raising more than $1 million since getting in the race and more than $400,000 cash on hand.
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Just Redo It? That was U.S. Rep. Austin Scott's campaign trail advice for Nike.
Scott, who joined Brian Kemp on several of his middle Georgia stops, told the crowds he is debuting his own line of athletic apparel in response to the Nike ads featuring Colin Kaepernick.
The former NFL quarterback started the nationwide trend of kneeling at football games, which has trickled down to the local level.
Scott said he took all the Nike garments out of his closet but didn't get rid of them because he’s “too cheap to throw them away.”
Instead, he said, he took them to his tailor and requested, "I want you to stitch an American flag over that swoosh."
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Former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder will be in Henry County on Sunday to stump with Charlie Bailey, the Democratic candidate for attorney general, and several House candidates for south-metro Atlanta area seats.
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As Republican Brian Kemp's message has morphed from "politically incorrect conservative" to "tell-it-like-it-is business guy," he's increasingly played up his private sector background.
Consider his message in Perry, where he talked of his frequent moves as he tried to start a construction company in the teeth of the Great Recession.
The two spec houses he built and a third that was underway were sitting idle as the economy tanked. He and his wife Marty were living in an Athens-area subdivision watching their bank account dwindle.
"So I finally told her one day, look, if we're gonna go broke we might as well change our luck, move in one of the spec houses and see if maybe that'll help it sell. We moved in one of them. We hadn't been there just a couple of weeks, maybe a month or so, and that house got under contract. We moved out of it, moved right next door to the other one we were trying to sell. Soon as we got in it, it sold."
That led to one move after another until they landed in a double-wide mobile home. Kemp thought they would stay there for one year, they ended up living there for three. When they learned their first child was on the way, Marty Kemp was unequivocal.
“You better start building me a house.”
About the Authors
Greg Bluestein is the Atlanta Journal Constitution's chief political reporter. He is also an author, TV analyst and co-host of the Politically Georgia podcast.
