Capitol Recap: Some in GOP blame Kemp for party’s suburban woes

Kemp "spent almost no energy trying to reach suburban and exurban women," former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said, according to The Washington Examiner, "and he came close to losing."

Gingrich could be taking things a bit personally because his former congressional district, Georgia’s 6th, just fell into the hands of Democrats for the first time in decades — to a suburban woman, no less, in Lucy McBath of Marietta.

Kemp could bear some blame for that by choosing to campaign in Atkinson County and neglecting Alpharetta.

It may have been a winning formula for him, but it did little for now-outgoing-U.S. Rep. Karen Handel of Roswell and U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall of Lawrenceville, whose survival, as of Thursday morning, was still not a sure thing in his contest against Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux. (You probably have noticed that this has been a fluid election.) It also didn't benefit Republicans running for suburban seats in the state Legislature. Kemp's coattails didn't cut it in the cul-de-sacs.

Gingrich accused Kemp of running “a primary election in a general election.”

But can you really blame Kemp?

He followed the same path that helped Donald Trump win Georgia during the 2016 presidential campaign by running up big margins in rural areas to compensate for losses in the cities and suburbs.

History buffs will note that the real trailblazer was Sonny Perdue, now Trump’s secretary of agriculture, who set the course in 2002 to give Republicans their first Georgia governorship since Reconstruction.

But that look in the rear-view mirror could be costly, some Republicans now worry, if the party’s candidates continue to drive down country roads and shun the parkways on the outskirts of Atlanta and other major U.S. cities.

“When we start to lose in the suburbs, it says something to us,” said Republican strategist Karl Rove, who joined Gingrich in speaking at a Sea Island conference.

It’s a simple matter of math, Rove said.

“Frankly,” he told that Sea Island crowd, “there’s more growth in suburban areas than there is in rural areas.”

But how do you appeal to those growing suburban areas?

Eric Cantor, a former Republican U.S. House majority leader, prescribes a program that focuses more on health care.

It "would not just address pre-existing conditions in insurance coverage," he wrote in a New York Times op-ed, "but also commit to medical research that offers treatments for a child with a chronic disease or a cure for a parent's Alzheimer's."

But there’s more, Cantor said, making a case that Republicans “need to unify” behind providing paid maternity leave and keeping the cost of child care affordable for working families.

And he suggested that the GOP improve its messaging.

“You wouldn’t know it from most 2018 campaigns,” Cantor wrote, “but Republicans actually doubled the child tax credit in last year’s tax bill.”

There, however, is also a matter of attitude.

U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, whose South Carolina district just shifted to the Democratic column following his loss in the GOP primary to an ardent Trump supporter, wrote in his own Times op-ed that his party has lost some oomph on issues such as the environment and fiscal restraint. But Sanford, who had his run-ins with the president, also drew a bead on the currently fractious political atmosphere that he traced to "Mr. Trump's highly combative style."

“I heard it from young soccer moms and longtime Republican voters alike,” Sanford wrote. “They don’t want to condone behavior that is counter to what they’ve taught their children.”

But there's another side to this: Of course, as noted above, Kemp got the most votes, which makes this all seem like a particularly odd episode of "CSI." Why do an autopsy if you can't produce the body?

Charlie Hayslett explains in his blog "Trouble in God's Country," which focuses on the problems of rural Georgia, how Kemp notched all those votes.

He notes that Kemp was the top vote-getter in 130 mostly rural counties.

How rural are they? Combined, those 130 counties are home to 2.9 million registered voters. There are 3.5 million registered voters in the 29 counties where Abrams is the leader.

If you have fewer players, you have to get more out of them while they’re on the field.

That’s what Kemp did.

The turnout in the Abrams counties, at 59.8 percent, was impressive — until you see that 61.5 percent of the voters in the Kemp counties cast ballots.

More staggering was the margin Kemp ran up in his counties, where he won 71.4 percent of the vote to 28.6 percent for Abrams. It’s another case where Abrams did remarkably well in her counties, winning by a 2-to-1 ratio. But in this case — and again, please remember that this was written Thursday when judges were still weighing in — it doesn’t look like it was good enough.

Look to the future: Former Democratic U.S. Rep Buddy Darden, while appearing on GPB's "Political Rewind," suggested that it might be time for Abrams to take her mind off the governor's race.

He wasn’t telling her to relax. He was telling her to think about 2020 and Georgia’s upcoming U.S. Senate race.

“Never stop. Keep using this energy,” he said. “Keep using these new voters.”

Of course, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who is up for re-election in 2020, probably has his own ideas about what Abrams should be doing.

So that probe, how's it going? Every election comes with winners, eventually. All the court activity tied to this round of balloting means those winners include lawyers.

There have been plenty of lawsuits — many of them labeled as “frivolous,” usually by the side with the higher number in its column.

That may have obscured some other actions in the world of jurisprudence.

There was, for example, that investigation Kemp announced two days before the election, back when he was still Georgia's secretary of state, that would look into the state Democratic Party and whether its employees and volunteers might have attempted to hack the state's voter registration database.

Asked whether they’ve been contacted by law enforcement, the state Democratic Party’s executive director, chairman and representative on the State Election Board all say they have heard nothing.

As probes go, this one appears to be off to a slow start — admittedly, it’s been rather busy down at the Capitol — but you begin to wonder at that pace whether it will be completed at all.

New city movement moves to a new location: When it came to creating a city of Eagles Landing, supporters failed to stick the landing.

Voters rejected two measures that would have enabled the community to break away from the city of Stockbridge.

But the new city push continues.

East Cobb County could just become East Cobb if an effort there, still in the early stages, comes to fruition.

Cobb County Commissioner Bob Ott told The Marietta Daily Journal that the complaints he’s heard from residents of the area are “the overall appearance of the roads and medians compared to Sandy Springs,” a “shortage of police officers” and the balance between what east Cobb pays in taxes — 40 percent of the county’s total property taxes — and what it gets in return.

“Many feel they pay more than they get back,” Ott said.

Staff in place: Lt. Gov.-elect Geoff Duncan has put together his leadership team.

Chip Lake, a veteran Republican strategist, will serve as Duncan’s chief of staff. In the past, Lake has worked with congressional Republicans, including Tom Price and Lynn Westmoreland.

John Porter, who was Duncan’s campaign manager, will be a top deputy.

Former state Rep. Mike Dudgeon will be the policy director.

Capitol Recap

Here's a look at some of the political and government stories that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's staff broke online during the past week. To see more of them, go to http://www.myajc.com/georgia-politics/.