Georgia GOP split grows over Brian Kemp’s redistricting stance
A fight over Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision not to immediately redraw Georgia’s political maps is rippling through Republican circles and forging a new dividing line in the U.S. Senate race.
With early voting underway and the May 19 primary closing in, Kemp argued that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision weakening the Voting Rights Act came too late in the election cycle to redo the maps for this year’s midterm elections, though he has endorsed an overhaul before 2028.
That has infuriated some MAGA loyalists and rankled senior Republicans who have tangled with Kemp before over his refusal to heed Trump’s demands to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
On Wednesday, Georgia GOP Chair Josh McKoon joined the chorus urging Kemp to suspend congressional elections to redraw the lines while keeping statewide races on schedule.
“I have the utmost respect for the governor,” McKoon said in an interview. “But from our standpoint, we have a Supreme Court decision that tells us these racially constructed districts aren’t required, and they aren’t lawful. And we need to correct them as soon as possible.”
Kemp’s allies are also moving to shore him up. RightCount Action, a conservative group, launched a six-figure ad campaign Thursday praising Kemp for defending “stability and principled leadership.”
The fight has also roiled a U.S. Senate race that has so far sorted itself less on policy than on biography, MAGA credentials and the basic question of who can beat Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff.
Kemp’s stance is dividing the field. U.S. Reps. Buddy Carter and Mike Collins are urging more aggressive action, while former football coach Derek Dooley — Kemp’s hand-picked recruit — stands with the governor.
With the race still in flux, the divide could matter. Collins leads the latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll, but more than half of likely GOP voters remain undecided — leaving space for the candidates to sharpen contrasts and curry favor with the president.
Carter is taking the most confrontational approach, arguing that Republicans could pick up at least two of Georgia’s five Democratic-leaning seats in November if lawmakers agreed to remake the maps before the midterm. He wants Kemp to follow several neighboring Republican-led states and act now.
“Call a special session. Redraw the maps. Delay the House primaries if needed. Keep statewide races on track. Get it done,” Carter wrote in an AJC essay. “This is not complicated. It is about whether Republicans are willing to compete.”
Collins staked out his own aggressive position at a campaign stop Monday in Acworth. Asked whether Georgia lawmakers should act in time for this year’s elections, he said: “The Supreme Court got it right. We need to move on that as fast as we can.”
This year?
“I think they can move as fast as they can this year.”
Dooley and other close Kemp allies say it’s simply too late. John F. Kennedy, the former Georgia Senate GOP leader now running for lieutenant governor, said stopping an election midstream is legally fraught.
“I don’t think we in Georgia have the discretion to halt our election process for 2026,” he said. “However, I sincerely hope that we will promptly visit the issue and redraw our congressional maps” before the 2028 vote.
‘Too late’
Kemp could still call a special session this year to redraw the maps for 2028. But halting voting already underway is another matter.
Kemp’s allies say doing so would invite a flurry of litigation and argue the governor has no authority to stop an election already in progress. That power belongs to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who said in an interview that he backs Kemp’s stance.
“We have already started early voting,” Raffensperger said. “If they would come up with that ruling several weeks or a month earlier, then we might have a different decision. But already we have 275,000 people that have voted. It’s too late in the process.”
When lawmakers do rework the maps, experts expect the overhaul will eliminate at least two Democratic-held seats by 2028.
One target is almost certain to be U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, a 17-term Democrat representing a rural southwest Georgia district. A second would come from one of four left-leaning metro Atlanta seats. But doing so carries risks.
“It’s very difficult to see how Fulton County could be divided up in ways that wouldn’t threaten Republican seats in other places,” said Eric Segall, a Georgia State University constitutional law professor. “It will happen, but it’s going to be walking a tightrope.”
For Black voters, the fight is not abstract. The districts at risk were drawn to give minority communities more electoral power. Several prominent Black pastors amplified their objections at an event this week promoted by Ossoff’s campaign.
The Rev. Jay Augustine, senior pastor of Big Bethel AME Church, praised Kemp “for taking what I see to be the high road and not giving in to partisan vitriol, as his gubernatorial colleagues have done in Florida, in Tennessee, in Alabama.”
And the Rev. Willie “Bo” Barber II, senior pastor of Prospect AME Church in Columbus, urged voters to “plan for the worst.”
“We are hopeful,” he said. “But we are also clear-eyed, that if the worst happens, we must be prepared to respond, react and to move on, because the struggle will continue.”
For McKoon, the stakes could not be higher. He said he’s haunted by the prospect that two Georgia districts Republicans believe could be redrawn within weeks might be all that stands between the GOP and a House controlled by U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries if Democrats were to win a majority.
“I don’t want the next two years to be the Democrats attempting to impeach the president and paralyzing the country with frivolous investigations,” he said. “And we have a chance to do our part and stop that.”
Staff writer Tamar Hallerman contributed to this report.
About the Author
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.
