The gubernatorial debate between Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, Democrat Stacey Abrams and Libertarian Shane Hazel lasted just an hour Monday night.
But it started to feel endless by the middle of the contest, as Hazel interrupted Abrams and Kemp, complained about the format and groused that Libertarians were being left out of the debate, despite the fact that he stood prominently at the center of the stage between Abrams and Kemp.
At one point, after answering questions about criminal justice, decriminalizing cannabis and Kemp’s approach to reopening the state’s economy during COVID-19, he continued to speak over the moderator, Donna Lowry.
“Mr. Hazel, we’ve got to move on,” she told the Libertarian.
“If this is going to go back and forth between the Democrat and the Republican ...” Hazel said, as Lowry asked him again to let the other candidates speak. “We’re not going to be excluded from this!”
Told that the rules allow Abrams to respond if she’s mentioned directly in another candidate’s answer, Hazel then spoke over Abrams until she stopped talking long enough for him to finish.
When Hazel wasn’t speaking over the two other candidates, he often insulted them, at one point called them “fascists and Communist socialists.” He referred to them as “Stacey” and “Brian” and blamed them and their parties for the state of society, which he said is both oppressive and corrupt.
“Creating freedom for everybody in Georgia is the default position, not more government, not more programs or policies, not to point at the barrel of a gun forcing coercion,” he said.
By the end, Hazel went so far over time in his closing statement, Lowry told him the debate was over and the organizers simply cut his microphone.
The problem with Hazel’s performance, other than being belligerent toward the other candidates, was that it siphoned away both time and focus from Kemp and Abrams on the day early voting in Georgia began.
Kemp focused on his record as governor, especially the state’s economy, and returned to his decision to reopen Georgia before any other state during COVID-19 as the core of the state’s record-low unemployment numbers.
“She wanted to stay locked down and criticized us when we opened it back up,” he said of Abrams and her criticism of Kemp when he reopened businesses in 2020.
Asked by a panelist whether he would look to further restrict abortion through limits to emergency contraception, Kemp said no, and he quickly pivoted to the economy, saying that and public safety are his focus now as governor.
When Abrams criticized his administration’s record on minority contracting, Kemp returned to his COVID decision again.
“A lot of Georgians, including African Americans and other minorities, cannot go to work if their kids are not in the classroom,” he said. “We now have the lowest unemployment rate in the country for African Americans.”
While Kemp talked about his record, Abrams used her time to talk about her plans, including her push for Medicaid expansion, abortion rights for women, and an economy and justice system that needs to work for all Georgians — not just the ones privileged enough to be born rich, white or both.
“Like most Georgians, I lead a complicated life where we need access to help, but we also need to know that we are safe from racial violence,” Abrams said of her plans for policing and public safety.
Key to reducing crime, she said, was reducing gun violence. “We can protect the Second Amendment and second-graders at the same time,” she said.
Kemp, on the other hand, said more people have guns to defend themselves from criminals, and they’re not always the people you’d assume.
“The largest, fastest-growing segment of the population buying handguns and firearms are African Americans and females,” he said. “You know why? Because criminals are the ones that do have the guns.”
For all of the plans that Abrams has rolled out in the 2022 campaign, like the ones on gun safety and abortion rights where she’s aligned with Georgians, she has still been lagging behind Kemp in the polls, even as Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock has led Republican Herschel Walker in the exact same surveys.
Why is that? she was asked. “I’m on the right side of history and the right side of the issues,” she said, and she added that she still doesn’t buy the polls that show her trailing. “I do not believe that I’m behind,” she said.
If anything embodied the three candidates in the debate, it was their answers on what they see as the biggest challenge facing Georgians in the future.
Abrams listed a half-dozen challenges for the state in the future, but she called four more years of Kemp as governor the most dangerous of them all.
Kemp pointed to today’s “40-year-high inflation” and listed the ways he said his administration and Republican lawmakers have already helped Georgians deal with higher prices, including a gas tax suspension.
Hazel quoted an economist of the Austrian school of thought, and he said neither Democrats nor Republicans understand economics well enough to solve the problem, “otherwise we wouldn’t be in the hole that we’re in.”
Left to their own devices, Kemp and Abrams probably would have had a more respectful, more substantive debate Monday night, with both making their case to voters for their future leadership of the state as voters go to the polls.
The final debate between Kemp and Abrams will be on Oct. 30 on WSB-TV. It won’t include the Libertarian.
About the Author
