Wall Street Journal
By Cameron McWirter
May 23, 2018
Democrat Stacey Abrams came closer to possibly becoming the first woman and first African-American to serve as Georgia’s governor, after securing her party’s nomination Tuesday. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, the Republican front-runner, failed to secure 50% of his party’s votes and will face a July runoff against Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp.
In the Democratic primary, Ms. Abrams won with about 76% of the vote to Stacey Evans’s 24%, after a rough campaign that pitted the former state House minority leader from Atlanta, who has hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, against a white multimillionaire from the suburbs.
In her victory speech, Ms. Abrams called for “a Georgia that sees diversity as our strength, and acceptance as our birthright.”
In the crowded Republican race, Mr. Cagle won 39% of the vote, beating Mr. Kemp, who received 26%, and several other rivals, according to the unofficial results from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
With her win Tuesday, Ms. Abrams becomes the first black woman to win a major party nomination for governor in the U.S., according to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women in Politics. Ms. Abrams, who was endorsed by former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, as well as liberal firebrands Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) and former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), now will draw even more national attention—and likely visits from 2020 Democratic presidential aspirants coming to Georgia to stump on her behalf.
Ms. Abrams, 44 years old, and Mr. Cagle, 52, have been involved in state politics for years. Ms. Abrams, a lawyer, led the Democratic Party as it fought to stay relevant in a chamber dominated by the GOP.
Ben Clark, a political science lecturer at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Ga., said both parties face challenges in the general election. Democrats are seeking to increase voter participation from minorities and younger people, but he said, “it’s always difficult to get nonvoters to vote.”
Similar efforts fell short in past gubernatorial elections, including a big push in 2014 for Jason Carter, grandson of former President Jimmy Carter. In Georgia, voters don’t register with a party, but can request a primary ballot from either one when they get to their polling station. In this year’s primaries for governor, about 600,000 people voted in the Republican primary, and about 550,000 in the Democratic primary.
Democratic strategists hope voters unite behind Ms. Abrams in an effort to break GOP dominance in Georgia, where Democrats haven’t held the governor’s seat since 2003. Republicans now hold every major statewide office and control both houses of the General Assembly.
Republicans are counting on their conservative base, people who voted for President Donald Trump and right-leaning independents. But that coalition has been an uneasy one, with tensions arising between Trump voters and pro-business establishment Republicans over a range of issues in recent years, from gun-rights legislation to religious-liberty bills. Conservatives consider such bills as protecting religious expression, while some businesses view them as discriminatory toward gay people and others.
Republicans hope voters choose to keep a Republican in the governor’s office after eight years of relative growth and economic recovery under current Gov. Nathan Deal, who is term-limited.
Mr. Cagle faces a costly and combative campaign within his party until the July 24 runoff, time that he could spend campaigning against the Democratic nominee and wooing more centrist voters. There is a “sizable Republican electorate that can’t stand Cagle” because they see him as mainstream, Mr. Clark said.
Mr. Cagle made national news in February when he helped kill a GOP-sponsored bill that would have provided substantial tax breaks on jet fuel and aided Delta Air Lines Inc., after the airline’s decision to cut benefits for members of the National Rifle Association in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting.
Despite that move, as well as some hard talk about illegal immigration, he hasn’t persuaded the far right of the party that he truly embraces their positions on immigration and other issues, and in November, they might not show up to the polls, Mr. Clark said.
Those voters likely will coalesce behind the conservative Mr. Kemp, making him the standard-bearer of the far right against what they perceive to be the establishment GOP, Mr. Clark said. During the primary race, Mr. Kemp gained attention with commercials showing him with a shotgun, a chain saw and a truck, which he said he would use to round up illegal immigrants.
“If you want a politically incorrect conservative, that’s me,” he says in one ad.
Ms. Abrams has argued that her financial status makes her more sensitive to the needs of working people. In her most recent disclosure filed with the state, she listed her net worth at about $110,000. She also reported about $174,000 in credit-card and student-loan debt, and about $54,000 in back taxes and fines to the Internal Revenue Service.
Republicans already have begun attacking Ms. Abrams about her debts. Gov. Deal had about $2.4 million worth of personal debt when he ran for governor in 2010.
Lowell Cagle, who goes by his nickname Casey, never graduated from college. He ran a tuxedo rental business for years. A state senator since 1995, Mr. Cagle was elected lieutenant governor in 2006 and has held the office for three terms. Mr. Cagle sought to run for governor in the 2010 race but abruptly dropped out in 2009, citing back problems.
Mr. Kemp, 55, was a state senator from 2003 to 2007. In 2006, he ran for state agriculture commissioner and lost. He was first elected secretary of state in 2010.
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