Kemp draws the partisan line between Washington and Georgia

To hear him tell it, with most of his second term still ahead, Gov. Brian Kemp remains laser-focused on the State’s business. He’s raised a lot of money, and it’s been widely speculated he might challenge U.S. Sen. John Ossoff in 2026, but after his run-in with former President Donald Trump, he has no national ambitions.

So, if all that is true, what are we to make of Kemp’s State of the State speech last week?

The speech Kemp gave at this year’s Eggs and Issues breakfast was an upbeat summary of his spending plans for the upcoming session, which was not unlike the kind of speech one of the old asphalt Democrats might have given in a year when revenues were flush.
With a presidential election coming up this year, it’s no surprise Kemp would adopt a more partisan tone later in the week in his State of the State message. It’s how he drew those partisan lines that’s interesting.

Voters this fall will see a “stark difference,” Kemp said, not between Democrats and Republicans, but between Georgia, where “we work together across party lines on more issues than not,” and Washington, a dystopian place where both parties are to blame for the chaos.

“Congress has become synonymous with runaway spending, bloated budgets, job-killing regulations, gridlock and partisanship, and elected representatives in both parties who are more interested in getting famous on cable news than delivering results for the American people,” Kemp said.

Every line spent jousting with Washington was a time that could have been spent laying out a case for some of his legislative priorities. This speech didn’t sound like it was being made to a room full of legislators and only marginally to the “hardworking people of Georgia.” It sounded for all the world like the Iowa Caucuses weren’t this week, and there was still time for an outsider candidate to make a bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

If one legislator has worked to fulfill Kemp’s boast about working across party lines, it’s Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, a Decatur Democrat who has been central to most of the key bipartisan legislation the House has passed in recent years. She has become so accustomed to smoothing things out with Republicans that in her testimony before a House committee protesting the way her district was redrawn in the latest legislative map, she said, “I’m here to help you” several times.

They were not there to help her, and Oliver now finds herself in the northern tip of a district that stretches all the way across the county, about 300 yards from Emory University, which she used to represent. Her views on bipartisanship in Georgia may be a lot different than Kemp’s these days.

At some point, presumably, there’s going to be a more serious discussion about why a state where hospitals are being closed needs another medical school when it already has four. For now, however, this is just one of the baubles in a suitcase full of new spending.

Kemp doubled down on his healthcare policies, claiming the State has “made enormous strides in lowering costs, expanding access, and incentivizing more healthcare providers to give care.” That dims the already faint chances of a deal on Medicaid expansion.

The governor repeated his support for school vouchers, saying it’s “time for all parties to get around a table and agree on the best path forward to provide our kids the best educational opportunities we can.” There’s just enough wiggle room in that earnest statement to make it hard to blame anyone if the deal doesn’t get done.

This speech sounded like it was being delivered to a national audience of Republicans, but there was no mention of Trump. It would have been inappropriate anyway, with the primaries still ahead. But it’s likely that at some point in this campaign year, Kemp will be called on to address exactly where he stands with the former president.

Maybe that’s what this speech was really about: Kemp positioning himself for an unpredictable campaign year in which many things could happen, and like any ambitious politician, keeping an eye out for what opportunities chaos might throw his way.