Money Battle Brings Trouble To Kemp And Cagle In GOP Primary Runoff
Republican candidates for Georgia governor — Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, left, and Secretary of State Brian Kemp — speak during an Atlanta Press Club debate July 12. The two will face each other Tuesday in a runoff election for the Republican nomination, with the winner challenging Stacey Abrams in the November general election.
John Bazemore / Associated Press
The contest began focused on immigration enforcement and gun rights. But in its final weeks, the Republican primary runoff for governor in Georgia has pivoted to allegations of improper fundraising and calls on both sides for federal investigations.
Despite President Donald Trump’s recent endorsement of Secretary of State Brian Kemp, he and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle will likely continue to talk about how their opponent attracted campaign cash.
Both Kemp and Cagle face widespread criticism for how they’ve handled campaign fundraising during the gubernatorial election that is already the most expensive in Georgia history, four months before its November finale.
By the end of Georgia’s race for governor in November 2006, candidates had drawn about $29 million into their campaign accounts.
In Georgia’s 2018 contest, it’s only taken until July for candidates to raise about $32 million.
Roughly a third of that, $10.5 million, went to Cagle. At the same point in the race, his campaign still had $1.3 million to spend.
Kemp brought in about $4.5 million by the end of June and had $711,000 left to spend.
At a recent debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club, the discussion of campaign donations dominated.
“The only person that has been trading anything for money is the secretary of state,” Cagle said.
As secretary of state, Kemp oversees licensing boards for professions like dietitians, and massage therapists.
Kemp took campaign donations from individuals and companies regulated by boards like these that an AJC investigation found amounted to over $300,000.
Republican state Sen. Renee Unterman, a Cagle supporter, sent a letter to the U.S. attorney for North Georgia, B.J. Pak, requesting an investigation. No criminal investigation has been announced.
For his part, Kemp said he hasn’t done anything wrong, and he has returned donations his campaign received that were illegal because of his position as secretary of state.
“The nonsense [Cagle] is talking about,” Kemp said, “has already been buried. It’s not going to be an issue.”
Since the runoff began in May, Kemp has claimed Cagle is a “puppet” whose campaign depends on money from “special interest” groups.
Since the release of a secret recording of Cagle by former GOP primary opponent Clay Tippins, Kemp’s campaign has amplified this attack.
“You’re the special interest candidate. You’ve taken money from all the special interests. They’ve done fundraisers for you, and you’ve used all that money to lie about the facts and the record,” Kemp said at the debate.
In the recording, Cagle says he backed a bill that was “bad a thousand different ways,” in order to keep a $3 million donation away from another primary opponent.
A longtime state senator, and Tippins’ uncle, later told the AJC that Cagle explained he backed a separate bill to secure a $2 million donation.
A pair of state legislators who support Kemp called for a federal criminal investigation. None has been announced.
“Would someone please show me where $2 million has gone into my campaign? It does not exist,” Cagle said to Kemp in the debate. “What does exist is the fact that you, along with Clay Tippins, have conspired to create this tape. The only thing you have to run on, all across the state, is sadly enough not your record – and you can’t attack me on my record – is a tape.”
Better for a candidate to raise money from wherever legally possible and deal with the criticism than moderate their efforts, according to Rusty Paul, who led the Georgia Republican Party for four years in the ’90s.
“You’re going to get criticized one way or another,” Paul said. “So, I’d much rather be able to get the money from where I can find it than not have it at this point in the campaign, and I’ll deal with the criticism. As long as there’s nothing illegal about the contributions. I would take them if I were a candidate in the situation that these two candidates are.”
Paul expected Kemp and Cagle will likely spend most of what they’ve raised in the runoff, but the winner will be able to attract plenty of cash for the general election in November against Democrat Stacey Abrams.
And Paul said, for Abrams and the Republican, questions will continue about where they got their money.
Correction: A previous version of this story included inaccurate figures for the amount of money remaining in the campaign accounts of Kemp and Cagle at the end of June.
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