Governor Kemp is fighting the good fight to save Georgia from the farthest right of the state Republican Party. He is building on the success he achieved in his reelection campaign in 2022, along with other Republican state officials. Kemp, Attorney General Chris Carr, Insurance Commissioner John King, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger all failed to receive endorsements from Donald Trump. All won their elections. All are skipping the Georgia Republican Party convention in June. One notable exception is Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed candidate with close ties to the Georgia GOP’s current leadership. He will attend the convention.

Kemp is very popular and handily won reelection so he must be doing something right. This brouhaha looks like a civil war inside the state Republican Party. It happens. Most state parties have to deal with it at some point. There will always be a faction that is more conservative than the rest of the party. The problems begin when one faction begins to make a power move to take control of the party without maintaining a desire to work with all members. In this case, it is the most conservative Republicans who are criticizing the state’s duly elected leaders. So, the top state officials are distancing themselves from Chairman David Shafer, for example, who is under scrutiny for his role in the fake elector plot.

The Insurance Commissioner said he is committed to attending an insurance conference that had been planned long before the convention. There is no word yet if the House Speaker will attend.

Governor Kemp plans to remain on the sidelines of the state party and create a parallel fundraising structure. Some Republicans who don’t consider themselves far-right feel slighted that the governor is not thought to be rallying the opposition to the far-right.

“The governor isn’t helping those of us who are not far right,” said John Beville, an east Cobb Republican, who said many in the party still oppose the fringe forces and need the governor to help rally the opposition.

“Kemp is forgetting that there’s lots of time before he might run for Senate,” he said of Kemp’s possible challenge to U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff in 2026.

“We’re having that discussion tonight at the Cobb GOP.”

Even as Kemp works to move Georgia Republicans away from Trump and Trump’s influence on the state party, Kemp retains broad support from Republicans. One sign of his support was seen in a photo in a recent newspaper. Kemp was flanked by many Republican lawmakers for a bill signing ceremony. He did not look like a man without a party.

Another sign the Georgia Republican Party has gone too far in discord is a reprimand that was given to Marsha Blackburn, the senator from Tennessee. No one should doubt her conservative chops yet the former Georgia GOP executive director did recently. Blackburn teamed up with Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat from Georgia, to investigate alleged abuse in Georgia’s foster care system. Her campaign sent a note to former Georgia GOP executive director Jay Morgan about a May 15 fundraising luncheon in Atlanta. His response was not good at all.

Wrote Morgan:

Anyone who consorts with Sen. Ossoff is no friend of the state of Georgia. She has also endorsed the Trump party nominee for President. Trump has cost us two senate seats in Georgia alone and did nothing to assist Gov. Kemp’s reelection. If she removes her name from that letter or rescinds her endorsement and apologizes for her lack of judgment , please be in touch.”

Jay Morgan, former Georgia GOP executive director

She may have endorsed a candidate he didn’t endorse but that’s no reason to go off and say she is ‘no friend of Georgia.”

All factions need to learn to work together again. Georgia is an important state, a swing state now that used to be a solidly red state. I’m old enough to remember when I lived in Georgia and it was a blue state, as all southern states were back then. I don’t want to see Georgia and then other states go back to being blue states. As it is, Democrats have set their sights on Mississippi. All of this has to be nipped in the bud. Let Kemp be Kemp. He seems to know what he’s doing.