Opinion: Georgia does not deserve this.
Policy discussion turns into a shouting match
I was at work during the Republican debate for Georgia Governor on Sunday night. The plan was to record it, watch it when I got home and provide you all with a brief rundown of the debate on this Monday morning.
But after watching it, I feel that I must provide you all with more than just the facts. You all deserve to hear my honest opinion of the debate.
Anybody who knows me knows that I am a staunch Democrat. I come from a family of Democrats and I was a reliable Democratic vote in the 2020 election. So naturally, I found myself agreeing with very little of what was said by either of the candidates during the debate.
But I feel that we should put party aside when addressing this debate. Georgia voters deserve better than what we saw on Sunday night.
Right out of the gate, the debate began with a lie: former Sen. David Perdue’s opening statement.
“First off, let me be very clear tonight: the election in 2020 was rigged and stolen.”
And this pretty much set the tone for how the rest of the hour would go. Perdue, trailing in polling and in fundraising, spent most of the evening making other unfounded allegations of election fraud.
He even said that his loss to Democrat Jon Ossoff in the 2020 U.S. Senate race was not legitimate. Not only was Ossoff’s margin of victory well outside automatic recount territory, it was around 5 times greater than Joe Biden’s margin in the November 2020 election.
Perdue alleged that the reason he is not a U.S. Senator anymore is because his opponent, Gov. Brian Kemp, caved to Stacey Abrams and “liberal Democrats” in 2020. He said that if Kemp were a Democrat, his supporters would be saying that this was a “gross, corrupt cover-up.” To which the Governor responded:
“I’m not going to let you call me corrupt like you let Jon Ossoff call you corrupt.”
Kemp was referring to a viral moment in a 2020 debate when the Democrat grilled Perdue over stock transactions that the Senator made during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The two rivals would spend the first half of the debate talking over each other and calling each other names. They each said that their opponent is unprepared to take on Democrat Stacey Abrams in November, with Kemp citing Perdue’s loss to Ossoff and the former Senator saying that the Governor betrayed conservative voters by refusing to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
It wasn’t until the last half of the debate when the candidates started discussing issues that Georgians actually care about, and the two tried to outflank one another from the right on each one. Among them was the issue of illegal immigration.
In 2018, Kemp famously aired an ad in which he said he planned to round up “criminal illegals” in his pickup truck and take them back across the southern border. Perdue said that Georgia has more illegal immigrants than Arizona and wittingly asked Kemp is his pickup truck had broken down.
Kemp said that the spread of the coronavirus interfered with his deportation efforts and suggested that mass deportations during the pandemic could have increased infection rates.
Other than the 2020 election results, another area of disagreement between the two candidates was the issue of crime. More specifically, the growing rift between Atlanta city hall and the wealthy northern enclave of Buckhead. In the last year, Buckhead residents have expressed support for breaking away from Atlanta to form their own city in the wake of rising crime rates.
Sen. Perdue expressed his support for the cityhood initiative and chastised Gov. Kemp for not pushing for allowing residents to vote on the issue. The Governor said that he is “keeping his powder dry,” saying that cityhood referendums must be approved by the legislature.
The rivals concluded Sunday’s debate by turning their attention to Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee. “We have to make sure that Stacey Abrams is never our Governor,” said Perdue. “There’s only one person that’s beaten Stacey Abrams, and that’s me,” Kemp concluded. “And I plan on doing it again.”
But the two also used their closing statements to essentially call each other “weak,” as they did throughout the hour. Kemp said that Perdue is attacking his record because the former Senator doesn’t have one of his own, and Perdue said that the Governor is a weak leader who oversaw a “stolen election.”
Personally, I felt really bad for the panelists in this debate. I’m sure they did a lot of work and research while writing their list of questions, but they did not get a chance to ask many of them because the candidates were shouting at each other and going over time limits for most of the hour.
The bottom line is this: both of these candidates missed an opportunity to provide solutions to the problems that Georgians are facing. Instead, they spent most of the hour shouting at each other, name-calling and relitigating the results of the 2020 presidential election — which to date have been recounted three times with zero evidence of widespread fraud uncovered.
This election should be about the future of our state. Our economy is at a turning point as we emerge from the worst of the pandemic. People are concerned about inflation, the price of gas and public safety. But instead, this Republican debate — and the Republican primary itself, is merely dwelling in the past.
Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, I hope all Georgians can agree that we are not going to accomplish anything in the future if we are still living in the past. The 2020 election was nearly two years ago. It is long time for us to turn the page on this chapter in Georgia history.
Going forward, it is my hope that all statewide candidates spend more time discussing the issues facing hard-working Georgians, especially in public settings like debates. We as voters work tirelessly to elect these candidates, so they owe it to us to provide substantive discussions about the issues that we face. Not petty insults and childish attacks.
Agree we deserve better...👏🏾