President Donald Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp enter Tuesday’s Republican runoff elections as both allies and rivals, backing the same candidate in the governor’s race while at odds in a closely watched Senate showdown that will test the competing power centers inside the Georgia GOP.The overlapping endorsements highlight the increasingly complicated relationship between Trump and Kemp, whose long-running political feud has loomed over Georgia Republican politics for much of the last decade, even as both remain dominant forces within the party.Trump elevated Kemp during the 2018 gubernatorial race with a late endorsement that helped him secure the Republican nomination, but the alliance unraveled after Kemp refused to intervene in Georgia’s certification of the 2020 presidential election following Trump’s loss in the state. Trump later backed former Sen. David Perdue’s failed 2022 primary challenge against Kemp and continued publicly criticizing the governor throughout much of that cycle before softening his rhetoric again during the 2024 campaign.
Trump over the weekend undercut Kemp’s Senate pick of former football coach Derek Dooley by backing Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA). Meanwhile, Trump and Kemp are aligned in the governor’s race, where both are now supporting Lt. Gov. Burt Jones over businessman Rick Jackson in one of the most expensive and bitter Republican gubernatorial primaries in Georgia history.
