There's a New Partnership in the Fight for the Senate

The red wave we all hoped for didn’t quite materialize on Tuesday night, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep fighting for a red victory.

A Senate runoff in Georgia for the second consecutive election cycle has the nation’s eyes on the Peach State once again. And it’s crucial to rally everyone on the right to vote for Herschel Walker. That’s where a surprising and impressive new partnership is coming into play.

Gov. Brian Kemp is lending his formidable political apparatus to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in order to rally support for Walker and get Georgians out to vote for the football legend.

“Kemp is loaning his get-out-the-vote machine to the Senate GOP’s voter turnout efforts, giving the party entrée to a political team that is increasingly viewed as one of the GOP’s most formidable state operations,” reports Politico. “The governor ran a gauntlet this year, prevailing over a Donald Trump-backed primary opponent by a lopsided margin before comfortably defeating Democrat Stacey Abrams in the general election.”

McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund PAC, which ran some compelling radio ads in Georgia during the general election, is bankrolling the operation, while Kemp’s campaign staff and volunteer base will do the work on the ground.

This partnership is the first of its kind for McConnell, who has never worked directly with a governor in this way and has also never directly worked with a canvassing effort.

It’s hard to express how impressive Kemp’s political infrastructure is to anyone outside the state. He battled not only a national Democratic base and mainstream media that worked together to craft a narrative that Georgia was turning blue and Stacey Abrams was the one to lead it, but he also fought against a Trump-anointed primary foe.

Kemp’s ground game was so well-oiled and primed for action that he dispatched with his primary opponent, former senator David Perdue, with ease and trounced Abrams in the 2022 election, carrying GOP candidates for every statewide office with him.

The Democrat-media complex allied itself so strongly against Kemp and the Georgia Republicans that the Associated Press sang the praises of the “slate of strong Democratic down-ballot candidates running in Georgia,” all of whom lost decisively.

Kemp also managed to win a strong race without the help of the state Republican Party. Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer played into the stolen election narrative in 2020 and arguably led to the depressed voter turnout in the Jan. 2021 runoff that put Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock into office. Kemp’s team believes that Shafer aligned with Perdue in the primary as well, so the campaign worked on its own without the state party.

“Gov. Kemp was able to build the best ground game operation in the entire country this cycle,” Bobby Saparow, Kemp’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “Our team is ready to work with SLF and Leader McConnell to make sure Herschel Walker is the next senator from Georgia and Republicans regain the majority in the Senate.”

Here’s hoping this partnership can serve as the offensive line that will push Walker across the goal line in this overtime championship game.