Gold Dome Reacts to Kemp’s Threats On Tort Reform
“Don’t shoot the messenger.”
It’s important to start this post with that sentiment because I’m simply collecting what I’ve heard in the last 24 hours and passing it along to you, Dear Reader. I’m a Brian Kemp stan—I make that clear on a regular basis. That doesn’t mean I agree with him on everything, but overall, I believe he has done a phenomenal job as our Governor.
So, it brings me no joy to share what I’ve been hearing since my friend, Cody Hall, an advisor to Governor Kemp, appeared on Politically Georgia and indicated that any Republican who votes against the Governor’s tort reform package would face a Kemp-backed primary challenge.
For the record, I have no dog in the tort reform fight. I understand the issues, but I’m not invested in the debate as I have other matters I’m focused on.
I’ve heard from lobbyists in the hall—long-timers who have been there for decades, lobbyists who are former members of the General Assembly, and current rank-and-file Republicans serving in the legislature. The reaction, even among those who support the legislation, has been uniformly negative. That’s not to say there aren’t some who support the threats—I just didn’t hear from them.
One Republican lawmaker told me, “I heard that same type of threat over the school choice debate, and the Governor didn’t follow through. Everyone who voted no on that got reelected.” He went on to say, “There’s a lot of questioning about why he would go that far. It projects weakness to me. It probably means he doesn’t have the votes to get it to his desk.”
A former Republican member, now a lobbyist, said, “This is likely to backfire. The only people who genuinely care about tort reform are lawyers and doctors. Everyone else doesn’t even know what the debate is about. And whenever I was threatened, I would vote no just because I didn’t like being threatened.”
Another longtime lobbyist, who isn’t working on the tort reform issue, told me, “It just projects weakness. Why would he head into his final two years in office at odds with his own side? Especially since he’s considering running for higher office. There are already a lot of hurt feelings about how he’s wielded [line-item vetoes] in the budget. This just seems like piling on.”
“Don’t threaten me. I’m now going to reevaluate whether I should vote yes,” another Republican member told me. “A lot of [my colleagues] are pissed. It probably created a lot more no votes than yeses. And if he wants to come to my district on this issue, I’ll probably win by a bigger margin by pointing out that I don’t kowtow to the Executive Branch. This wasn’t just a strategic error; it’s an example of executive overreach. He’s acting no better than the GRA with their purity tests.”
Another told me, “I don’t sign pledges, I don’t fill out surveys, and I don’t respond to threats.”
“[It] seemed really early to bring out the threats. And politically, they’re better if made on the second floor in private,” another former member commented.
“To me, it just means he doesn’t have the votes,” a current member said. “Why else would he do that? If he were confident, there’d be no need to go there.”
Another added, “I’ve never seen that kind of reaction from the Governor. I’d actually like to hear that from him directly. It doesn’t seem to be in his nature to be threatening.”
Whether or not the Kemp team’s threats about primaries will even be necessary remains an open question as SB 68 works its way through the legislative process. It just passed the Senate with a vote of 33-21, with some rumored “no” votes instead opting for “yes.” At this point, it’s mere speculation to suggest that the threats had the intended effect. The coming weeks, as the bill moves to the House, are sure to be interesting—if not testy.
