Picking His Fights

By Michael Warren

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

 

When I sat down with Brian Kemp at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta earlier this week, I had no expectations that the outgoing two-term Republican governor was going to announce a presidential run (he didn’t) or declare some major break with his party’s leader (he and Donald Trump are on good terms these days).

 

But I was intrigued during our hour-long conversation to hear the 62-year-old governor draw some distinctions between his own brand of Republican politics and those of the current leader and his presumptive heir, J.D. Vance—perhaps the kind of thing you might expect from someone with ambitions to run for higher office.

 

“Is the Republican Party still a party of free markets?” I asked.

 

“Well, some of us are,” Kemp replied.

 

We had been discussing whether Republican thinking is changing on issues involving economics, government intervention, and free markets. “I think there’s a lot of debate out there on that right now with kind of the whole new populism and other things,” Kemp said. When it comes to economic policy, he is a conventional conservative, preferring fewer regulations on business, less public spending, and lower taxes. For four of the last five years, most Georgia taxpayers have qualified for a small tax refund thanks to a budget surplus. The governor has also suspended the state’s gas tax at various times and signed into law caps on property tax increases.

 

Kemp’s economic approach is conventional, almost boring, and it’s clear from our conversation (the full video is here) he thinks it’s the right way forward for Republicans searching for an answer to the dissatisfaction with the Trump administration’s economic record as well as responding to the rise in popularity of democratic socialism among young Americans.

 

“We can’t just say the other side’s bad, they’re socialist or they’re communist or whatever. You know, we’ll do plenty of that,” Kemp said. “But we’ve also got to say, but this is why you need to vote for us because this is what we did in the past, and this is what we’re going to do in the future.”

 

Kemp was talking about his own record in Georgia, where he remains relatively popular, but the governor was more circumspect in his assessment of how Republican leaders in Washington are approaching economic policy.

 

Since last year, the federal government under Trump’s leadership has purchased equity stakes in more than two dozen companies, most notably computer component manufacturer Intel. When I asked about this, Kemp said that he didn’t know enough about the decision-making behind the deals, so he was wary of drawing conclusions.

 

“It’s not what my first blush would be,” he said of the administration’s moves. “I’m more of a keep-the-government-out-of-the-private-sector [person].”

 

Vance, meanwhile, said this month on a podcast (where else?) he thinks it’s a “good thing” that Trump has helped reorient Republican economic thinking away from free marketeer Milton Friedman and toward the more interventionist approach of Alexander Hamilton. The veep also recently said Republicans should stop the popularity of socialism not by “throwing slogans at people about the free market” but instead by “making people’s lives better.”

 

To Kemp, the way to make people’s lives better is to recommit to more limited government.

 

“Well, I’ve seen great benefit from government getting out of the way and letting entrepreneurs and small-business people thrive,” he said when I asked him about Vance’s comments. “We should create an environment for them to be able to do that. And I don’t think, you know, government being involved every step of the way is a way to make that happen.”

 

Kemp didn’t take the bait when I asked him which Republicans are not on the side of free markets, and the governor was not eager to directly criticize Trump or Vance. Even as he has occasionally and famously found himself at odds with Trump on matters of principle, Kemp has skillfully avoided being dragged into needless spats with the president.

 

But on a few other subjects he put some distance between the current administration and his own views.

 

The Iran War? “Well, I’m personally supportive of not letting Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Kemp said. “But there’s not a, I think, a clear vision for where we need to go and what we need to do. I do think that’s one thing that the president and his team could try to do a better job of, is just laying out and being honest with the American people and going, ‘Look, this is what we’re up against. This is what we’re trying to keep from happening. You know, we’re just going to have to be tough to get through this.’”

 

What about the government taking a stake of some kind in the major artificial intelligence companies, an idea that both Trump and Bernie Sanders have separately expressed interest in? “Well, anything that Bernie Sanders would want to take a stake in would give me great pause,” Kemp said. Even if the president supports the idea, too? “I’ll just leave it at that,” Kemp replied, grinning.

 

Although Kemp is perhaps best known for his willingness to stand firm while Trump unsuccessfully pressured him and other Georgia officials to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential results in his state, he remains aligned with Trump and mainstream Republican views on many policy goals related to “election integrity.” He seemed open to the idea, expressed in the Trump-backed SAVE America election bill, of a national photo ID requirement for voting. “I mean, if we got to have … ID to get on an airplane, you know, I’m not opposed to us doing that when we vote,” he said. He also shrugged off the Trump administration’s investigation into Fulton County’s voting system.

 

“If they want to look into Fulton County, you know, five, six years later, have at it,” Kemp said. “So if they want to go back and double check that, or if they got more information and want to do something, I don’t have a problem with that. But that’s not something that I’m dwelling on right now. I’m trying to stay forward-thinking, and I think Republicans should do that. And if we don’t, it’s going to be a rough 2026.”

 

So enough about the current administration, philosophical debates, and 2026—what about 2028? In the burgeoning discourse about potential Republican candidates, Kemp undoubtedly takes a back seat to Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, if for no other reason than that the conversation seems to be driven by the question of who will receive the all-important endorsement of Donald Trump.

 

But strip away the current GOP incentive structure, and on paper, Kemp looks exactly like the kind of person who would consider a White House run. He’s a successful two-term governor of a large swing state. He has gained a big national profile, not just for his fights with Trump over the 2020 election but because of controversial bills he signed into law, such as a six-week abortion restriction that sparked some brief boycotts from Hollywood and a voting law that prompted Major League Baseball to move its 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta. (Kemp can feel vindicated, since Georgia’s entertainment production industry remains robust and MLB brought the game back to Atlanta in 2025.) He leaves office in January, freeing him up to campaign in the early primary states. Kemp has survived and thrived during the Trump era, carving out his own identity, governing as an old-school conservative and being a good partisan soldier for the GOP. What’s for Republican primary voters not to like?

 

When I asked him what he says to people who suggest he should run for the big job, he demurred. “Well, I tell them that they should stay focused on 2026,” Kemp said. It’s not a denial that he’s interested, and there are other signs he’s at least thinking about it. I was not surprised, for example, to see Kemp’s wife, Marty, in the room for our interview; she’s known among Georgia Republicans for taking a more active role in her husband’s political strategy than is typical for political spouses. Another sign was his answer to my question about what would be better for the GOP in 2028: a top-down selection and coronation of the next presidential nominee, or a serious debate among multiple candidates for the nomination?

 

“Well, it depends on what happens in 2026,” Kemp said. “I think the verdict’s still out on that. But I also think that you’re going to have robust debate always in a presidential race, no matter what the situation.”

 

My translation: A disastrous or even merely disappointing midterm election for the GOP could inspire the party to widen its search beyond the Trump administration for a potential standard-bearer. In that scenario, why wouldn’t Kemp at least get a look-see—from donors and from primary voters?

 

Here’s one final thing: Kemp noted that while most Republicans would probably declare themselves pro-free market, some really are embracing the idea of bigger government to answer America’s economic concerns. But Kemp is not worried about “people that are saying things like that,” he said. “I’ll put our record up against anybody’s.