Those of us in the press corps who have covered Gov. Brian Kemp long enough have gotten used to a certain laid back demeanor — a country pace in a city setting, an easy smile and frequent talk about his wife and three daughters, “Marty and the girls.”
Part of that is a function of Kemp’s generally low-key personality. But it’s also a function of the fact that Kemp has become so uniquely powerful during his two terms in office that he rarely has to go out of his way to remind people of it.
That all changed Thursday, when Cody Hall, the top political adviser to Kemp, made an appearance on the AJC’s “Politically Georgia” radio show with a new and unusual hardball message from Kemp to his fellow Republicans at the Capitol: vote with the governor or else.
Practically ripping a page out of the President Donald Trump campaign playbook, Hall warned for the first time that Kemp is prepared to spend a portion of his $4.5 million campaign war chest against anyone, especially incumbent GOP lawmakers, if they fail to support his priority bill overhauling Georgia’s litigation laws this year.
“This is his top legislative priority. (Kemp) has a political infrastructure and a political organization that is committed to supporting his priorities,” Hall said. “And we’re going to make darn sure that folks that were with us are supported. But we’re also going to make sure that voters are reminded of those who do not stand with him.”
The threat from a top Kemp aide against fellow Republicans left many in disbelief.
“The governor is a close friend. I’ve known him since I was 20. I was even one of his floor leaders,” said Sen. Blake Tillery, a Republican attorney in Vidalia who is also the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “He’s also a former senator. He has a profound respect for the legislative process. To see someone contradict the governor’s stated desire to allow the process to work out makes me question if they are actually speaking for him.”
A GOP House member who is still undecided on the measure couldn’t believe his ears either. He wouldn’t believe it “until I hear Gov. Kemp say it,” he said.
In the same interview Thursday, Hall reminded those Republicans that Kemp is the most popular public official in the state, and that in his opinion, Kemp has never asked Republican members of the Legislature to take a tough vote for him. “Never. It has always been, let’s work together as a team.”
But Hall wasn’t done. “Let’s do the right thing. Let’s be reasonable,” he continued. “If there are members of the Legislature that consider this a tough vote, I think they should look at the governor’s track record of taking arrows for them.”
The warning from Hall came after an unprecedented lobbying effort by the governor and his political team up to this point. Along with an early declaration this year that the litigation overhaul would be his top priority, Kemp also held a splashy Capitol news conference last month with hundreds of supporters and lobbyists turning out in a show of force. After that came a first-ever $1 million messaging push from Kemp’s PAC targeting members in their districts, including Republicans. Then came phone calls and texts from the governor himself to holdouts on the bill.
Even then, with a Senate vote planned for Friday morning, whip counts for passing the bill were still dicey for Kemp. So Hall was dispatched with a radio-ready message for the fence-sitters on Thursday — pass the bill, without amendments that weaken it, or suffer the consequences.
But the thorny issue of “tort reform,” as it’s called in the Capitol, has vexed Republican governors for the last two decades. The most recent package of lawsuit limits passed back in 2005, only to see the Georgia Supreme Court overturn much of its language on constitutional grounds five years later.
Unlike Kemp’s earlier priorities, such as drastically tightening abortion restrictions or loosening gun laws, the natural constituency for tort reform scrambles the usual partisan math at the Capitol. Conservatives can’t necessarily be counted on to support Kemp’s plan if they are also plaintiffs attorneys in their day jobs, who oppose all or parts of the measure. The House and Senate both have enough of those lawyers in their ranks to sink or drastically weaken what the governor wants to see done. It also doesn’t help that GOP officials cannot say the state’s racing insurances rates will fall if the lawsuit-focused bill passes.
“It is obviously an issue that the governor cares very deeply about,” said Edward Lindsey, a former House GOP leader who is also a lawyer in Atlanta. “At the end of the day, every legislator has to go back to their district and face their voters, and this is going to be a difficult vote for some folks.”
What’s the hardball all about? Along with the chance to notch the white whale of conservative legislative victories, people close to Kemp say his near obsession with the topic is driven by his early days as the bootstrapping founder of Kemp Construction, the early part of his origin story that he’s never really left behind. He has said many times that small businesses in Georgia are struggling to pay for spiraling insurance costs, which he says are driven by the state’s current litigation rules.
Also, he’s the most powerful politician in the state, who has gotten used to getting what he wants.
But nothing is assured when it comes to tort reform, even for Kemp and his political team. As of Thursday night, Tillery and plenty of other GOP senators had not committed to anything. “I’m always confident cooler heads prevail,” Tillery said. “And something works out.”
It turns out something did work out. A last-minute deal with the governor, hours after Hall’s appearance, created a third-way option that gave the holdouts some of what they wanted, along with giving Kemp a win. The Senate voted 33 to 21 to pass the new bill Friday. Tillery and many of the other uncommitted GOP lawyers in the chamber voted yes.
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