ATLANTA – Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley hit the campaign trail Friday with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, praising the Republican for reopening Georgia businesses during the pandemic earlier than most of his counterparts.
“The courage we have seen from Gov. Brian Kemp has been extraordinary,” Haley told reporters during a late afternoon stop at The Varsity restaurant in Midtown Atlanta. “He’s the one who saved the economy for businesses like The Varsity.”
The Kemp campaign has reminded voters that his Democratic challenger, Stacey Abrams, opposed the governor’s decision to reopen the economy during the pandemic’s early months in 2020 as a “dangerously incompetent” decision that would put Georgians’ health at risk.
“Because our state has been open, we’ve had great revenue … two record years of economic development,” Kemp said.
On Friday, Kemp said he moved quickly when the pandemic struck Georgia to augment hospital staffing and medical supplies to cope with the outbreak of COVID-19, just as he is moving now to fill the gap in health-care delivery looming when Wellstar’s Atlanta Medical Center closes on Nov. 1.
“Expanding Medicaid would not save that facility,” the governor said. “I’m sitting down to find a solution. … We’re going to figure this out.”
Abrams has said Medicaid expansion would be a top priority if she defeats Kemp in November. Georgia is one of only 12 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act a then-Democratic Congress passed more than a decade ago.
Kemp and other Republican governors have been criticized in recent weeks for taking credit for federal pandemic relief flowing into their states due to acts of Congress they opposed.
“I’m taking the money they’re spending way too much of and putting it out to help people in our state,” the governor said.
Kemp complained that Georgia hasn’t received its fair share of pandemic aid because the formula being used to allocate the money is penalizing Georgia for the state’s low unemployment rate.
The Democratic Party of Georgia used Haley’s appearance with Kemp as another example of the governor aligning himself with politicians taking extreme positions on abortion.
“Brian Kemp continues palling around with extremists who want to pass a national ban on abortion or make abortion illegal with no exceptions — dangerous positions that threaten Georgians’ lives, health, and freedom,” Democratic spokesman Max Flugrath said.
Haley, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the administration of former President Donald Trump, said the Democrats’ emphasis on the abortion issue since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion isn’t resonating with voters as much as inflation, rising crime and international threats.
“From what I’m hearing around the country, abortion is about fifth,” she said.
For his part, Kemp said there’s been a lot of misinformation circulating about the “heartbeat” bill the General Assembly passed in 2019 banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. He said the Supreme Court did the right thing by turning over decisions on abortion to the states.
Haley also appeared in Norcross earlier on Friday with Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.