DALTON — John King, a Georgia Republican who hopes for the opportunity to try to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff next year, predicted that it will be the highest priority election in the nation.
King, Georgia’s insurance and safety fire commissioner, was among the speakers Friday as the state Republican Convention rumbled to a start in Dalton. Speaking to a crowd of several hundred in the local convention center, King said the stakes in the race are high, clearly implying to the delegates that that’s why they should back him during the primary.
“This is going to be the most watched, most expensive race in the United States,” said King, a former law enforcement officer and retired major general of the U.S. Army National Guard. “We can’t get this one wrong.”
King was a policeman in Atlanta, then worked his way up to police chief in Doraville. Gov. Brian Kemp ignited King’s political career by appointing him to fill a vacant seat as insurance commissioner in 2019, a post King later won by election in 2022.
King said he retired from the National Guard two years ago after 42 years of service. In a foreshadowing of the campaign he might employ if he wins the Republican primary, he told a story about what happened just before that, after President Joe Biden ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021.
One of King’s Afghan sources contacted him, hoping for a way out of the country. So King said he tried to reach Ossoff’s office for help, but said he got none.
Finally, King said his Afghan source abandoned hope for himself and just asked to get his daughters out of the country.
“That still crushes me,” King said.
King accused Ossoff of being too “afraid” and “incompetent” to “take a stand” and help him and that “America paid a price for his weakness.”
King declared his candidacy after Kemp announced last month that he would not be running for Ossoff’s Senate seat. King’s announcement came days after U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter of St. Simons Island became the first high profile Republican to enter the race after Kemp said he was out.
Regan Box spoke too on Friday, saying she was the first Republican to declare for the race — two years ago. She said she’s driven over 100,000 miles to visit a hundred Georgia counties. She said she is against funding the war in Ukraine and she is for changes to Social Security and Medicaid. In the first quarter of this year, she raised over $10,000.
Others are expected to enter the race, too. Whoever emerges from the primary fight will have to face the most prolific fundraiser in the Senate.
Ossoff raised more than $11 million during the first quarter of the year, the most ever by a U.S. Senate incumbent in the first three months of an off-year.