Donald Trump has hit out at his former vice president Mike Pence after he backed a candidate hated by the former POTUS.
There may be no politician that Donald Trump wants to see ousted more than Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, who defied the then-president's demand to overturn the state's 2020 US presidential election results that narrowly helped Joe Biden win the White House.
Trump has endorsed more than 150 candidates in this year's US congressional elections, seeking to deepen his imprint on the Republican Party and remove any adversaries from its ranks.
But Kemp appears poised to deal Trump his biggest rebuke of the midterm elections thus far in Tuesday's Georgia primary to choose a Republican nominee for governor.
The governor has built a massive lead in polling and fundraising over Trump's hand-picked Republican challenger, former U.S. Senator David Perdue.
Donald Trump
GAELEN MORSE
Former Vice President Mike Pence, who broke with Trump over the former president's effort to block the certification of Biden's election, appeared alongside Kemp at an election-eve rally on Monday.
“Mike Pence was set to lose a governor’s race in 2016 before he was plucked up and his political career was salvaged,” Taylor Budowich told the New York Times.
“Desperate to chase his lost relevance, Pence is parachuting into races, hoping someone is paying attention.”
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie also campaigned with Kemp in recent weeks.
Opinion polls show Kemp well above the 50% threshold required to win the nomination outright, avoiding a June runoff, with Perdue trailing far behind.
Kemp's success to date, despite a constant fusillade of insults from Trump, provides a potential roadmap for other Republicans eager to move past the former president's divisive obsession with the outcome of the 2020 election without alienating his still-substantial base of voters.
"I don't know if there's any politician in America who has been harangued by the former president like Brian Kemp," Eric Tanenblatt, a longtime Republican strategist, said. "His victory will hopefully make Republicans step back and say: I don't need to be so fearful."