Endorsed by Trump, Brian Kemp wins runoff to become Republican candidate for Governor of Georgia

.
Kemp responds to 10 Obama DHS intrusions: 12/15/2016, “Georgia secretary of state [Brian Kemp] says cyber attacks traced to DHS addresses,” wsbtv.com, Aaron Diamant 

“The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office now confirms 10 separate cyber attacks on its network [in 2016] were all traced back to U.S. Department of Homeland Security addresses.“…(article at end of this post)
…………………………. 

7/24/18, “Trump-backed candidate wins Georgia governor nomination,“ The Hill, Reid Wilson 

“Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R) completed his surprise comeback on Tuesday, claiming the Republican nomination for governor after winning late endorsements from President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. 

Kemp, serving his second term as secretary of State, bested Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle (R) in a low-turnout runoff two months after Cagle finished first in the primary, the Associated Press reported. 

Cagle called Kemp to concede the race about an hour-and-a-half after polls closed, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. In the end, the contest wasn’t even close. With 36 percent of the vote reporting, Kemp had taken 69 percent. Cagle finished with 32 percent…. 

The results are a reversal from the May 22 primary, when Cagle finished first with 39 percent of the vote. Kemp, less well-known and funded, took about 26 percent of the vote in the primary, while four others split the remainder. 

Kemp will now face Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams, a former minority leader in the Georgia statehouse and the first African-American woman to be nominated by a major party to run for governor. 

Cagle, who had support from term-limited Gov. Nathan Deal (R) and the National Rifle Association, appeared headed for the nomination early on, even as polls during the runoff showed Kemp closing the gap. 

But days before voters headed to the polls, President Trump offered Kemp an unexpected endorsement on Twitter.  

“Brian Kemp is running for Governor of the great state of Georgia. The Primary is on Tuesday. Brian is tough on crime, strong on the border and illegal immigration,” Trump wrote last week. “He loves our Military and our Vets and protects our Second Amendment. I give him my full and total endorsement.” 

Over the weekend, Pence campaigned with Kemp at a rally in Macon....

Trump apparently arrived at his decision to back Kemp after talking with Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, himself a former Georgia governor, some of these officials said…. 

The GOP race also featured leaked recordings in which Cagle was heard complaining about the Republican primary and saying he had backed a bill he knew to be “bad public policy” because of political reasons.”
……………….

Among comments at Free Republic
…………………… 

“Kemp’s win is no surprise, consolidating the true Conservative support that had been spread between the second, third and fourth candidates back in May. The lopsided outcome was predictable early last week, as Cagle’s ads became more desperate and outrageous. 

President Trump’s endorsement was a smackdown of the duplicitous Lt. Gov Cagle, who as president of the senate had stabbed Conservative senators in the back. Cagle recently alleged that Kemp had “campaigned with John Kasich” in the 2016 primary, when in fact Secretary of State Kemp rightly declined to endorse anyone since he was responsible for conducting and certifying the election. Even worse, Cagle claimed to have been Trump’s man despite his own official endorsement of Jeb Bush.

FReepers should note that Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp spearheaded the 2016 “SEC Primary” in which seven Southern (i.e. Conservative) states held their primaries on March 1. This bold move angered the national GOP because it checked the earlier practice of scheduling liberal northern primaries early so RINO candidates could build early leads. The SEC primary was a key to Trump’s sweeping victory, and the president remembered. 

25 posted on 7/24/2018, 9:50:55 PM by Always A Marine”

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/3673573/posts?q=1&;page=29#29

…………………………

Added: NY Times report

………………….

7/24/18, “Brian Kemp Wins Georgia G.O.P. Runoff for Governor to Face Stacey Abrams,” NY Times, Alan Blinder, Jonathan Martin, Athens, Ga. 

“Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, captured the Republican nomination for governor Tuesday, easily dispatching the preferred candidate of the state party establishment after…a well-timed endorsement from the president himself…. 

On Tuesday afternoon, at a news conference in Atlanta, Mr. Cagle said he had been in weekly contact with the White House in pursuit of the president’s endorsement, and that Mr. Trump’s support for Mr. Kemp came “somewhat out of nowhere.” He said he had been told up until Mr. Trump tweeted his endorsement that the president would not take sides….

Mr. Cagle appeared in a ballroom at an Atlanta hotel to concede about 90 minutes after the polls closed. Calling Mr. Kemp “a dear personal friend of mine for a long, long time,” Mr. Cagle urged his supporters to put aside the ugly primary fight and back Mr. Kemp against Ms. Abrams…. 

According to results from The Associated Press, Mr. Kemp held a nearly 40-point lead in Tuesday’s runoff over his opponent, Casey Cagle, the state’s lieutenant governor.”…Image by NY Times, Kemp on 7/24/18

………………………. 

Added: As Georgia Sec. of State, Brian Kemp defended his state against ten attempted cyber attacks on state government files in 2016 by the Obama DHS: 

12/15/2016, “Georgia secretary of state [Brian Kemp] says [2016] cyber attacks traced to DHS addresses, wsbtv.com, Aaron Diamant 

“The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office now confirms 10 separate cyberattacks on its network were all traced back to U.S. Department of Homeland Security addresses. 

In an exclusive interview, a visibly frustrated Secretary of State Brian Kemp confirmed the attacks of different levels on his agency’s network over the last 10 months. He says they all traced back to DHS internet provider addresses. 

“We’re being told something that they think they have it figured out, yet nobody’s really showed us how this happened,” Kemp said. “We need to know.” 

Kemp told Channel 2’s Aaron Diamant his office’s cybersecurity vendor discovered the additional so-called vulnerability scans to his network’s firewall after a massive mid-November cyberattack triggered an internal investigation. 

The Secretary of State’s Office manages Georgia’s elections, and most concerning for Kemp about the newly discovered scans is the timing. 

The first one happened on Feb. 2, the day after Georgia’s voter registration deadline. The next one took place just days before the SEC primary. Another occurred in May, the day before the general primary, and then two more took place in November, the day before and the day of the presidential election. 

“It makes you wonder if somebody was trying to prove a point,” Kemp said. 

Last week, the DHS confirmed the large Nov. 15 attack traced back to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection internet gateway. But Kemp says the DHS’ story about its source keeps changing. 

“First it was an employee in Corpus Christi, and now it’s a contractor in Georgia,” Kemp said. 

Unsatisfied with the response he got from DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson this week, Kemp fired off a letter Wednesday to loop in President-elect Donald Trump. 

“We just need to ask the new administration to take a look at this and make sure that we get the truth the people of Georgia are deserving to know that and really demanding it,” Kemp said.

Kemp says several of those scans came around the same time he testified before Congress about his opposition to a federal plan to classify election systems as “critical infrastructure,“ like power plants and financial systems. 

Kemp believes Georgia’s state-run election systems are already secure and doesn’t think the feds should be involved. 

The DHS did not return Diamant’s emails seeking comment Tuesday.”



..............