The Dispatch Podcast - The White House Runs Through Georgia

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Josh McKoon won his bid to become chairman of the Georgia GOP. McKoon inherits fractured relationships and a storied past between elected officials. Join Dispatch Politics Reporter Audrey Fahlberg for his strategy on unifying Georgia’s GOP, which includes: -Grassroots activism and big donor capture -Working with Kemp -Staying neutral during primaries -Firing Joe Biden -Topics of concern for GOP voters: crime, inflation, America not leading on world stage Show Notes: -Watch: Audrey interviews Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon -Tuesday's Dispatch Politics newsletter with Audrey Fahlberg's Georgia reporting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Josh McCune, thank you for joining the Dispatch podcast, and congratulations on winning your race at last week's Republican Party convention in Georgia. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for your good wishes. Yeah, let's dive right in. So tell me about your 2024 strategy. As you have pointed out, the White House runs through Georgia. How do you plan to deliver Georgia for the Republican presidential nominee next cycle? Walk us through your grassroots organizing, door-knocking, and fundraising strategy? Sure. So when it comes to our grassroots leaders, we need to make sure that we set an expectation for those leaders and give them the tools to be successful.

So that's going to mean live in-person training for our county chairman, our precinct chairman, and our volunteers on the basic blocking and tackling of politics. I told people throughout the campaign, being state chairman's not the most important job in this organization. It's each one of our precinct chairs. Building strong grassroots organizations at a neighborhood level is what will make

the difference in this election. So that's really important. Fundraising is also crucial. We've had a lot of success over the last four years with our fundraising strategy here, locally building up our Georgia Republican Party Foundation. We're planning on building on that. But our strategy really is to give people at every level the opportunity to invest.

So whether I'm a grassroots activist that wants to donate at a small recurring level, or I'm someone that's able to invest at a greater level, we're going to give all those folks an opportunity to participate financially and be very aggressive to raise the financial resources we need to win next November. So you're about a week into the job. But where do you see room for improvement from your predecessors' tenure as chairman? I think a big thing that we can do better and build on is our internal and external communication. So we have a lot of stakeholders with the Georgia Republican Party.

We have our elected officials. We have our donors. We have our grassroots leaders. Our state committee, our state executive committee, all of those folks need to be kept in the loop on what we're doing. And so I've spent a lot of time over the last week. renewing some of those relationships, working on building those relationships. That's really important. And then on the external communication side, there are two issues that I want the Georgia Republican Party to continue to put in front of Georgia voters. One is public safety, where we have seen Democrats

asleep on the job in district attorney's offices around the state, having terrible human consequences in terms of an increase in crime in communities. Everyone wants to be safe. That's not a R versus D issue. The other issue we want to continue to draw people's attention to is the economy. While Georgia is experiencing great economic growth, the Biden inflation is causing lots of problems for people, particularly on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. So we're going to spend a lot of time talking about the human cost of electing Democrats, both in terms of public safety and the economy. Let's talk about some recent statewide elections. Speaking before the convention last week, your predecessor, former chairman Schaefer mentioned, multiple times that during his tenure, the Georgia GOP

raked in more than $64 million. After the 2022 midterms, Republicans still control most statewide constitutional offices and majorities in the state legislature. But what about Herschel Walker's Senate defeat? His November 22 loss, of course,

comes on the heels of the January 2021 runoffs when Kelly Leffler and David Purdue lost and Democrats ended up retaking the Senate. I mean, with all those resources at the Georgia GOP's disposal, what went wrong in these three Senate races in particular? Do you think that Trump played a role in dampening turnout? Do you think that candidate quality mattered? So I think those two elections are very different. The 2021 runoff came in the teeth of the 2020 election. And I think everyone can agree that the 2020 election

was unprecedented. We had never had a situation in Georgia before. We're all million registered voters received an absentee ballot application from the Secretary of State's office. We had never had drop boxes randomly assigned throughout the state. And in the wake of that election and the president's contest of that election, which was never heard by a Georgia judge, it frankly discouraged a lot of Republican voters. And if you look at the turnout in the January 2021 runoff, it bears that out, particularly northwestern Georgia, the 14th, congressional district, which is very Republican territory, we didn't have everybody come back out. And it's because a significant number of people have a crisis of confidence in our electoral

process. And we're still dealing with that today. The Herschel Walker race, I think, had a lot more to do with Republicans not being able to come together and be united. I went all over the state talking about the contrast between the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race in 2022 and the race in Georgia. Because in both races, you had candidates that I'm sure people could point out issues with. When it came to John Federman, he unfortunately had a stroke. Anyone that watched those televised debates could tell he was going to struggle to serve as a United States Senator, but you didn't hear any Democrats going on national television saying, I don't know if I can vote for John Federman. And unfortunately, in Georgia, we had prominent elected

Republicans go on national television outlets and say, well, I showed up to the polls for the runoff, but I just couldn't pull the trigger for our nominee for U.S. Senate. And in a race that we lost by less than five votes per precinct, when you're projecting that kind of lack of confidence in your own candidate, that causes a problem. That's why I have been so focused on bringing us together, because whoever the Republican nominee for president is, we've got to be united to fire Joe Biden. want to do that, we can't have any daylight between us and our presidential nominee, whoever that winds up being. So clearly, party unity was a really big part of your platform, as you just discussed.

But to be frank, I mean, there's still some pretty fresh wounds here between Republican Governor Brian Kemp and the Georgia GOP. Your predecessor, former Chairman Schaefer caught some flack from Kemp World last cycle, and he declined to back the incumbent and his reelection bid against Trump-backed a gubernatorial primary challenger, former Senator Perdue. For listeners who may not be familiar, Kemp ended up winning that primary, and then he later defeated Stacey Abrams and the general.

Do you think that it was wise for your predecessor to stay neutral in that primary? Well, I'm not going to really get into what happened in 2022 or 2020. I'm looking ahead to 2024. I enjoy a very good relationship with Governor Kemp and a lot of our other statewide elected officials. Really one of the things I thought I brought to the table as a candidate for chairman because of my service in the state senate, these are not folks that I'm having to get introduced to. They're people I have longstanding relationships with. I have a relationship with Governor Kemp

going back to his run for Agriculture Commissioner 17 years ago. And I'm excited to be working with him and our entire Republican team to fire Joe Biden in November of 2024. That's where my focus will be and will remain. Everything else to me is just noise. and we've got to stay focused on the job at hand. Talk to me a little bit more about how you plan to work with Kemp moving forward. He's made clear that he wants his state leadership pack and his federal PAC. He's going to use a lot of those funds to help deliver the White House for the Republican presidential nominee in Georgia. Talk to me a little bit more about how you plan to work with Kemp.

Yeah, I think when it comes to the governor's leadership pack, when it comes to Senator Leffler's greater Georgia organization, personally, I'm grateful as someone who's been not just a spectator of elections, but also someone that's participated in them as a candidate, we had cycle after cycle where the Democrats had fair fight action in this constellation of left-wing organizations. And it was sort of like playing a football game and the other team having twice as many players on the field. So I'm excited about the fact that we've got this additional infrastructure now to help us. And so I think what we need to make sure we do while following all the relevant laws that

governed this sort of conduct is that we try to cooperate as much as we can and not duplicate effort and try to make sure that that is a force multiplier for Republicans across the state. So that's certainly my intention is to be a teammate and to work well with the governor's political team to make sure we maximize that investment in Republican turnout. And a number of conversations I've had in recent days with Republican consultants and operatives and political junkies in Georgia. Everyone's really curious to hear whether you plan to put your thumb on the scale in primaries in Georgia moving forward. You're going to have a bunch of elections in 2026, which we can get to near the end of this podcast. Do you plan to stay neutral in all races or just back all incumbent Republicans moving forward no matter who the nominee is?

So our party rule on this subject is very clear, which is that, The chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, really all of our party officers, are supposed to stay neutral in Republican primaries. It is not my intention, and I have said over and over again during this campaign. I'm not going to put my thumb on the scale. You know, you had people saying, are you going to be for this presidential candidate or that presidential candidate? Absolutely not. Are we going to promote presidential candidates that come to Georgia? Absolutely.

We want them to have a tryout before Georgia Republican voters and to get to see as many of those folks as possible. But until we have a nominee, my job is to stay laser focused on promoting all the good work Republicans are doing from the courthouse to the state house to the Congress. And then once we have a nominee, we're going to be working every day to fire Joe Biden and replace them with whoever that is because we've got to put the adults back in charge of this country. So you've made clear that looking ahead, your goal is to look ahead and not look in the rear view mirror. there's growing concern from some Georgia Republican operatives and consultants about Trump's continued insistence that he won Georgia in 2020, all legal arguments aside here.

I mean, are you worried that his kind of continued insistence to kind of look in the rearview mirror and look at the 2020 election and insist that he lost that election? Are you worried that that might alienate independent voters moving forward if he is the nominee in 2024. So I think that whoever the nominee is in 2024, the focus of the Georgia Republican Party, and I believe, frankly, the focus of our presidential nominee will be on the failed economic policies of this administration, the abandonment of our allies in Afghanistan in a way that has damaged for, I think, a long time U.S. reputation on the world stage. Public safety, again, these woke left-wing DAs that are refusing to prosecute violent felons while pursuing

political agendas. I think all of those issues are going to be the issues that we focus on regardless of who our nominee is. And I think as long as we continue to put that in front of voters over and over again, choosing a Democrat means continued inflation, means dangerous circumstances in cities, and it means America not leading on the world stage. And I think that it If we stay focused on that message, Georgia voters are going to respond. We saw that in 2022. Governor Kemp, so many of our other statewide officials, not just winning, but winning with a margin. Governor Kemp winning re-election by the greatest margin since Sonny Perdue in 2006.

This state is still very much a center-right state. We just need to keep the focus on issues that voters are concerned about. And I believe those issues to be public safety, primarily public safety in the economy. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online

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We've done some of these other programs, but we really have to message to our voters make a plan. you've even seen the Republican National Committee come out with this bank the vote initiative. That's really, I think where you're going to see the biggest shift from our standpoint in terms of get out the vote is to make sure that our people that are out in the field are saying to folks, hey, no reason to wait until election day. Go ahead, go to your early voting location, vote in person, it's safe and secure. If you have a concern about the voting machines, which we continue to hear, take advantage of the paper absentee process. which is a totally separate process. But go ahead and vote now so that we don't have to, the way I would put it to you is a focus that is entirely on election day

is basically like saying we're going to go into the fourth quarter of the football game being down to touchdowns and then hope we can throw a couple of Hail Mary's on Election Day and nose ahead at the end. We don't want to do that. We want to be competing all the way along so that we don't have this Herculian effort that all goes into the election day voting process. So early voting, absentee voting, that's going to be a critical part of our plan, which I do think Democrats in the state have done for several cycles. I want to ask you about Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis's investigation into alleged interference in the 2020 election by Trump and others.

We don't need to get into the nitty-gritty legal details about the case, but I do want to ask about the parties and a party apparatus's involvement here. The Georgia GOP spent official party funds on behalf of the legal. defense fees to a couple law firms who are defending some of the quote unquote fake electors who signed certificates saying Trump on the election, the 2020 election there. Now that you have taken the reins, will you continue to use state party funds to pay their illegal fees? And will you use those funds if one of them is indicted? It's certainly my intention to defend all of our presidential electors to continue to underwrite the cost of that defense. These are volunteers. who signed up to be presidential electors,

they were given specific legal advice that casting these electoral votes was to preserve the president's right if his election contest was successful, which was still pending on December 14th, 2020. This happened in 1960, this happened in 1876. The only thing unprecedented about the 2020 election from an electoral college standpoint

is it's the only time I'm aware of in American history that people have been targeted for criminal prosecution for casting electoral votes, and that includes faithless electors. So we have to do this. These people signed up for this job to represent the Georgia Republican Party. We have to stand with them. We have to stand with them, frankly, because who's ever going to sign up to be a presidential elector? Again, if the Georgia Republican Party abandons them in the wake of this partisan prosecution and make no mistake about it, the intention of this is not a search for truth or justice. It is about trying to make political points so that they can win an election next year so that Fannie Willis can get written up in the New York Times. So folks like

you are talking about a district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia. And we're not going to abandon these folks. We're going to defend them. If it moves beyond a targeting stage to an indictment stage, we will defend them until this finally gets in front of someone who doesn't have a political agenda who will throw it out because it is a baseless case. You have pledged to back the Republican presidential nominee, no matter who it is. But the current runner is former President Donald Trump. The same day you were elected, chairman, Trump made his first public remarks since the Justice Department's indictment was unsealed.

I'm curious what you made of Trump's response in his speech to the 37 count indictment charging him on willfully retaining classified documents after leaving office and conspiring to obstruct the federal government's efforts to retrieve those documents. What did you make of his speech kind of condemning the indictment? I think, you know, I think he expressed a concern that many Georgia Republicans share, which is that we seem to be on the verge of developing a two-track criminal justice system, one for Democrats, one for Republicans. Members of federal law enforcement can mislead federal judges to get warrants to wiretap people,

and they're found not guilty by juries that I think are composed of partisan Democrats. Democrats can, like Sandy Berger, take things out of the National Archives. Joe Biden can have classified documents that should not be in the locations where they are. Hillary Clinton can have them on an email server, and none of those circumstances result in a criminal prosecution. And yet here we have in the onset of this presidential campaign, campaign, the current president of the United States having his attorney general order a prosecution of the leading candidate on the Republican side. That is incredibly dangerous for our republic. It's dangerous in terms of the precedents that are being broken. And I think a lot of

people have this idea that, well, it's Donald Trump, so I just have to do anything I can. And that's not that's not what we're built on. We're supposed to be a nation that's founded on this idea of the rule of law, that it applies equally to everyone. And so I think he was making that case. I share those concerns. And I think if we're going to prosecute people under the Espionage Act, if we're going to prosecute people for having classified materials they shouldn't have, then we need to be prosecuting everyone that violates that law, not just people that we decide need to be targeted for criminal prosecution. Now, we can close out with some 2026 punditry. all the focus seems to be on winning Georgia for Republicans in 2024.

But there already seems to be some positioning ahead of 2026 when Democratic Senator John Ossif is up for re-election and Brian Kemp, the current governor, will be termed out. How do you, it's very early, of course, but how do you see those races shaping up? Who do you see some prospective contenders? Obviously, former Senator Kelly Luffler was at the convention. She spoke. and Lieutenant Governor Bert Jones seems to have some pretty big political aspirations. I'll kick it over to you.

Yeah, so, I mean, the great thing about Georgia Republicans is we have an incredibly deep bench of talented policy leaders. And obviously, Governor Kemp showed tremendous courage in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic when everyone, every member of the chattering class was saying, stay closed, stay closed. he stood up to all of that pressure, reopened Georgia, and we have benefited economically ever since as a result of that courageous decision. I think that, you know, Senator Leffler showed tremendous courage in her time in office, and even after losing a hard-fought election, didn't walk away.

She obviously could if she wanted to, but she's so committed to this fight. What she's done with Greater Georgia is terrific. Of course, I had the opportunity to serve with Lieutenant Governor Jones. We've served together in the state senate. I think a lot of him. I think all of them are potential candidates. I think Secretary of State Brad Raffinsberger is a potential candidate for higher office. And I think some of our other constitutional officers are also potentially in that mix.

People like Labor Commissioner Bruce Thompson, Attorney General Chris Carr, Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper. The list really goes on and on. We have a lot of talented folks in Georgia who have conservative. credentials who have established themselves statewide. So 2026, the one thing we can say for sure, it's going to be a very exciting time to be a Georgia Republican. It is indeed. Thank you so much for your time. And we look forward to having you on again soon, Chairman. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. You know,