by Jay Bookman, Georgia Recorder, [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission]

May 1, 2025

Brian Kemp is not a large man, but he is the Big Dawg. The scramble doesn’t start until the two-term governor says it starts.

But once Kemp makes up his mind whether to run for the U.S. Senate next year, he will set off a mad dash by politicians of both parties hoping to move up a notch or two in Georgia’s political hierarchy. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is making noises like she might be one of them.

I don’t mean to scare you. Greene is one of those politicians who can’t be beaten within her district, but who can’t win outside that district. She can’t win a statewide general election in Georgia. She probably can’t win a statewide primary either. 

Look at the numbers: In the 2024 election cycle, Donald Trump carried Greene’s north Georgia district by 37 percentage points, while Greene won it by 29 points. If you underperform Trump by 8 points in your own district, if a good number of your own voters are willing to embrace Trump but find you too bizarre, then trying to win statewide is a fool’s mission.

Which by definition means she might try anyway. 

On Saturday, standing before a banner reading “Save America. Stop Communism,” Greene told an annual convention of her home-district Republicans that “the Democrat Party is overcome with evil,” and she urged them to help the GOP take back the U.S. Senate seat won five years ago by Jon Ossoff.

“It was never theirs to begin with,” Greene said to cheers and applause. “That was stolen, that Senate seat was stolen, and so was Warnock’s Senate seat stolen, just like Donald Trump’s election was stolen in 2020.”

It’s always tempting, and often unfair, to use a party’s more extreme personalities to characterize the party as a whole. Republicans do it, and so do Democrats. But in listening to Greene’s comments, I was struck by the fact that in the second Trump administration, Greene is closer in tone and content to the Republican mainstream than she was in his first term. She has gone from outlier to MAGA mainstream, and it isn’t Greene that has moderated her attitude. The second Trump regime has moved much closer to Greene’s view of the world. 

Consider the role of free trade. In her remarks, Greene offered a pretty accurate description of Georgia and its current importance in the global economy.

“Georgia is the economic hub of the Southeast,” she noted. “Georgia has the third largest port in America. That is incredible control of shipping and trade. Georgia has the busiest airport in the world, in the city of Atlanta. Georgia has two corridors, I-75 and I-85, that run through our state, branching out into our neighboring states. That’s more trade, that’s interstate, that’s commerce. Georgia is the economic hub of the Southeast, and the Democrats want to take control of it just like they took control of California years ago and just like they control New York.”

The economy that she describes is the investment of generations, investment that has made Georgia more productive and prosperous than most of its Southern neighbors. Everything she cites – our ports, our highways, Hartsfield-Jackson airport – are publicly funded infrastructure. 

But as we’re about to be reminded in the next few months, a Georgia economy built on logistics and global commerce is also much more vulnerable to the disruptive, chaotic and undisciplined trade policies of the Trump regime. In fact, it’s probably not accurate to describe them as policies at all. They seem to be more the product of urges and resentments than of rational planning.

That’s certainly how Greene’s economic “theory” comes across.

“I’m tired of our state leaders importing foreign countries’ companies to our state, claiming job creation,” she told the crowd. “You want to know the reality? That big old battery plant in Cartersville….? Here’s the reality: They’re bringing in something like 200 to 300 families from Korea to work in that battery plant.

“They didn’t create jobs in Georgia by doing this, they are importing jobs into Georgia.”

That “big old battery plant” is a joint venture between two Korean firms, expected to employ thousands to build enough electric batteries to power 300,000 electric vehicles a year. At the Indeed job-search site, the plant is advertising engineering jobs paying up to $120,000 a year, shift supervisors making $34 an hour, jobs that provide 401ks and health insurance, with production slated to begin later this year.

But according to Greene, “that’s not what Georgia needs to be doing … they’re not helping Georgia be Georgia. It’s changing Georgia, and we’ve all witnessed this for years now, starting with the Hollywood tax credits.

“I do not want to associate with those (Hollywood) people. I don’t like their values, I don’t like their award ceremonies, I don’t want them living in our state and taking advantage of our tax dollars … We need to be supporting Georgia-born and -bred companies in our state.

“Georgia has been invaded,” she asserted. “Georgia has been watered down. Georgia is on the verge of being lost.”

As Greene noted, that’s the Georgia First version of the America First approach taken by Trump, and both versions are economically illiterate and irrational. The damage that they could potentially do – the damage that has already been done – will undo the work of generations and require generations to repair.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.