Republican Governor of Georgia Brian Kemp says he has a problem with boycotts, especially those related to Georgia’s new voting restriction law. But apparently the boycott only applies to Democrats and the issues he supports, because Kemp proposed his own boycotts.
Kemp and his campaign recently reunited false attacks on Democratic rival Stacey Abrams, accusing her of, falsely, of fueling a boycott of the Major League Baseball League. 2021 in Georgia as a means to pressure conservatives to repeal the new voting law that Georgia passed in April 2021.
While Abrams did not encouraging that boycott — and in fact, openly discouraging it — Kemp personally called on Georgians to boycott companies when it fit his political agenda and demanded that the founders state law taking punitive economic action against Georgia-based Delta Airlines because of ideological differences.
“Last year, Stacey Abrams pressured MLB to move the All-Star game out of Georgia,” Kemp said. tweeted in July. “After costing Georgia businesses $100 MILLION in lost revenue, imagine the damage Abrams would do to our economy if she were elected Governor.”
Last week, Kemp’s press secretary, Tate Mitchell, tweeted that “Abrams actively encouraged businesses to boycott Georgia and expose it when she was caught lying about it,” and contrasted that statement with Kemp’s economic record.
The Kemp team even built a campaign advertising around false statement, allegations that Abrams and MLB “stealed” the All-Stars Match from Georgia. .
But in 2018, when Kemp was campaigning for governor, he encouraged people to boycott major companies against the arms industry in the wake of the Parkland massacre. Kemp sees the move as an expression of longstanding conservative “free market” values.
In one interview With AmmoLand about a month after the shooting, Kemp was asked how gun owners can “fight” corporations “from Wal-Mart to Citibank” that are “trying to impose their beliefs on we”.
“I believe in the free market. If businesses are targeting Second Amendment advocates, we, as private citizens, should express our objections with our wallets,” Kemp replied.
Last month — about two weeks after Parkland — Kemp asked state lawmakers to use economic measures to punish Georgia-based Delta airline after the company’s “unwise decision” about termination of its relationship with the National Rifle Association.
In a press release still posted on its campaign website, Kemp called Delta a “corporate coward” and said the move against the NRA had “jeopardized” a tax cut that was expected to “save the airline.” millions of dollars”.
Kemp, who was Georgia’s secretary of state at the time, opposed the tax cut and used controversial ideology to ask state lawmakers to “replace it with a sales tax holiday that benefits those in need.” advocate for the 2nd Amendment that Delta — and other cowardly companies — are publicly ashamed of. “
“If state legislators do not want to put hardworking Georgians first in this session, I will do it in 2019 as the next governor of Peach state,” Kemp announced.
Those two moves would seem to cut Kemp’s continued attacks against Abrams. However, the attacks began to be baseless: Abrams, as Camp Kemp says, discouraged the boycott that led MLB to pull the All-Star game out of Atlanta that year.
When that claim surfaced this year, PolitiFact evaluate it’s “Wrong”, quoting Abrams himself – a problem the site also has handle after Kemp’s attacks at the time. As it turns out, the state’s most influential Democrat has actually taken the opposite view, asking supporters to “do not boycott” Georgia.
In one video posted to Twitter in March 2021, Abrams said she understood the “passion” behind calls for a nationwide boycott in response to controversial voting restrictions Kemp signed.
“But here’s the thing: Blacks, Latinos, AAPIs (Asian Pacific Islanders) and Native Americans with the most suppressed votes under SB 202 are also likely to be vulnerable. most by potential boycotts of Georgia,” Abrams said. “To our friends across the country please don’t boycott us. To my fellow Georgians, stay and fight, stay and vote”.
Kemp’s tweet last month that Abrams “pressured” MLB to withdraw the All-Star game is quoted from Fox News report from April 2021, runs with the headline: “MLB commissioner decides to move All-Star Game following pressure from Stacey Abrams on voting issues: sources.”
Those anonymous sources, however, did not say that Abrams pressured the federation to postpone the game, but asked the commissioner to strongly denounce the new voting law. During those meetings, Abrams encouraged MLB not to pull the game out of Georgia, because Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein then reported, and tournament confirmed to PolitiFact.
In response to a question from The Daily Beast, Kemp’s press secretary Tate Mitchell – who went after Abrams in the boycott issue last week – explicitly asserted that Abrams edited himself. USA Today op-ed, and asserted that Kemp “never supported boycotting our state.
“While Stacey Abrams may be the first candidate in history to edit her own op-ed after she was called out to support reckless boycotts of our state, she is couldn’t run away from my wake-up record,” Mitchell said — referring to an update Abrams did not do voluntarily, but at the request of USA Today. “Governor Kemp has never supported boycotting our state, and under his leadership, high paying jobs and new investment are breaking records in the Peach State. The Governor also took swift action to help the Georgians fight 40 years of high inflation caused by failed liberal policies and will continue to combat the disastrous Biden-Abrams agenda. “
The op-ed regarding the dispute of amendments Abrams made after MLB moved the All Star game to Denver — amendments added To orders of USA Today. But while Abrams took the opportunity to bring down Republicans and former President Donald Trump (who had floated the idea of canceling the sport as a national pastime), she remained unchanged. his base school on this issue.
“Instead of boycotting, I strongly urge other events and products that do business in Georgia and speak out against our laws and similar proposals in other states,” she wrote.
