Trump’s GOP frenemy is dunking his MAGA game in critical red state

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as he speaks to reporters onboard Air Force One, on travel from West Palm Beach, Florida, to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., February 16, 2026. REUTERS Elizabeth Frantz

Once considered safely red, Georgia has been regarded as an important battleground state ever since Joe Biden won there in 2020. While the state shifted back to the GOP when it went to President Donald Trump in 2024, now Republican Gov. Brian Kemp — who has had a strained relationship with Trump in recent years — is betting that Georgians are through with MAGA. As a result, he’s backing his own handpicked candidate for the Senate rather than two MAGA-aligned opponents supported by the president.

While Trump has endorsed congressmen Buddy Carter and Mike Collins, Kemp’s money is on former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley. This has angered some in the GOP, who accuse the popular governor of splitting the vote and potentially causing an expensive runoff. Were that to happen, frustrated Republicans argue, the state GOP would be forced to spend vital funding they would rather use in the 2028 presidential race, in which Georgia could prove to be a determining factor.

But Kemp has remained steadfast in his support of Dooley.

“To me, it’s about winning,” said Kemp. “If you look at where Republicans have beat Democratic incumbents, it’s all been political outsiders that have done that.”

To that end, Kemp and Dooley have set out to distinguish the latter from the two self-described “MAGA warriors” running with White House support. Instead of “using his stump speech to warn about Democrats’ secret Marxist Socialist agenda or to flamboyantly praise Trump as the greatest president in American history,” Dooley speaks about his experiences as a coach and community member. While he has been open about his support for the president, he asserts that solving the corruption in Washington “starts with leadership. It starts with sending a different kind of leader back in D.C.”

“... [Y]ou better have somebody that can find some common ground with voters that don’t always vote Republican,” Dooley said. “I don’t care if it’s white, a suburban mom, the Black community, Hispanic, Indian, and everybody deserves to be listened to. Everybody deserves respect.”

It may also be that Kemp has personal reasons for bucking the Trump candidates. The two had a very public falling out in 2020 after Kemp rejected Trump’s efforts to overturn the Georgia election results. In the years that followed, Trump frequently made Kemp a target of his attacks.

"He's a disloyal guy and he's a very average governor," Trump declared during a 2024 presidential rally. "Little Brian, little Brian Kemp, bad guy."

It could be that Kemp is over this kind of politics.

“We’ve got to have a different kind of candidate,” he recently told his fellow Republicans.

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