Kemp bus tour stops in Tifton
Published 5:00 pm Wednesday, March 7, 2018
- Kemp shaking hands with supporters during the bus stop in Tifton.
TIFTON — Secretary of State Brian Kemp visited Tifton Feb. 27 on his two-week “Putting Georgians First” bus tour of the state during his campaign for Georgia governor.
He made his stop at Lewis Taylor Farms and spent over an hour speaking with supporters and touring the facility.
Bill Brim, owner of Lewis Taylor Farms, said that Georgians need “somebody who knows something about business” in the governor’s seat.
Kemp told supporters that he wanted to focus on deregulation and supporting small business.
“This campaign is literally about putting Georgians first,” Kemp said. He wants to put Georgians ahead of special interests, “the status quo, the politically correct and those that are here illegally.”
He said he has spent a lot of time in Tift County and feels his familiarity with rural communities and their needs is a strong selling point.
“Y’all have a great business community and a great ag community,” he said. “That is a strength for our state going forward and one reason I’ve been talking so much about strengthening rural Georgia.”
He spoke about the need for high speed internet and better job opportunities to keep young people in rural parts of the state. He also highlighted the need to address the healthcare gap in rural counties.
“The answer is not what Democrats want to do, expanding Medicaid and throwing more government money at it,” he said. “That would be a nice short term solution but that’s not going to work long term.
“When you have populations decreasing in rural Georgia, no matter how much government money you throw you’re never going to be able to support and sustain that hospital.”
His plan is to provide opportunities and investment for people to stay in and move to rural parts of the state.
“You’ve got to have a tax base and tax-paying citizens to be able to support rural hospitals,” he said. “My plan will start building communities up and start creating opportunities where people will want to stay in rural Georgia and stop the population decline.”
He said education has the same problem.
“It’s hard to get people to move to a community that doesn’t have internet, that doesn’t have good opportunities for their kids,” he said. “It’s going to be hard work, but I’m ready to start on that and work with the local communities that want to help themselves.”
Kemp said that he supports the immigration changes President Trump and Congress have been working on and wants to encourage the agricultural economy and small business growth by reforming regulations on the state level. He also wants to work on tax reforms to give people other than “those who have a lobbyists in Atlanta” tax breaks.
“When we’re doing things at the capitol I want people to know that I’m going to be the governor that’s thinking about people in Tift County,” he said. “Not just somebody that’s getting paid to stomp the halls at the state capitol.”
Kemp said that rural Georgians feel they have a lot of great things they’re doing, but they also have a lot of issues they’re facing.
“Not having high-speed internet, the opioid crisis, rural healthcare, and I think they’re ready for somebody that will pay attention to those issues,” he said. “I think I understand that better than anybody else in the governor’s race because I’ve been to all 159 counties.”
The two week tour has taken him all over the state and people generally want the same thing, Kemp said.
“They want somebody that’s going to fight for them up there,” he said. “There’s a lot of angst among Republican primary voters and rural Georgians in general about who is out there fighting for them.”
“You’re going to have a governor in Brian Kemp that will be focused on our whole state,” he said. “I want to fight hard for working Georgians and Georgia families, not only protecting our values of today but making sure we continue to have those values and opportunities tomorrow.”
Follow Eve Guevara on Twitter @EveGuevaraTTG.