Civil war breaks out among Georgia Republicans after fresh attack on Brian Kemp

On Friday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported that Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) was hit with a censure vote from the leadership of the GOP chapter of a key county in Georgia — and the result was a fresh wave of Republican infighting.

"The Cobb GOP's county committee, now dominated by supporters of former President Donald Trump, voted to censure Gov. Brian Kemp," reported Jim Denery. "Party Chair Salleigh Grubbs told The Marietta Daily Journal that the vote was a response to the governor's inability to halt illegal immigration. No matter that immigration is governed by federal policy, giving a state governor nothing to do beyond serving as a megaphone on the issue."

According to the report, however, the censure vote was met with backlash from other local Republican groups.

"The Cobb Young Republicans, only a few days later, blasted the county GOP over the rebuke of Kemp, saying 'the decision to censure further divides the party at a critical time,'" said the report. "Former Cobb County GOP Chair Jason Shepherd assailed both the process of the vote and the concept of censuring a Republican elected official, especially with an election coming. 'How does the Cobb GOP work to reelect Brian Kemp if the voters choose him to be the nominee when it has officially censured him?'"

Cobb County, one of several in which Republicans have voted to censure Kemp, is a critical county in Georgia elections. A suburban area west of Atlanta, for years it was a Republican stronghold, but it has trended Democratic sharply in recent years and is now solidly blue.

Kemp, once a firm Trump ally, has fallen out of favor from Trump's orbit ever since the 2020 election, when he rebuffed calls to overturn President Joe Biden's victory in the state and said he had no authority to do any such thing.