It is a political oddity that Georgia has two Democratic senators. The Peach State may not be as red as it used to be; Joe Biden won it in 2020. But Donald Trump won it in 2016 and last year, and Republicans hold every major statewide elected office, including the governorship.

Brian Kemp, who holds that office, is an impressive political talent. Having narrowly won against the overhyped Democrat Stacey Abrams (remember her?) in 2018, Kemp trounced her in 2022. In between, Kemp deftly tackled some of the same tough issues that his neighbor to the south rose to national prominence facing, such as navigating Covid-19 (the media castigated his April 2020 decision to scale back lockdown measures as an “experiment in human sacrifice“) and countering woke assaults on his state (he stood his ground on Georgia’s voting law, despite MLB’s punitive removal of the All-Star Game from the state). His success as governor rebuffed internecine critics and rivals.

Kemp is now mulling a challenge to incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff. Ossoff owes his presence in the Senate to a quirk. In the raucous 2020 Senate election in Georgia, Republican incumbent David Perdue had more votes than Ossoff did on Election Day, but he was just short of a majority. In the state-mandated runoff, Ossoff narrowly prevailed. He has since voted in the Senate largely as a “progressive’s progressive,” as NOTUS puts it. Ossoff-world reportedly fears a Kemp challenge, and rightly so; of likely Republican candidates, only Kemp currently beats Ossoff in polls. While Trump and Kemp had some bad blood as recently as last August, they seem to have reached a kind of truce. Kemp himself remains the main obstacle: NOTUS alleges that he is hesitant to go to Washington. This is certainly understandable. But Republicans would be fortunate if Kemp overcame his hesitation. A Brian Kemp Senate run would be peachy.