Kemp Lashes M.L.B. as Republicans Defend Georgia’s Voting Law

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia on Saturday issued a blistering critique of Major League Baseball’s decision to move its All-Star Game out of the state over the new law there restricting voting, arguing that the move would deliver an economic hit to Georgians.

Mr. Kemp, a Republican, framed the battle over voting rights in Georgia as a wholly partisan one concocted by Democrats, rather than a civil rights effort to protect access to the ballot as Republicans try to place new limits on voting across the country.

“Yesterday, Major League Baseball caved to fear and lies from liberal activists,” Mr. Kemp said at a news conference, flanked by the state’s Republican attorney general, G.O.P. members of the legislature and grass-roots activists. “In the middle of a pandemic, Major League Baseball put the wishes of Stacey Abrams and Joe Biden ahead of the economic well-being of hard-working Georgians who were counting on the All-Star Game for a paycheck.”

The governor peppered his speech with conservative catchphrases like “cancel culture,” underscoring how Republicans are seeking to make access to voting a wedge issue that they can wrap into the cultural debates that animate the base of the party.

Mr. Kemp, who is gearing up to run for re-election in 2022, has striven to re-enter the good graces of Republican voters after becoming a central political target of former President Donald J. Trump because of his refusal to help Mr. Trump overturn the state’s election results last year. A former secretary of state of Georgia who has his own record of decisions that made voting harder for the state’s residents, he is again a key G.O.P. voice leading the charge on the issue.

On Saturday, he repeatedly tried to paint the league’s decision as driven by Stacey Abrams, the voting rights advocate and former Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia who is seen as likely to challenge Mr. Kemp again next year.

Ms. Abrams, one of the most prominent critics of Georgia’s voting law, has pushed back on calls for sports leagues and corporations to boycott the state. She said on Friday that she was “disappointed” baseball officials had pulled the All-Star Game but that she was “proud of their stance on voting rights.”

In defending the law in Georgia, Mr. Kemp singled out two Democratically controlled states, New York and Delaware, and compared their voting regulations with the new law in Georgia. Those states do not offer as many options for early voting as Georgia does, but they have also not passed new laws instituting restrictions on voting.

“In New York, they have 10 days of early voting,” Mr. Kemp said (New York actually has nine). “In Georgia, we have a minimum of 17, with two additional Sundays that are optional in our state. In New York, you have to have an excuse to vote absentee. In Georgia, you can vote absentee for any reason.”

Mr. Kemp’s news conference followed a week of television appearances in which he has staunchly defended the law, arguing that it expands access to voting because of an extra required Saturday of early voting. He and other Republicans have denounced criticism of the law as a political game by state and national Democratic leaders. (The New York Times reviewed the voting law and found 16 key sections that could hamper voting access or the nonpartisan administration of elections.)

The decision to move the All-Star Game was the first major statement by a leading organization or business since Georgia passed its voting law, and came amid a growing chorus of corporate statements denouncing the legislation after it had already been signed.

Delta and Coca-Cola, two of the state’s largest corporations, ended weeks of silence on Wednesday, stating sternly that they were against the law.

“I want to be crystal clear,” James Quincey, the chief executive of Coca-Cola, said on Wednesday. “The Coca-Cola Company does not support this legislation, as it makes it harder for people to vote, not easier.”

Big companies and Major League Baseball had faced pressure to take action from Black executives, Black baseball players and faith leaders who wanted to see important American institutions take a stronger stance against the voting law in Georgia, as well as similar Republican efforts now advancing in states around the country.

Mr. Kemp challenged Major League Baseball to consider what it might do if the Atlanta Braves made the playoffs.

“What are they going to do if the Braves make the playoffs?” he said. “Are they going to move the damn playoff game?”

And he said that more event changes or boycotts would not prompt him to reconsider the law or support any adjustments to it.

Promising that he was “not wavering,” Mr. Kemp said, “For anybody that’s out there thinking that any kind of snowball effect is going to have an effect on me, it will not.”