They sparred over the state’s economy, abortion rights and, in a sign of the race’s national implications, whose party should be blamed for the country’s woes.

Kemp has led in most polling of the race, but Abrams – who came within a few thousand votes of pushing their 2018 race to a run-off – has a strong base of support and has succeeded in helping to mobilize Democrats in her campaigns and those of other high-ranking Democratic candidates, including President Joe Biden and Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in their 2020 campaigns.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams sparred over health care, crime and punishment, and voting rights in a Monday debate as they made their closing arguments to voters in a reprise of their fiercely contested 2018 race for the same job.

The stakes for this night were arguably higher for Abrams, who has trailed in most recent polling of the race. Kemp, one of the few prominent Republicans to resist former President Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election in 2020, has positioned himself as a more traditional, pro-business conservative – a tack that his gentle resistance to Trump reinforced with swing voters. Abrams has argued that Kemp shouldn’t get any special credit for doing his job and not breaking the law.

When Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker met to debate in the already contentious Georgia Senate race, all the focus was on how personal allegations against Walker would roil the first – and likely only – debate in the campaign.

The allegations that Walker paid for a woman to terminate her pregnancy and then, two years later, encouraged the same woman to have the procedure a second time, however, were just a blip in the hour-long contest, which instead centered on Warnock’s ties to President Joe Biden, the vast differences between the two candidates on abortion and even, however briefly, Walker’s use of what appeared to be a sheriff’s badge.

Walker continued to deny the allegations about him – calling them “a lie” – and Warnock, as he has on the campaign trail, did not engage on the controversy, instead choosing to question his Republican opponent’s relationship to the truth.

Wayne Black was one of the few African Americans in the crowd as about 100 people gathered recently at the Republican Party headquarters near Columbus, Georgia, to hear from U.S. Senate candidate and football legend Herschel Walker.

A member of the Muscogee County Republican Executive Committee, Black said he found a certain promise in Walker’s candidacy, a GOP voice who could appeal to African Americans and others in Georgia who have traditionally voted Democratic.

“They identify with him from the standpoint of the American dream,” Black said. “You can start from nothing and if you work hard, you can achieve the American dream.”

Now that David Alfred Perdue’s bloodied political corpse has been dispatched to its final resting place at Sea Island (without, we can probably surmise, even a brief opportunity to lie in state at Mar-a-Lago), the long-awaited gubernatorial heavyweight rematch between Brian Kemp, the incumbent Republican, and Democratic Party challenger Stacey Abrams can begin in earnest.

It’s arguably been underway for a while now.  Early last week, even before the party primaries, the Kemp camp fired a salvo at Abrams for what they and some in the media called a “gaffe” – a statement that she was weary of listening to Kemp brag about Georgia being the No. 1 state in which to do business while it was “the worst state in the country to live.”

I’ll offer a contrarian view.

Georgia as a whole may not deserve the “worst place to live” label, but rural Georgia arguably does. In fact, much of Republican Georgia would qualify for that title.

Prominent Democratic candidates Stacey Abrams and Senator Raphael Warnock appear better-positioned to beat their Republican opponents come November in Georgia, according to new polling released on Wednesday.

Abrams, the former state House of Representatives minority leader, aims to unseat incumbent GOP Governor Brian Kemp in what is shaping up to be a tight race. Abrams previously unsuccessfully ran against Kemp in 2018 during his first gubernatorial bid. She ultimately lost by a margin of about 1.4 percent or just under 55,000 votes.

Meanwhile, Warnock is defending his Georgia Senate seat against former football star Herschel Walker, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Warnock narrowly flipped his Senate seat blue in a runoff after the 2020 election, as Democratic President Joe Biden and fellow Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff won in Georgia as well.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp holds a more than 20-point lead in the Republican gubernatorial primary race against former Sen. David Perdue (Ga.), according to a new poll by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs on behalf of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The poll, which surveyed likely Republican primary voters, found that 53 percent of voters support Kemp in the race, while 26 percent support Perdue.

Similar results occur when asked whether respondents approve of the men, with Kemp’s favorable rating at 71 percent and Perdue’s at 57 percent.

When the music stops at the Gold Dome Tuesday night, not every bill will have a seat.

Tuesday is Crossover Day in the state Legislature, the last day a bill can cross from one chamber to the other. While lawmakers have been known to practice legislative necromancy by grafting dead language onto healthy bills, legislation that does not pass either Georgia’s House or Senate by Crossover Day is typically considered dead for the session.

“It doesn’t happen every day, but every session it happens on some bills,” said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock. “For the most part, bills that aren’t approved by one chamber or the other will not go forward, but if, indeed, the leadership gets behind it, they will find a way to push it through.”

The Georgia House is poised to take up the controversial legislation supporters say will prohibit the discussion of “divisive concepts” in elementary, middle and high school classrooms.

Why it matters: The legislation would ban educators from teaching students that one race is superior to another; that a person is a victim or oppressor because of their race; that one person bears responsibility for things done by people of the same race in the past; and that the United States is “fundamentally or systemically racist.”

• Senate Bill 377 passed the Senate Friday, meeting the Crossover Day deadline.

The big picture: Critics argue the bill would make it harder for teachers to thoroughly educate students about such historic events in the United States as the enslavement of Africans, genocide of Native Americans and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

What they’re saying: The bill’s chief sponsor, Republican Sen. Bo Hatchett, said he understands history and lessons about racial discrimination can be hard and uncomfortable to learn about.

• “They are children, and we can teach these hard lessons, but at the end of the day…a teacher should not tell a child that because of their race, skin color or ethnicity, that they should feel guilty, that it is their fault,” he said.

The other side: Democratic Sen. Kim Jackson said the legislation is a “censorship bill” that will make it hard for educators to teach not only about racist acts in the past, but current systemic inequities that point to higher incarceration and maternal death rates for Black and other people of color.

• “This bill…will be become in and of itself a prime example of systemic racism that is being enacted before our very eyes, not in the past, but now,” she said.