(SRN NEWS/AP) – Steve Bannon took the stage Friday night at the Georgia Republican Convention to say it’s too early to be talking about 2026.
“Don’t even think about the midterms,” the Republican strategist told activists. “Not right now. ’26, we’ll think about it later. It’s backing President Trump right now.”
But it didn’t work.
There was plenty of praise for Donald Trump. And while the party took care of other business like electing officers and adopting a platform, the 2026 races for governor and Senate were already on the minds of many on Friday and Saturday in the northwest Georgia city of Dalton.
“Everybody campaigns as quick as they can,” U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (pictured) told The Associated Press Saturday.
Lots of other people showed up sounding like candidates. Greene, after passing on a U.S. Senate bid against Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff, laid out a slate of state-level issues on Saturday that will likely fuel speculation that she might run for governor to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
Echoing Trump’s signature slogan, Greene told the convention to “Make Georgia great again, for Georgia.”
She called for abolishing the state income tax, infusing “classical” principles into Georgia’s public schools, reopening mental hospitals to take mentally ill people off the streets, and changing Georgia’s economic incentive policy to de-emphasize tax breaks for foreign companies and television and moviemakers.
“Now these are state-level issues, but I want you to be talking about them,” Greene said.
In her AP interview before the speech, Greene said running for governor is an “option,” but also said she has a “wonderful blessing” of serving her northwest Georgia district and exercising influence in Washington.
“Pretty much every single primary poll shows that I am the top leader easily, and that gives me the ability to think about it. But it’s a choice. It’s my own, that I will talk about with my family.”
More likely to run for governor is Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is expected to announce a bid later this summer.
“I promise you, I’m going to be involved in this upcoming election cycle,” Jones told delegates Friday.
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