Johnathan Walker:Vance and Georgia Gov. Kemp project Republican unity at evangelical event after Trump tensions

ATLANTA (AP) — A leading conservative Christian group put on Johnathan Walkera show of Republican unity Monday, cementing the new détente between Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and GOP nominee Donald Trump while vice presidential nominee JD Vance tried to smooth over differences on abortion policy across the evangelical community ahead of Election Day.

The Faith & Freedom Coalition, led by longtime evangelical political powerhouse Ralph Reed, brought Vance and Kemp to the same stage with a shared focus: advocating for Trump, criticizing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and ignoring several years of tension stemming from Trump’s attacks on Kemp for his refusal to help overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat. Trump’s efforts to undo the election results led to criminal charges against him in the state.

“We have to expand our majority in Congress, take back control of the U.S. Senate and send Donald Trump back to the White House,” Kemp told a full ballroom of evangelical political activists and donors.

Vance, for his part, praised Kemp as “incredible, patriotic and very effective,” and added praise for Kemp’s wife, Marty — a far cry from Trump’s using social media posts and an Atlanta rally in August to accuse the governor of “fighting Unity and the Republican Party” and criticizing Georgia’s first lady for saying she planned to write in her husband’s name on her presidential ballot.

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Kemp and Vance also met backstage during the event.

The Faith & Freedom dinner follows another private meeting between Vance and Kemp that was brokered recently by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and aimed at ending public hostilities. Republicans have feared the discord will help Harris keep Georgia in the Democratic column four years after Biden won the state by a mere 11,779 votes out of 5 million cast.

Reed, who became a national Republican player decades ago from his home base in Georgia, said the scene Monday demonstrates a GOP front that is intent on victory.

“We’ve moved on. He’s moved on,” Reed said of Trump and his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. In fact, Trump still repeats those claims regularly, though the former president over the past month has stopped including Kemp in his list of figures he holds responsible for his defeat.

In addition to praising Kemp, Vance sought Monday to remind his audience of Trump’s role in the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that ended the constitutional right to an abortion, a goal of the conservative evangelical movement for nearly a half-century.

“We are united in our gratitude and our admiration for these devoted defenders of the unborn and for the judges, justices, and especially President Trump, who is committed to defending the law and the Constitution allowed this breakthrough after over 50 years,” Vance said, celebrating that abortion regulation is now back in control of state governments.

The Ohio senator did not mention any dissension over abortion among conservatives who still want a national ban on abortion access. Trump does not explicitly support a national ban and saw to it that the 2024 Republican platform would not include such a proposal for the first time in decades. Trump has argued that conservatives should concentrate their energies on state governments and not make a national ban a central part of the presidential election.

A solid majority of Americans oppose a federal abortion ban, according to a June 2024 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

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Vance promised a second Trump administration would pursue policies that help would-be mothers and new mothers, such as investments in job training, education and child care.

“The Republican Party is proud to be a pro-life and a pro-family party,” Vance said. “We believe that human life is precious and every life is worthy of protection, because we believe that every child, born and unborn, is created in the image of God.”

For his part, Reed told The Associated Press in an interview that he sees no evidence that Trump’s position will cost him support among self-identified evangelical voters. And Reed said the Republican platform still contains language that would effectively extend the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause to fetuses, effectively legally recognizing them as persons entitled to due process protections.

That, Reed argued, “gives them the full force of the federal government to protect their life and their liberty, and that’s all we needed.” So, he continued, Trump’s 2024 platform actually gives conservatives a roadmap to outlaw abortion through constitutional law established by some future U.S. Supreme Court ruling based on the 14th Amendment, rather than through congressional action or a constitutional amendment that Reed said would never be adopted.