PLAINS, Ga. -- Former President Jimmy Carter joined the campaign for governor today with an appearance near his south Georgia home. Carter toured the town’s main health care facility with Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams – and criticized what he called Republican Brian Kemp’s avoidance of the issue.
At age 93, Carter is now one of America’s elder statesmen while still a fiercely partisan Democrat. He met Abrams outside a cinderblock building called Mercer Medicine – a health care facility opened with some pull from the former president. Abrams says health care, especially in rural Georgia, is a crisis and put it in starkly personal terms.
“This is personal for me. I have a younger brother who is bipolar and who is also a heroin addict and he is in and out of the criminal justice system because he lives in a state that, like Georgia, has refused to expand Medicaid,” Abrams said.
Abrams wants Georgia to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, something Republicans including, her opponent Brian Kemp, strongly oppose. Kemp said Monday he favors a new tax credit for rural hospitals. “My idea of fixing health care is not to take more government money, and throw it at a program where doctors are losing 14 cents on the dollar and aren’t taking patients,” Kemp said. “We’ve got to have people investing in Georgia. We’ve got to have a governor who’s focused on that with job creation” which will expand health care opportunities, Kemp said.
PHOTOS: President Jimmy Carter and Stacey Abrams
Carter said the job creation answer avoids the health care issue.
“That would be a very good thing in the long term but you can’t fix the immediate problems with health care by doing that. So I think Kemp is just trying to avoid the issue,” Carter said.
“You can’t create opportunity when people don’t have the ability to take care of themselves,” Abrams added.
Before he exited, Carter recalled that his grandson ran for governor as a Democrat four years ago and lost the seat now sought by Abrams.
He said he is optimistic Abrams can do better than Jason Carter did – in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic governor in 20 years.
