Georgia is one of the best-run states in the nation, if not the best.

The state budget is on time and more than balanced, even after hundreds of millions invested in just the Augusta area's higher education and cyber revolution, and even after fully funding K-12 education for the first time in memory. Our port in Savannah is being dredged to deepen our already sweeping role in international trade. We're becoming a world leader not just in peanuts, peaches and pines, but in health, financial and cyber technologies. Ours is the eighth-most populous state, and was sixth in the nation in total population growth from 2016 to 2017. Our home has been voted the best state in the nation to do business by Site Selection Magazine five years running.

The Democratic gubernatorial candidacy of Stacey Abrams, in short, is a dubious solution in search of a nonexistent problem.

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We don't need a radical shift in the state's course. Far from it. Yet, that's what we may get if voters don't get out and support Brian Kemp for governor.

Kemp is so down-home and personable and makes you feel so comfortable that, sitting there in a plaid shirt and jeans, it feels as if he's a neighborhood handyman assessing what to do with your house. And, in fact, he has a background in construction. In reality, the outgoing secretary of state is a vastly experienced leader with remarkably broad experience in the legislative and executive branches of government and in the private sector as a businessman. And he's talking about building on the estimable legacy of Gov. Nathan Deal.

Kemp has commissioned a comprehensive study of what the state's next voting machines should look like. He's proposed a Commission on Behavioral Health "to address the state and national problem of mental health and substance abuse – including issues like school security, teen suicide, and PTSD amongst veterans." He's come out with a health care plan that leverages the awesome power of the free market.

But Kemp's signature plans are for public safety reform, a kind of bookend to Deal's criminal justice reform. Kemp promises to "deport criminal aliens and crush street gangs," saying his effort to "stop and dismantle gangs" will involve raising public awareness, funding the Criminal Street Gang Database, supporting the attorney general’s office and enhancing local law enforcement efforts.

His opponent had a chance to vote to crack down on gangs and sexual predators but literally walked away, Kemp says.

You've heard a lot about foreign attempts to influence U.S. elections. Well, folks in other states are doing their best to choose Georgia's next governor for us. Because she could be the first black female governor, and could plant a Democrat flag on Republican territory, because she's inclined to the left's way of thinking, and because she's smart, articulate and personable, Abrams has become the darling of the liberal elite, attracting money and support from such places as California -- where liberal flame-throwing Rep. Maxine Waters attended a fundraiser for Abrams in September.

"Sixty-two percent of all Abrams itemized donations are from outside Georgia, according to a McClatchy analysis of campaign filings," the news company reported this summer. In a separate analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 80 percent of Democratic contributions, and contributions to Abrams' campaign, came out of California, New York and Washington, D.C., in a recent three-month period.

Either these folks care deeply about providing Georgians with the best agency heads and occasional appointed Superior Court judges possible, or they want Georgia to be more like California or New York. We suspect it's the latter. And we sure don't want California and New York appointing judges in the Peach State.

The question is, is that what you want?

In contrast, Kemp has been to every one of Georgia's 159 counties, and one plank of his "4 Point Plan to Put Georgians First" is strengthening rural Georgia by such things as expanding access to high-speed internet and health care, the latter by "protecting rural hospitals (and) recruiting physicians."

While the national media seem eager for a "blue wave" Nov. 6, Kemp is encouraged by the people and crowds he's encountered in his Georgia travels. Hundreds at a time have been showing up to meet and greet him in places where such crowds are highly unusual. He says Republican voters are more energized than the media may know or care to know -- in large part due to their frustrations with Washington and their dread of left-wing, socialist policies a Democrat governor might pursue. They're also no doubt hopping mad at Democrats' treatment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

This race has been nationalized, first by Democrats seeking momentum for their socialist agenda by the toppling of a red state through a historic candidate. But as we wrote in a Sept. 2 editorial, this is not a social experiment or political trophy for us. It’s our home.

This is a pivotal election, in Georgia and nationally. Will Georgia keep its good thing going -- or will voters choose to upset the peach cart to feel good about breaking barriers? Will we go with what clearly works, or try socialist policies that provably do not?

This election is about the nature of Georgia, and arguably the nation. Will the state stay on its present course of relatively inexpensive government and expansive liberty? Or will it turn left toward choppy, uncharted waters?

This may be the single most important election nationwide Nov. 6 (though early voting is already on), and is certainly the most important vote you'll cast this year.

We urge you to protect what we've got, which is arguably the best-run state in America. We urge you to vote for Brian Kemp for governor.

Don't do it alone; get your friends and family to do so too.

And do it with the urgency it absolutely warrants.

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