Interview: Small Business Owner and Candidate for Governor Brian Kemp

“I know that you can’t completely run government like a company, but you can bring in business principles and processes.”

On January 16th, 2018, former Georgia Secretary of State and small business owner, Brian Kemp, joined Merion West’s Henri Mattila for an interview to discuss his vision for Georgia as he campaigns for Governor.

Thank you for joining us today, Secretary Kemp. For our readers who aren’t familiar with your background, could you tell me a little bit about why you chose to enter politics?

Oh gosh, well, it was really back in the early 2000s. I was a small business owner, which I still am today, raising a young family, in Athens, Georgia. I just really became frustrated with the government and the leadership we had serving in the Georgia State Senate, so I decided to do something about it. I ran for the legislature against an incumbent, and just barely beat him, and served two terms in the legislature. But that’s really what drove me to get involved; I was just kind of frustrated with government bureaucracy, over-regulation, high taxes and people just not using good common sense in government, and using politics for power and not for putting the people first.

So when you were a small business owner, were there any particular laws or policies you found to be hurting your business?

Not necessarily hurting my business, but it made it aggravating not only for me — you know, I had a construction company and I was involved with the local homebuilders association — and we were dealing with all kinds of regulatory issues and legislative-type issues, like the requirements were one thing for one county and different in another. There were things like that, which were just so frustrating.