SAVANNAH, Ga. () — Even though he’s running as a Republican in the 2026 race for governor, a local candidate said he wants to provide a middle ground in a political landscape full of extremism.

“I’m giving them an American to vote for, not a Republican to vote for,” Ken Yasger told Tuesday.

Yasger, a former Army Ranger and active-duty member of the Georgia National Guard, is a Tybee Island resident. His focus in the gubernatorial race, southeast Georgia.

“Instead of all these Atlanta politicians focusing on Atlanta or folks who are from this area that want to run for statewide office and the first thing they do it go up to Atlanta, we’re forgotten down here,” Yasger said. “Especially further southeast Georgia, so what I decided was that I’m going to form a coalition in the southeast area and then we’re going to bring it up to Atlanta.”

Yasger describes himself as a constitutional Republican and said he believes voters need “middle of the road” options to vote for instead of far left or right candidates.

“We demonize the other side, both Republican and Democrats do it,” Yasger told . “Not the people, but the politicians. The politicians’ job is to divide and conquer and yes, I’m talking about the people running for governor right now. Because all I hear when I hear the Republicans, the other Republicans and then I hear the Democrats candidates talk, who can be more pro-Trump and who can be more anti-Trump. How about we focus on being pro-Georgia and pro-America.”

Yasger has run for public office twice prior to throwing his hat into the ring for governor. He ran in 2020 for the 1st Congressional District and again in 2022 for State Senate in the 2nd District.

He said he’s been actively interested in politics since he was a teenager, volunteering and interning on both John McCain and President Donald Trump’s campaigns, Yasger told .

“I still remember, I interned for [McCain’s] campaign in St. Louis, Missouri when I was 18 years old, that was the first campaign I worked on,” Yasger said. “I remember in a town hall debate a woman getting up and saying Obama’s an Arab and she started bad mouthing him and he took the microphone away from her in that town hall and he said no he’s a good man and he’s good American, we just have differing opinion. That’s what we need to get back to.”

During his sit-down with , Yasger described himself as “annoyingly patriotic.” He served in the U.S. Army for four years as an Army Ranger before joining the Georgia National Guard, which he’s served in for 10 years.

Military service is what brought him to the Savannah area. Since enlisting, Yasger’s been deployed to the Middle East four times.

He said he knows what Georgians face every day because he’s interacting with people every day through his job as a bartender on Tybee Island at Huc-A-Poos and in day-to-day life, something he said that high-profile candidates aren’t doing.

“With all due respect to Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, I get it, money wins elections, but the week that he announced, he loaned himself $10 million. Three days after he announced, I was at Kroger in Savannah, downtown Savannah, and I was behind a gentleman trying to buy a six pack of eggs and his card declined. With all due respect to Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, Governor Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr, they don’t see him. I see him.”

Yasger will face off against heavy-hitting Republican candidates in the primary on May 19, but he said his focus is on the voting population that isn’t engaging with the primary.

“The majority of us think the way I do, just not all of us vote and I’m trying to give people a reason to want to vote,” he said. “We had a pretty high turnout in the 2024 election, but we still have 30, 40% of people who did not vote. That’s my target. I’m not trying to get people that voted for Trump against Harris or for Harris against Trump. I’m trying to give people something to vote for, not something against.”

The former Ranger also has some policy ideas that some of the Republican party has moved away from, but Yasger said he’s “trying to save the party.”

“And the Republican party, in my opinion, has gone away from being constitutional and physically conservative and now that we have the White House, we’re just big government again,” he said. “I don’t care who’s in the White House, Republican or Democrat, my job as governor of Georgia is to keep the federal government the heck out of our state.”

The Tybee local told that he is tired of Americans identifying each other by who they voted for in the last election. He said that even though he’s voted for Trump three times, he said he would not vote for him again due to him going back on his promises, like releasing the Epstein files.

Yasger has a long road ahead of the primary, including a tour of the state that he will walk, starting on Tybee Island.

Other candidates like Jones and Carr might have more access to campaign funds, while Yasger is running a grassroots campaign, but he also has faced issues with getting his message to the public. One local media outlet reportedly told Yasger to call them when he raises $100,000.

Even though it may be an uphill battle, Yasger said it is worth it to fight for Georgians.

“I know that this is a long-shot bid for governor, but if I have the opportunity and the pleasure to become the next governor of Georgia, I would bring actual issues that real people have to the Governor’s mansion, which hasn’t happened in a very long time.”

Watch the full interview here:

Andrew Davis contributed to the reporting in this article.