Georgia, you can update your Facebook status to “comraded.”
The state, according to an NBC News report, was among those that targeted by Facebook ads that investigators say are linked to Russia's efforts to interfere in last year's presidential election.
The network cited two people familiar with the investigation in reporting that the ads were aimed at about a dozen states, including the battleground states of Florida and Ohio, Democratic strongholds such as California and Maryland, and the GOP-dominant Texas.
Facebook this past week handed over more than 3,000 of the Russia-linked ads to the House and Senate Intelligence committees, which are probing what investigators say could have been a sprawling effort by Russia to interfere with the 2016 vote.
At least 4 million people saw the ads before the November election, Facebook said in a post.
- Coming to the small screen: The state Senate is finally ready for its closeup.
The general public, along with reporters and lobbyists, will now be able to use laptops and smartphones to watch at least some Senate committee meetings, where a lot of the real work happens in shaping legislation.
The state House has allowed its committee meetings in the state Capitol to be live-streamed over the internet for several years. The Senate has finally come around.
Three committee rooms in the state Capitol and two more in the Coverdell Legislative Office Building are being wired for video and sound. The estimated cost is $485,000.
“The work of the General Assembly should be transparent to everyone in Georgia, not just those with the means and time to travel to the state Capitol when we are in session,” said Senate President Pro Tem David Shafer, R-Duluth, who claimed credit for the initiative and happens to be running for lieutenant governor next year.
Shafer had previously raised questions about the cost of setting the rooms up for streaming.
Another politician happy with the move is state Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus. He was a chief critic of the previous policy, which held that it was too expensive to broadcast the meetings online. McKoon, now running for secretary of state, even conducted screen tests, so to speak, by using his smartphone to live-stream some committee meetings.
Sessions in the House and Senate chambers are also live-streamed and archived — which means a video archive, curated by Georgia Public Broadcasting, will now exist for most official doings in the Capitol.
- Campaign season, noncampaign season: A couple of significant figures in state government announced this past week that they have decided to keep a firm grip on their hats, instead of tossing them in the ring for next year's elections.
Stan Wise, the chairman of the state Public Service Commission, announced that he has made his last run for the board of the utility regulator.
Potential candidates for Wise’s seat, which covers a stretch of territory west of metro Atlanta, are Republican activists Tricia Pridemore and Justin Tomczak.
Also leaving office, according to The Dunwoody Crier, is state Rep. Tom Taylor, who holds two key positions in the Legislature.
Taylor, a Dunwoody Republican, is the chairman of the MARTA oversight committee and also heads a state House subcommittee on film and entertainment.
A growing movie and television industry has produced huge benefits for Georgia, but Taylor’s work on MARTA may be of higher interest during the upcoming legislative session that begins in January.
The transit agency is looking at its first expansion of rail in decades thanks to Atlanta’s imminent annexation of Emory University and adjacent properties. House Speaker David Ralston is also making a push to establish a financial role for the state in a metro Atlanta transit system. There’s also the small matter of Amazon’s desire for easy access to transit wherever it decides to place its $5 billion second headquarters and the 50,000 jobs that come with it. That’s a gem the state’s leadership said it will make an all-out attempt to obtain.
Democrat Michael Wilensky, a local attorney, announced his candidacy for Taylor’s District 79 seat in July. DeKalb County Commissioner Nancy Jester and former Dunwoody Mayor Mike Davis are potential Republican candidates in the district.
- Ryan made plea for Price: U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, according to Politico, tried to save the job of his longtime friend Tom Price shortly before the health and human services secretary resigned under pressure.
The political news website reported that Ryan urged White House Chief of Staff John Kelly not to fire Price, a former congressman from Roswell.
Yeah, that didn’t work.
- One last move: Before Price quit, the news website Mic reports, one of his final actions was to postpone implementation of a rule aimed at punishing drug makers for price gouging. The rule was supposed to go into effect Oct. 1. It's now been delayed until July. The action, or inaction, came even though President Donald Trump has long railed about drug prices and urged pharmaceutical executives to lower prices.
- Immigration on the menu: We told you last week not to expect to see Georgia U.S. Sen. David Perdue power lunching with big shots at the U.S. Capitol after he blasted the GOP's congressional leadership for its inability to win passage of legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare.
That’s because his plans called for dinner.
Perdue dined with President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers early this past week to talk about immigration.
The senator says an immigration deal Trump reached with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and her counterpart in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, isn’t nearly as lenient as the Democrats have reported. Perdue indicated that the deal, which would shield from deportation young immigrants who were illegally brought to this country as children by their parents, could include features of a bill he has been pushing that would halve legal immigration and would award entry based on skills.
- Candidates, endorsements, etc.:
— Stacey Abrams has gained the endorsement of The Daily Kos, the blog and internet forum that gives voice to the liberal side of the Democratic Party, in her run against Stacey Evans for the party's nomination for governor. The endorsement comes with a contribution link, much like the one that helped Democrat Jon Ossoff raise nearly $30 million when he was running in the 6th Congressional District special election. Of course, it also fueled opposition to Ossoff as the agent of outside interests.
— Hoschton City Councilwoman Tracy Jordan has announced that she is running to replace Ralph Hudgens as the state's insurance commissioner. The Republican said she plans to prevent what she calls the "roughshod" treatment Georgia residents and businesses receive from the insurance industry. A half-dozen candidates have already filed paperwork to run for the job.
— Former state Sen. Jason Carter, the Democratic Party's 2014 nominee for governor, has picked a candidate to back in the race to get the party's nod to replace Republican Hunter Hill in the state Senate. Carter is supporting trial lawyer Jen Jordan in the Atlanta-based district. She is facing Jaha Howard, a dentist who was narrowly defeated by Hill in 2016. Several Republicans are also vying for the seat.
The week in Georgia politics
Here's a look at some of the political and government stories that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's staff broke online during the past week. To see more of them, go to http://www.myajc.com/georgia-politics/.
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