In politics, we tend to focus on the chatter that goes on between the two major parties. But in reality, the fiercest debates can be internal ones.
As President Donald Trump's standing in the polls sinks, some Democrats are increasingly urging presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden to expand his 2020 map to Georgia and other new battleground states. From The New York Times:
Besides Arizona, where Democrats have made incursions in recent years, no state may be more ripe for the poaching than Georgia, which Mr. Trump is visiting next week.
Democrats lost there by eight percentage points in 2012, five percentage points in 2016 and then by only 1.4 in Ms. (Stacey) Abrams's 2018 race for governor.
Jennifer Jordan, a state senator from Atlanta, noted that two potentially vulnerable Republican senators were up for election: David Perdue,and Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat last year.
"As the presidential goes I think that's how the Senate seats are going to go," she said. "So why wouldn't you play — it's a three-for-one."
For Georgia Democrats, putting the state in play would mean millions in party-building dollars. Marketing efforts are underway, aimed at the Democratic National Committee and those around Joe Biden.
Late last week, Fair Fight, the voting rights group established by Abrams after her gubernatorial defeat, put out a memo highlighting turn-out statistics from the recent June 9 primary. Some of the numbers you've seen. But not all of them.
From the memo:
-- “[M]ore Black Georgians voted in the 2020 primary than in the 2008 one with Barack Obama on the ballot. Georgia was one of only nine primary states to see an increase over 2008 turnout, and it had the third-highest increase. The average primary state saw a 15 percent reduction in Democratic primary turnout from 2008.”
-- “Among 2020 primary voters who did not vote in 2018, Democrats outvoted Republicans 164,196 to 115,477, a 48,719 voter edge. This number is nearly Stacey Abrams’ entire vote 2018 deficit (
-- “Georgia has more than 750,000 new voters who were not registered and eligible to vote for Stacey Abrams in 2018 but who are now registered and eligible to vote for Vice President Biden, Jon Ossoff, and the Rev. Raphael Warnock in 2020. Forty-nine percent of these voters are voters of color and 45% are under the age of 30 -- two demographic groups that overwhelmingly support Democrats.”
-- “Among Georgians who cast their first vote ever in the state during the June 9 primary, Democrats won 59.3 percent compared to Republicans’ 35.9%”
-- “Black Georgians made up 33% of the 2020 primary electorate, with 96% of Black voters choosing Democratic ballots. That 33% proportion is a significant bump from the 30% that is typical in recent elections.”
-- Despite punditry suggesting that Black voters did not trust vote by mail, vote by mail was the most popular voting method among Black Georgians, with 42% of total Black primary voters choosing to vote by mail.”
-- “White voters broke much more Democratic than usual, with 28.1 percent of white voters voting Democratic ballots, larger than the 25 percent proportion that Abrams won in 2018 (which was the highest level of support in a generation).”
-- And finally, the memo endorses a point we recently made -- that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's decision not to send out absentee ballot applications to all voters ahead of the Aug. 11 runoffs or Nov. 3 general election won't stop counties from being flooded with mailed ballots. Covid-19 is still with us, and will be for some time.
From the memo -- with a bit of snark: “In November, it is likely that campaigns or third-party groups will pick up the tab for mailing ballot applications to voters, but this action will have a positive impact on Democratic turnout, because the junk-mail-looking forms from the Secretary of State will be replaced by professional mailings.”
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At 10 a.m. today, the State House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee will have a virtual hearing on efforts to change the Georgia law that permits a citizen's arrest. The law was initially cited by at least one prosecutor as a reason for not pursuing charges against the killers of Ahmaud Arbery on Feb. 23 in Glynn County.
The committee is chaired by state Rep. Chuck Efstration, R-Dacula, author of the hate crimes bill that was recently signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp. Click here to watch the proceedings.
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So you know that Gov. Brian Kemp is taking rhetorical aim at Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for issuing executive orders to require the wearing of masks in her city. Other mayors have done likewise, but Bottoms is the only one the governor has cited by name. On Twitter, Kemp called the action "unenforceable," but stopped short of threatening legal action.
Lawyers have gotten involved. From the Georgia Recorder:
The Georgia Municipal Association has fielded a few dozen calls from city officials across Georgia since Savannah's mayor issued Georgia's first face mask mandate in late June, according to its General Counsel Rusi Patel...
Patel said he advises city officials there is room for interpretation in state laws governing emergency powers, which were written to provide guidance when they need to respond to short-term disasters like hurricanes. Georgia is now past the three-month mark in a statewide response to an unprecedented public health crisis.
"As clearly stated in my executive orders, no local action can be more or less restrictive, and that rule applies statewide," Kemp argues. The governor has publicly encouraged the wearing of masks when social distancing is impossible.
But officially, on paper, Kemp has been silent on the issue of face coverings, argues House Minority Leader Bob Trammell, D-Luthersville, who is an attorney. That makes all the difference, he said this weekend via Twitter:
Georgia @GovKemp's tweet is merely posturing - both ill-considered as public policy and legally inaccurate. See O.C.G.A Section 38-3-28(a). Governor hasn't done an executive order on masks. City order can't be inconsistent since Governor has done nothing.
Kemp spokeswoman Candice Broce fired back:
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Already posted: The three leading Republican U.S. Senate candidates have echoed President Donald Trump's attempt to energize the party's conservative base with promises of law-and-order to boost their standing as a series of recent polls show a tightening race in Georgia.
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The other day, our AJC colleague James Salzer reported that Stacey Abrams' Fair Fight voting rights group amassed about $6.3 million this year - far more than any other candidate and the two major state parties.
The group has an astonishing $14.5 million in the bank as of June 30.
That financial firepower will be key to her likely (inevitable?) rematch against Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022. Constricted by the pandemic-delayed General Assembly, he reported raising about $60,000 in the three days after the session ended. He’s got roughly $6 million in his campaign account.
(Worth noting: Other top Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and House Speaker David Ralston, reported no contributions in that short window of fundraising before the June 30 deadline.)
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In another fundraising development, Carolyn Bourdeaux, the Democrat nominee in the Seventh District Congressional race, will report raising roughly $625,000 in the second quarter of 2020, and has nearly $760,000 in cash on hand.
She was able to amass that war chest in part because she didn’t drain her account during the primary phase of the campaign. She won that crowded contest outright and will face Republican Rich McCormick in November.
Bourdeaux’s campaign said roughly 11,000 people contributed to her campaign during the latest reporting period, which stretches from April 1 to June 30, and that 95% of the donations were under $200.
The Democrat is making her second run at the Gwinnett-based district after narrowly losing to Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall in 2018. He quickly announced he wouldn’t stand for another term.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case regarding whether Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville illegally stifled the free speech rights of two plaintiffs who wanted to share religious messages.
The case dates to July 2016, when a Georgia Gwinnett student passed out flyers sharing his Christian faith on campus and was told he needed to first apply for a permit and stick to one of two “free speech expression” areas.
Even after following the process, the student said campus officials told him he couldn’t continue because others had complained.
He sued later that year in conjunction with another student who also wanted to preach on campus. Several lower courts have dismissed the case, saying Georgia Gwinnett later changed its rules to address the concerns raised.
Attorneys for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian organization, are defending the student. A date for the Supreme Court hearing has not been scheduled, but its next term begins in October.
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Former Senate candidate Sarah Riggs Amico sent supporters a weekend email outlining her reflections on state and national politics after spending the last several weeks recovering from COVID-19.
Her dispatch addresses the two major stories shaping the 2020 race: The pandemic and the protests over policing and racism.
Amico, who finished in third-place in the June primary for Senate, urges her supporters to "choose wisely" in November, although she stops short of delving into specifics. (Amico has already endorsed former rival Jon Ossoff.)
“This election year, each of us will have a choice: We can vote for new leaders who will move America closer to its greatest ideal, articulated 244 years ago by our Founders, ‘that all men are created equal,’” Amico wrote. “Or we can regress to the same, broken systems that have left too many families on the sidelines of the American Dream.”
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A federal judge reduced the number of signatures that candidates for smaller political parties need to collect before their names can appear on the state ballot in November, the AJC's Mark Niesse reports.
U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross on Thursday ordered the secretary of state's office to accept 30% fewer signatures from Libertarian Party, Green Party and other third-party candidates.
The ruling provides an accommodation to candidates who couldn't go door-to-door collecting signatures because of social distancing requirements, especially during the period when Gov. Brian Kemp ordered Georgians to shelter in place.
"No one can debate that conditions throughout the state, country and world are anything but normal," Ross wrote. "Because of the ongoing pandemic and the subsequent restrictions on social interactions, plaintiffs could not, and in many ways still cannot, gather signatures in the same safe and reasonable manner as they could during more typical times."
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More fallout from U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler's campaign against the WNBA's plan to honor Black Lives Matter this season: She has now received the Deadspin treatment in a piece titled "Everybody Hates Kelly Loeffler."
Also, late Friday, Atlanta Dream players blasted Loeffler -- the team co-owner -- in an open letter. Catch up on it here.
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The nation breathed a sigh of relief after one of your Insiders reported Saturday that, contrary to falsehoods circulating on the Internet, U.S. Rep. John Lewis is still with us.
The HBCUBuzz blog appears to be the source of the bad information, posting an article that said the 80-year-old, who is suffering from pancreatic cancer, had died.
It went viral from there and led to many tweets from high-ranking Democratic officials, including U.S. Rep. Alma Adams of North Carolina, who tweeted her condolences before deleting the remarks.
Michael Collins, Lewis’s chief of staff, set the record straight. But the intensity of the speculation about his health offered a reminder of the Atlanta Democrat’s gilded place in U.S. history.
Lewis might not be making many public appearances these days, but his office is still churning out endorsements and policy positions.
Friday night, the congressman's staff posted his statement opposing the Trump administration's position that foreign college students attending American universities won't qualify for visas if their classes this fall are all online.
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Brooke Siskin, a Democrat in the runoff for the Ninth District congressional seat, was arrested last week after refusing to turn in her firearms, the Gwinnett Daily Post reports:
Brooke Siskin was booked into the jail Thursday on a contempt of court charge for allegedly not surrendering guns she owned. Siskin had been ordered to surrender the weapons and ammunition after a 12-Month Family Violence Protective Order was issued in March. News reports have indicated the protective order was related to her divorce from her ex-husband.
Siskin was ordered by Judge Deborah Fluker to spend the weekend in the jail and will have to appear at a hearing at the Gwinnett County Detention Center on Monday morning.
