Today’s newsletter highlights:
- Georgia Democrats criticize the governor’s State of the State address.
- Turmoil on the Cobb County Commission.
- How Georgia’s U.S. House members voted on another immigration bill.
House Speaker Jon Burns held his ground on Thursday by refusing to allow Republican state Sen. Colton Moore to enter the chamber during the governor’s State of the State address. But Burns’ stand is causing him some growing political headaches.
Burns had ample reason to punish Moore, who was exiled from the Senate GOP caucus in 2023 for berating his colleagues and banished from the House a year later for what Burns called “vile” comments about the late House Speaker David Ralston.
But Moore’s attempted defiance of the ban — and subsequent arrest — on Thursday as Gov. Brian Kemp prepared to deliver his State of the State address made him a cause célèbre to the far-right crowd and earned him surprising sympathy from across the aisle.
MAGA loyalists in Georgia and beyond echoed Moore’s slashing attacks against the “tyrant” Burns and promoted the mug shot of him taken at the Fulton County Jail where President-elect Donald Trump was booked on election interference charges in 2023.
Georgia GOP Chair Josh McKoon weighed in after he saw the video of Moore’s scuffle with House officials, which led him to be handcuffed by state troopers and slapped with misdemeanor obstruction charges.
“It was not only legally appropriate to admit him to today’s proceedings — it was simply the right thing to do,” McKoon said.
Remarkably, he was echoed by U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, who chairs the Democratic Party of Georgia. She was arrested in 2018, back when she was a state senator, during a protest at the Capitol.
“While Colton Moore and I don’t agree on much, the speaker nor the doorkeeper should be allowed to prevent him from representing the people of his district,” Williams told us.
Burns and his allies are sticking to their stance. House Majority Leader Chuck Efstration, R-Mulberry, lamented the “dangerous situation” that Moore provoked. And Burns said he was proud of the House for “holding the line” to honor Ralston’s legacy.
“As you saw today,” he said, “the integrity and decorum of this House are non-negotiable. Period.”
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Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
GOOD MORNING! It’s the fifth day of Georgia’s legislative session, and lawmakers will be looking to get out of town after a midmorning meeting.
Here are three things to know for today:
- President-elect Donald Trump picked Chris Stallings, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, to be assistant administrator for disaster recovery and resilience at the Small Business Administration, Greg Bluestein reports.
- Gov. Brian Kemp’s budget would cut taxes while spending hundreds of millions of dollars more across a wide range of proposals, the AJC’s David Wickert reports.
- President Joe Biden says he will not enforce a ban on TikTok, leaving the fate of the app up to President-elect Donald Trump.
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Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
MOORE BACKGROUND. So who is Colton Moore, the Republican state senator who was arrested at the state Capitol on Thursday?
We first encountered him back in 2018 when he was a newly elected Georgia House member. At the time, the domain name “briankemp.com” was owned by another Brian Kemp — a public relations strategist in California — and the website was sending people to Democrat Stacey Abrams’ page, who was running against Georgia’s Brian Kemp for governor.
Moore stepped in and purchased the domain, redirecting it away from Abrams’ site and saving Georgia’s Kemp some headaches. We reached out to the California Kemp on Thursday, who told us that Moore paid $10,000 for the domain name.
“Colton hasn’t really done anything with it that I know of — makes one wonder about his level of fiscal responsibility,” he said. “Although it did get renewed until 2028, there’s a signal.”
Back then, Moore was a recent college graduate in northwest Georgia fresh off an upset victory in the GOP primary against a state House incumbent.
Later elected to the state Senate, he became a darling of Trump hardliners for using increasingly hostile language to pummel fellow Republicans who didn’t back his pie-in-the-sky push to impeach Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
The AJC’s Maya T. Prabhu has more on Moore’s background, including his exile from the Senate Republican caucus and the beginnings of his feud with the late House Speaker David Ralston.
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Credit: Matthew Pearson/WABE via AP
Credit: Matthew Pearson/WABE via AP
TAKING CREDIT. Georgia Democrats had strong reactions to Gov. Brian Kemp’s State of the State address, none more so than his assertion that his administration is “covering well over 200,000 more Georgians than traditional Medicaid expansion would cover.”
“Frankly, my jaw dropped,” House Democratic Whip Sam Park said.
Kemp was combining the small number of people who have Medicaid through his Pathways program with the much larger number of people who purchased insurance plans through the state-run health exchange.
Democrats noted the state health exchange is part of the federal Affordable Care Act, which Republicans have repeatedly tried to repeal.
“I was astounded at just kind of the brazen gaslighting, taking of credit, for health care numbers provided by, ultimately, President Barack Obama,” Park said.
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
A big chunk of the people who purchased private insurance plans did so because the Kemp administration did not fully expand Medicaid. Over the last two years, as the Biden administration made the private plans even cheaper, Georgia and other states have seen record surges in signups, as the AJC’s Ariel Hart has reported.
For Kemp’s part, he points out that if Georgia had expanded Medicaid instead and not opted to let some of those people buy private plans, then those people would have been on the creaky government insurance instead of more robust private insurance plans.
Kemp’s team is sticking to their guns.
“The numbers speak for themselves and the governor’s remarks speak for themselves,” Kemp spokesperson Garrison Douglas said.
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Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
OVERTIME. The thing about elected officials is they are, um, “elected officials.” But in the wild world of Cobb County politics, that conventional wisdom does not seem to apply.
No one was elected to the County Commission’s District 2 and District 4 seats in November after a lawsuit over redistricting forced a redo election later this year. The terms for the commissioners in those seats — Jerica Richardson and Monique Sheffield — expired on Dec. 31.
Yet during the commission’s first meeting of the year earlier this week, Richardson and Sheffield took their seats at the dais, ready to cast votes.
A state law says any commissioner serving as of Jan. 1, 2022, “shall continue to serve” until their term expires and (key word) a successor is elected. Since no successor was elected, the two commissioners are still in their seats.
“Welcome to Cobb County’s J 6,” said Republican Commissioner Keli Gambrill, referring to attempts by pro-Donald Trump supporters to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021.
Richardson’s case is more complicated. She no longer lives in her newly redrawn district. A judge disqualified her from office late last year. But Richardson appealed that ruling. As long as her appeal is pending, she can stay in office.
“This may be a legal method, but to me it’s not right,” Republican Commissioner JoAnn K. Birrell said.
Richardson acknowledged that some say she shouldn’t be on the commission.
“I will say not having nearly 200,000 people represented for nearly half the year is unacceptable,” she said.
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Credit: Adam Beam/AJC
Credit: Adam Beam/AJC
TODAY UNDER THE GOLD DOME:
- 10 a.m.: The House and Senate convene.
- 11 a.m.: Senate State and Local Government Operations Committee considers Senate Bill 16, relating to bail bonds.
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Credit: Christina Matacotta for the AJC
Credit: Christina Matacotta for the AJC
FURTHER SANCTIONS. U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter is asking the IRS to revoke the nonprofit status of a group founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams that admitted to illegally supporting her 2018 campaign for governor.
The New Georgia Project will pay a record $300,000 fine after admitting it broke state laws by failing to register as an independent political committee even as it raised and spent millions of dollars on Abrams’ behalf.
Carter, R-St. Simons Island, wrote a letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel requesting that federal authorities investigate the group and declassify it as a tax-exempt nonprofit.
“The abuse of the organization’s tax-exempt status and violation of federal campaign finance laws are serious violations of the public’s trust that undermine our country’s tax code and election system and must be fully examined by the Internal Revenue Service,” Carter wrote in the letter, according to the Daily Caller. “Considering the facts already reported, I believe the tax-exempt status of the New Georgia Project and its related Action Fund should be revoked and that it should be subject to further penalties.”
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Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
LISTEN UP. Today on “Politically Georgia,” the AJC’s Maya T. Prabhu joins the show to talk about Gov. Brian Kemp’s State of the State address and state Sen. Colton Moore’s arrest. Plus, the hosts preview President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
Be sure to download the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Have a question for the show? Give us a call at 770-810-5297. Episodes are uploaded by noon each day, just in time to have lunch with us. You can also listen live at 10 a.m. EDT on 90.1 FM WABE.
On Thursday’s show, the hosts previewed the governor’s address and talked to the AJC’s City Hall reporter, Riley Bunch, about the unlikely partnership between Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens.
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IMMIGRATION VOTES. The U.S. House passed another bill Thursday that, if it becomes law, could lead to more deportations of people living in the country illegally who are accused of crimes against women.
The legislation would call for the deportation of anyone from that group of immigrants who are convicted of or admit to committing a sex crime, domestic violence, stalking, child abuse or neglect.
Joining Republicans were 61 Democrats to support the bill, which passed 274-145. But none were from Georgia.
The state’s delegation split along party lines with all nine Republicans in favor and all five Democrats opposed. The measure is among a series of immigration crackdown bills that are being sent to the Senate for consideration.
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Credit: Evan Vucci/AP
Credit: Evan Vucci/AP
TODAY IN WASHINGTON:
- President Joe Biden will speak at the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ winter meeting in Washington.
- The Senate will take another procedural vote on the Laken Riley Act.
- The House is done for the week.
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Credit: Nathan Posner for the AJC
Credit: Nathan Posner for the AJC
RANKING MEMBERS. Most Democrats in Georgia’s congressional delegation have retained leadership posts as the new session gets underway.
- U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath of Marietta will serve as the top-ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance.
- Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Lithonia, will continue to serve as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet.
- Congressman Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, is the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies.
The one exception is U.S. Rep. David Scott, who was replaced as the ranking member on the Agriculture Committee after a challenge from a younger colleague. But Scott, D-Atlanta, will continue to serve on the committee.
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Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
SHOUTOUTS. Today’s birthday:
- State Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Atlanta.
Kudos to:
- Bill Pulte, whose grandfather founded Atlanta-based homebuilder PulteGroup, was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Want a birthday shoutout in the Politically Georgia newsletter? There’s a form for that! Click here to submit the shoutouts. It’s not just birthdays. We’re also interested in new jobs, engagements, birth announcements, etc.
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AS ALWAYS, send your best scoops, gossip and insider info to greg.bluestein@ajc.com, tia.mitchell@ajc.com, patricia.murphy@ajc.com and adam.beam@ajc.com.
