Today’s newsletter highlights include:
- Georgia congressman recovers from back injury.
- President-elect Donald Trump considers buying company with ties to Georgia donors.
- Georgia’s push for a national park faces a key moment in Washington.
Is there a path to civility in national politics after this brutal campaign season? That was a focus of back-to-back events in Atlanta and Athens this week after a tumultuous cycle ended with President-elect Donald Trump’s victory.
In Atlanta on Sunday for the finale of the Book Festival of the MJCCA, former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged fellow Democrats and other Trump opponents to take a breather until Thanksgiving and come back “restored” and determined to fight GOP policies.
As Pelosi said after Trump’s first victory in 2016, Democrats are willing to find consensus with Republicans where it doesn’t compromise their values. But she expects a fierce battle over GOP efforts to gut the Affordable Care Act, a law her party is ready to fight to preserve.
In Athens on Monday, former U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota sat down for a separate discussion on restoring the bridge-building that made the late U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson an icon of bipartisanship in Congress.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
At the Isakson Symposium for Political Civility, Heitkamp told Isakson’s family that she would walk through “cut glass” to honor his legacy. The Democrat went on to say that Isakson’s “secret sauce” was simple.
“You could take his word to the bank. He would never break his oath. He would never undermine you for his own personal benefit. That’s not who he was. And if we had a whole Senate and a whole Congress full of people who just started with that guiding principle, think of what we could get done,” she said.
But Heitkamp also left the audience with a sobering question about Isakson, a Republican who served in both chambers of the state Legislature and Congress before resigning from the U.S. Senate in 2019 as he battled Parkinson’s disease. He died in 2021 at the age of 76.
“Georgians knew when they voted for Johnny that they were voting for a person of character, someone who got things done for Georgia,” Heitkamp said. “But could somebody like Johnny, known as a compromiser, make it through a partisan primary?”
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Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC
Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC
GOOD MORNING! We’re 55 days away from the start of the Georgia legislative session. What questions do you have about it? We want to hear from you. Call us at 770-810-5297 and you could be featured on an upcoming special listener mailbag episode of the “Politically Georgia” podcast. Your political insiders will answer questions about the session, the 2024 election, what’s next in 2026 or anything else on your mind.
Here are three things to know for today:
- The Georgia Court of Appeals canceled a hearing on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from the election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump, the AJC’s Bill Rankin and Tamar Hallerman report.
- President Joe Biden is seeking nearly $100 billion in emergency disaster aid after Hurricane Helene. It’s the next step in a long battle for relief money that is a key priority for Gov. Brian Kemp’s administration.
- The DeKalb County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to vote today on whether to raise water and sewer rates by more than 19% over the next three years, the AJC’s Alia Pharr reports.
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Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
ON THE MEND. U.S. Rep. David Scott, D-Atlanta, will miss his second consecutive week of votes because he is in a rehabilitation facility receiving treatment for a back injury.
The 79-year-old was recently reelected to a 12th term in Congress. He easily won the general election in the newly drawn 13th Congressional District after beating five primary challengers in May despite ongoing concerns about his age and health.
Scott told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he plans to return at “full strength” after the Thanksgiving week break.
“I had to go ahead and take care of myself so I can be very strong, and I am,” he said.
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Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
BIG BUCKS. The New York Times and other outlets have been digging into the whopping $2.15 billion the campaigns of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris raised in their failed effort to defeat President-elect Donald Trump, including $1.5 billion spent by in the final 15 weeks of the Harris campaign.
Among the biggest recipients of the cycle was the Georgia-based media firm Media Buying and Analytics, LLC, which got a cool $281 million for their work as the lead media buyers for the two Democratic camps.
The New York Post called MBA a “front company” for Canal Media Partners, although chief Bobby Kahn tells us it is a “sister company” created to consolidate complex reporting requirements for presidential campaigns. Kahn is, of course, a former chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia and chief of staff to former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes.
Kahn said he is “proud of our tireless work on behalf of the Harris campaign and before that the Biden campaign.” And of the nearly $300 million his firm was paid, he said “the vast majority” of the money passed through to local TV, radio and cable operators to buy ad time ahead of the election.”
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Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
SOLAR FIGHT. While state Rep. Beth Camp is always trying to win broad support for the bills she sponsors, there’s one entity in particular she needs to woo this year: Georgia Power.
The investor-owned utility’s opposition helped sink one of her bills earlier this year that would have let communities band together to build small solar power plants with the goal of lowering their monthly energy costs while contributing more electricity to the grid.
Now Camp, a Republican from Concord, is leading a legislative committee to study the issue this fall with the goal of trying again when lawmakers return in January.
“I do not view Georgia Power as the enemy of this at all,” she said. “I think they took this as an affront, that their ability to do their business may have been attacked. That was not my intention at all.”
Georgia Power opposed Camp’s bill, arguing it would shift costs to other customers who are not solar subscribers. The company plans to testify during today’s hearing about their own community solar initiative. But critics have panned that program as ineffective.
The company said in a statement that it has “done a lot of work this year with solar developer stakeholders and customers” and appreciates the opportunity to “help explain the company’s position on complex energy topics.”
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Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
CRYPTO SALE? President-elect Donald Trump could soon own an Alpharetta-based cryptocurrency company with ties to two of his largest donors.
The Financial Times reports the Trump Media and Technology Group is in advanced talks to buy the crypto trading venue Bakkt. The company was once led by former Georgia U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler. It’s mostly owned by Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange, where Loeffler’s husband Jeff Sprecher is the CEO.
As the AJC’s Mirtha Donastorg explains, Loeffler helped create Bakkt in 2018. She left the company in 2019 after Gov. Brian Kemp appointed her to the U.S. Senate. After losing a special election, Loeffler has stayed in politics and is in line for a job in the new Trump administration. She’s also co-chair of Trump’s inaugural committee.
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Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
OCMULGEE MOUNDS ON THE HILL. It could be a make-or-break day on Capitol Hill for people trying to make Ocmulgee Mounds in Macon as Georgia’s first-ever national park and preserve.
The move requires an act of Congress, and the two committees that decide such designations are both meeting Tuesday to review the legislation that would make the change.
Seth Clark, the mayor pro tempore of Macon-Bibb County, and U.S. Reps. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, and Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, will testify before the House Subcommittee on Federal Lands. Separately, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will review the Ocmulgee Mounds Park and Preserve Act. Georgia U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, have pushed the effort on the Senate side.
The House and Senate must both pass the legislation, which needs President Joe Biden’s signature, before the end of this Congress in January — or else the entire process will have to start over.
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Credit: WSB-TV
Credit: WSB-TV
LISTEN UP. Today on “Politically Georgia,” newly-elected Georgia House Minority Leader Carolyn Hugley talks about her new post. And Heath Garrett, former aide to the late U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, talks about the importance of bipartisanship and civility.
Be sure to download the AJC’s Politically Georgia podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Have a question for the show? Give us a call at 770-810-5297.
On Monday’s show, Emory University political science professor Bernard Fraga discussed new data on Black voters in Georgia. And LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, discussed how identity politics influenced the election.
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BATHROOM BILL. Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday supported a resolution banning transgender women from using the women’s bathrooms in the U.S. Capitol.
“I support banning men from women’s restrooms in the Capitol, but that isn’t enough,” Greene wrote on X. “Men should be banned from women’s restrooms in every federal building paid for by taxpayers.”
It was Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina who introduced the resolution. That drew criticism from U.S. Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, a Democrat who made history in November when she was elected as the first openly transgender person to Congress. She’ll take office in January for Delaware’s sole U.S. House seat.
“This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing,” McBride wrote on X. “We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.”
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Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
TODAY IN WASHINGTON:
- President Joe Biden will participate in the second day of the G20 Summit and have lunch with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.
- The U.S. House has scheduled a vote on legislation to promote geothermal energy.
- Senate Democrats will try to confirm more Biden appointees after Republicans forced procedural votes Monday night to slow down the process.
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Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
HANDS OFF. Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff has asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Milgram to look into reports that travelers at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport have faced needless questioning and searches.
Ossoff’s request for an investigation is in response to Atlanta News First’s “In Plane Sight” investigation. It found that although the government has called the searches random and consensual they are often the result of profiling by drug agents and that Black men are disproportionately targeted.
Ossoff in his letter asked the DEA to outline its use of these searches, which sometimes occur even after a passenger has cleared security. He also requested better record-keeping to evaluate the effectiveness of the program and identify whether racial profiling is occurring.
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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.
