A political and legal standoff is underway in Catoosa County after the local GOP passed rules giving it the final say over who can qualify as a Republican and then this week refused to allow several contenders for the County Commission to run on the GOP ticket.
The party has repeatedly flouted Superior Court Judge Don Thompson’s order requiring it to allow four candidates — including three incumbent county commissioners — to run with an “R” by their name in the deep-red county.
The judge told deputies to record the candidates being rejected with their bodycams for court records, and then he threatened to slap a major fine on the Catoosa GOP if it doesn’t comply with his order.
On Friday, Thompson instructed the Catoosa Board of Elections — separate from the local GOP — to qualify the four candidates and indicated he could hold party officials in contempt if they don’t heed his warnings.
“This case is unprecedented given the intransigence of Respondents to the law and this Court’s repeated directives,” Thompson wrote in a Friday court order.
The party seems to be spoiling for a fight, arguing that the government can’t compel a political party to give up its rights to select candidates.
“To some, this may seem like a radical or foreign concept, since many people have gotten used to the idea that GOP and Democrat politicians are unaccountable to any set of principles or policy outcomes, often to the anger of voters,” wrote Alex Johnson, the party’s attorney.
Johnson is also the chair of the Georgia Republican Assembly, which backed a failed statewide effort last year to pass rules that could have blocked state candidates from qualifying as Republicans if they’re deemed to be insufficiently conservative.
He said Catoosa Republicans “don’t deserve fake candidates that force themselves upon organizations and people would prefer to ‘drain the swamp’ and don’t agree with conduct such as endorsing Democrats, voting for tax increases.”
Commission candidate Steven Henry, one of four contenders turned away by the party, fired back in court. His attorney, Bryan Tyson, argued the local GOP has “invented their own reality” and willfully violated the judge’s order.
There’s little chance of a Democratic takeover in Catoosa, a county along the state border with Tennessee that Donald Trump won with more than three-quarters of the vote in 2020.
But party hard-liners in Catoosa and several other deep-red counties have tried to exert more influence over the GOP primaries, where most countywide races are decided. (In Georgia, the two major political parties handle the process for candidates to qualify for office.)
Chattooga and Pickens counties also recently adopted “accountability” rules that give party leaders more control over which candidates can run on the ballot with an “R” by their name, though it’s not clear whether any office seekers in those counties were blocked from qualifying.
Tyson, Henry’s attorney, said it’s cut and dry.
“The fact the Catoosa County GOP continues to refuse to qualify Republican candidates in the face of multiple court orders giving them an opportunity to change their behavior is staggering,” he said.
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