As influential leaders and everyday citizens heap praise on the life and legacy of former President Jimmy Carter, now in hospice care in Plains, the residents of his Georgia hometown are also praying for his wife Rosalynn.
The Carters have known each other for more than 90 years, dating back to when the president was 4 years old and he lived down the street from Rosalynn, who was just an infant.
Credit: Courtesy photo
Credit: Courtesy photo
As Jimmy used to tell it, he was seeing a local beauty queen at the time but he agreed to a date with Rosalynn because he wanted an excuse to see a movie. By the time it was over, he was smitten — but she wasn’t so sure.
She rejected his first marriage proposal, before saying yes a few months later. They’ve been inseparable ever since.
“Now it’s inconceivable to me because I don’t make any decisions now without asking Rosalynn first, and generally I just do what she suggests,” he told one of your Insiders in an interview about a decade ago.
“We have a full and equal partnership, and have had since I first got involved in politics.”
Credit: Courtesy of Habitat for Humanity
Credit: Courtesy of Habitat for Humanity
Rosalynn, 95, has retreated from public life. With her husband’s condition worsening, the family’s friends and loved ones have Rosalynn on their minds, too. Jan Williams, a longtime friend, said her “number one prayer” is for Rosalynn now.
“She loves him with all of her heart. Look at all of the years they’ve had together. They did everything together,” said Williams, adding: “It’s going to be a tremendous loss to her, but the children are going to be taking good care of her.”
Read more AJC coverage about the former president.
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Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
LISTEN UP. We’ve got a special edition of the Politically Georgia podcast in your feeds now, reporting from former President Jimmy Carter’s hometown of Plains.
We look at both Carters’ lifelong love affair with their hometown, and how the farm hamlet is preparing for the inevitable goodbye to its favorite son.
And be sure to let us know if you have questions or comments about the former president. Leave a message at (770) 810-5297 and we’ll feature it during the Friday listener mail segment of the podcast later in the week.
Listen and subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher.
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HOSPITAL ‘HYPOCRISY.’ Wellstar Health Systems’ decision to close Atlanta Medical Center is starting to reverberate at the Capitol.
The hospital systems that annually defend the state’s Certificate of Need regulation must now do so with Wellstar at the forefront of the debate. It’s made trickier by AMC’s recent closure, which infuriated many politicians from both sides of the aisle.
Credit: Christina Matacotta for the AJC
Credit: Christina Matacotta for the AJC
The tug-of-war over CON is perennial. It protects existing hospitals from new competition, which makes it a target of powerful advocates who want to build newer medical facilities.
This session at the General Assembly, Senate Bill 99 would lift CON restrictions to allow new hospitals to go up in some rural counties, including a proposed facility not far from two Wellstar complexes in middle Georgia.
Wellstar executives fear the new hospital would siphon away Wellstar’s profits and workers. They said as much during Feb. 9 testimony in the Senate Regulated Industries Committee.
“The threat of a new hospital coming and landing right there in the middle of it is going to cause significant harm to those two facilities,” testified Leo Reichert, Wellstar’s general counsel.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Committee Chairman Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, led the tough questioning in response. “Are you the guys that shut down Atlanta Medical Center?” he asked. (Wellstar has argued it had no choice.)
The exchange, including Reichert’s robust defense, is making the rounds.
In an interview with the AJC’s Ariel Hart, committee chairman, state Sen. Ben Watson remarked on the irony that Wellstar was simultaneously negotiating to possibly build a divisive new hospital in Columbia County outside of Augusta, which may serve relatively affluent patients.
“I mean, I hate to use the word ‘hypocritical,’” the Savannah Republican said, “but it sure sounds that way, doesn’t it?”
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NEVER MIND. For a senator from South Carolina, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham was an unusually frequent presence in Georgia during and after the 2020 elections, including when he called Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to ask about how to throw out ballots in Georgia.
Graham was one of a number of allies of former President Donald Trump casting doubt, and in some cases, working to flip Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the state.
“He seemed to imply that we could audit all signatures and throw out the ballots from counties that had the highest frequency of error rates,” Raffensperger wrote of Graham in his memoir. “But no state can do that.”
But in an interview with ABC News Sunday, Graham said he now believes that Biden did indeed win the state, fair and square.
“The grand jury analysis that there was no widespread fraud in Georgia, I agree with that,” he said.
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Credit: Casey Sykes for the AJC
Credit: Casey Sykes for the AJC
UNDER THE GOLD DOME:
The state House and Senate are out of session Monday to observe the Presidents Day holiday.
Work resumes Tuesday, Feb. 21.
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Credit: Bob Andres/AJC
Credit: Bob Andres/AJC
FANCY FLIERS. The last-hurrah trip to Eurpope by outgoing Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and defeated Senate President Pro Tem Butch Miller in November of last year cost Georgia taxpayers at least $100,000, the AJC’s money man James Salzer reports.
But details of the 14-person European jaunt, which included a stay at London’s Clermont Hotel, and receptions in England and Germany, haven’t been easy to come by, since the General Assembly exempted itself from the Open Record Act that applies to other state officials.
More from Salzer:
According to a report compiled by Duncan's office and signed by Miller, the group met with government and business officials, toured company headquarters, studios, training schools and other facilities, and attended receptions.
Among the 14 people listed as attending, according to emails, were Duncan, Miller, states Sens. Clint Dixon, R-Buford, Emanuel Jones, D-Ellenwood, Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta, and Sheikh Rahman, D-Lawrenceville, two members of Duncan's security detail and Andrew Allison, the head of the Senate Press Office who left state government a little more than a month later for another job. Dixon, Jones, Halpern and Rahman all returned to the Senate this year.
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TODAY IN WASHINGTON:
- The U.S. Senate and House are out until Feb. 27.
- President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Monday ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of the country.
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Credit: Courtesy photo
Credit: Courtesy photo
ON THE BORDER. U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Pooler, announced that he recently made a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, the sixth of his career.
He and other Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a field hearing in Weslaco, Texas, focused on the fentanyl trafficking at the border and how illegal immigration might be contributing to the drug’s proliferation on U.S. soil.
“I hoped to see improvement, a light at the end of the tunnel, any signal that this administration is finally implementing policies that take our illegal immigration and fentanyl crisis seriously,” Carter wrote in a letter to constituents over the weekend. He later concluded, “That was not the reality.”
During their visit, Carter and other lawmakers also met with border patrol agents and toured an immigrant processing center.
On Thursday, the committee held a second public hearing in Midland focused on energy policy.
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Credit: Nathan Posner for the AJC
Credit: Nathan Posner for the AJC
FOSTER CARE PROBE. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff is launching an inquiry into alleged abuse and neglect of children in Georgia’s foster care system, the AJC’s Katherine Landergan reports.
Ossoff, who now chairs the Human Rights Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, partnered with the panel’s top-ranking Republican, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, to send a list of questions Friday to the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services. They demanded answers on what the state is doing to keep vulnerable children safe.
Last year, the state’s ombudsman for child welfare found widespread and systemic breakdowns within the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, as detailed in a recent AJC investigation.
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WHAT ELSE WE’RE READING.
- The Spokesman-Review: ‘I’m doing everything right,’ Marjorie Taylor Greene tells GOP gathering in Coeur d’Alene.
- The New York Times: It’s time to prepare for a possible Trump indictment.
- Wall Street Journal: Food stamp program in political crosshairs heading into Farm Bill negotiations.
- Marietta Daily Journal: Confusion reigns at Mableton town hall.
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Credit: Jimmy Carter Library
Credit: Jimmy Carter Library
CARTER DEDICATION. The U.S. Navy on Friday announced that a building on the Naval Academy’s campus in Annapolis, Maryland, has been renamed in honor of former President Jimmy Carter.
Maury Hall has been renamed Carter Hall, the AJC reported on Friday. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said the decision was prompted by a vote by Congress to identify and remove names connected to the Confederacy from U.S. military facilities.
Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946 and is the only U.S. president to have attended the famous academy in Annapolis. The building’s previous namesake, Matthew Fontaine Maury, is considered the father of naval oceanography but resigned his commission to join the Confederacy during the civil war.
What is now known as Carter Hall houses the academy’s engineering programs, a fitting tribute since Carter served as an engineer aboard the nation’s earliest nuclear submarines.
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AS ALWAYS, Jolt readers are some of our favorite tipsters. Send your best scoop, gossip and insider info to patricia.murphy@ajc.com, tia.mitchell@ajc.com and greg.bluestein@ajc.com.
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