The Buckhead neighborhood has been shaken by the brutal killing of 77-year-old Eleanor Bowles, who was stabbed to death in her garage around noon Saturday. Police believe she may have interrupted a man who was trying to steal her car.
But some residents were also dismayed by a fundraising appeal sent out two days after the tragic incident from the Buckhead City Committee with the subject line, “Tragic loss in Buckhead: How you can help.”
Instead of raising money for Bowles’ family or their choice of philanthropy, the leaders of Buckhead City Committee asked for donations to the cityhood initiative itself.
“The process of becoming a city is expensive, and we need your generous contributions to make Buckhead safe, secure and independent,” the email said.
Credit: Courtesy photo
Credit: Courtesy photo
Along with a donation form, it suggested a second way to help in the wake of Bowles’ murder would be to display a “Buckhead City” yard sign in residents’ front yards.
On Instagram, the group posted a screenshot of a news article about Bowles with the caption “another violent weekend in Buckhead.”
But not everyone agreed with the tactic.
“Please don’t use this tragedy to promote your own narrow political agenda,” one user replied.
There was more of that criticism on Twitter, where a Buckhead City Committee volunteer highlighted Bowles’ death in hopes of garnering support for its goals, such as another attempt in the upcoming legislative session to get a cityhood referendum approved. That post was then shared onto the committee’s official Twitter page.
“Understandably so many are now paying attention to what’s going on in Buckhead after the horrific murder of Ms. Bowles,” the post said. “Please read up on becnow.com on how to get involved and help @BuckheadCityGA become a reality in Nov 2023. It’s the only way to effect real change.”
Among the replies: “This is truly a tragedy but politicizing it to raise money for Buckhead City is not ok.”
Atlanta police announced the arrest of a suspect in the murder on Monday. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens also issued a warning.
“Let me be very clear to those who would want to do harm in our community, who would want to perpetrate these crimes,” Dickens said. “If you pull a gun or pull out a knife in our city to hurt, harm, or kill someone, you will be arrested and sent to jail.”
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Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
KEMP RECAP. First, there was a 52-part Twitter thread fired off by Stacey Abrams’ top aide that posited that the race for governor was “nearly impossible” for the Democrat to win.
Now Gov. Brian Kemp’s campaign is taking a deeper dive into his victory with a two-page memo that contends a multimillion-dollar investment in direct canvassing and streaming, along with message discipline, helped the Republican defeat Abrams by an eight-point margin.
The document was put together by Brent Buchanan and Jack Coogan on behalf of Kemp’s leadership committee. It involved a Cygnal poll of roughly 1,300 general election voters.
Among the findings:
- Roughly one-third of Kemp’s voters said inflation was their top priority, and 27% others said his record and experience were the main reason for their support.
- Although more independents listed abortion over inflation as their top issue, they voted for Kemp by a 10-point margin and supported U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock over Herschel Walker by a 19-point margin. That’s a 29-point split-ticket swing between the two races.
- The governor was roughly even with Abrams among women ages 50-64, while Warnock won the same bloc by 13 points. Kemp won women 65 and older by 20 points.
- Kemp roughly split college-educated voters with Abrams and won non-college educated voters by 15 points.
- One of the biggest sources of ticket-splitters were Catholic voters.
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Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
JAN. 6 SUBPOENA. Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed records from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, as a part of his multistate investigation into the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, The Washington Post reports.
More from The Post:
“The Georgia subpoena, which is dated Dec. 9, adds to the evidence that the Justice Department is extending its examination of the circumstances leading up to the Capitol attack to include local and state election officials and their potential interactions with the former president and his representatives related to the 2020 election.
The virtually identical requests seek communications with Trump, in addition to employees, agents and attorneys for his campaign.
The Department of Justice's long-running Jan. 6 investigation has moved beyond the large pool of people who directly took part in the bloody riot at the U.S. Capitol to focus on other aspects of the attempts to overturn the election results."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Dave Wickert also reports that Cobb County elections officials received a subpoena from the DOJ as well. The DOJ also asked for records from local officials in three other states where Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election: Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin.
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EARLY WARNING. The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel has a message for her fellow conservatives after Herschel Walker’s high-profile Georgia defeat: Get your voters out earlier.
“Mr. Walker’s troubled candidacy was the shining example of the need for a more sophisticated early-voting plan,” she writes. “Candidates who don’t excite voters shouldn’t count on their flocking to the polls on Election Day. Better to track them down and lock their votes in.”
To Strassel’s point, of the 1.9 million people who cast their ballot prior to Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock won 64% of those voting absentee and 58% of those voting early. Walker won 57% of votes cast Tuesday, but turnout for the day was 1.6 million, or 46% of the total.
She concludes: “In a perfect world, every state would go back to Election Day voting — it’s cleaner and a civic duty. But early and absentee voting aren’t going away. The GOP can moan about it, continue to freak their voters out about election integrity, fritter away weeks of vote gathering — and lose. Or they can get in the game.”
In-person early voting and voting by mail has been embraced by both liberal and conservative-leaning states for years, and some states conduct nearly all of their elections by mail. Few systemic issues have been raised over the years, but that was upended by former President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud surrounding the 2020 election.
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Credit: Nathan Posner for the AJC
Credit: Nathan Posner for the AJC
PRISON SEXUAL ABUSE. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff is continuing to harness the power of the committee he leads to investigate federal prisons with a new report today outlining allegations of sexual abuse from incarcerated women.
The latest investigation found that incidents were reported over the past decade at two-thirds of all federal prisons where women were detained. The culprits are often male prison employees, including senior-level officials.
The Bureau of Prisons’ Office of Internal Affairs has a backlog of approximately 8,000 cases, some pending for more than five years. An unknown number involve sexual assault allegations, meaning potentially abusive prison employees are allowed to continue working and never held accountable.
The committee’s investigation found that at four facilities — two in New York and one each in California and Florida — there were multiple employees who were accused of assaulting female inmates.
The committee will hold a hearing this morning to go over the report’s findings. Three former inmates are scheduled to testify. Colette Peters, the new director of the federal Bureau of Prisons, is also expected to attend.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has already released findings related to the treatment of immigration detainees and a pattern of mismanagement and lax security at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta.
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TODAY IN WASHINGTON:
- The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hold a hearing about its report of sexual abuse at federal prisons.
- President Joe Biden will sign the Respect for Marriage Act at an event at the White House.
- Biden is also hosting the heads of state and other officials from nations across Africa for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, which begins today.
- The U.S. House Financial Services Committee holds a hearing on the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
***
Credit: Alyssa Pointer/AJC
Credit: Alyssa Pointer/AJC
RESPECT FOR MARRIAGE. Look for familiar faces in the crowd on Tuesday when President Joe Biden signs legislation that mandates federal recognition for same-sex and interracial marriages.
Georgia state Rep. Matthew Wilson and his husband, Robert Poole, will be among the hundreds attending the White House ceremony to witness the adoption of the Respect for Marriage Act.
Wilson, who ran as a Democrat for Georgia insurance commissioner but lost in the primary, just celebrated the first anniversary of his wedding in November.
Wilson and Poole should dress in layers. The event is outdoors on the White House’s South Lawn, and the forecast for today is partly cloudy skies and a high of 43 degrees.
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Credit: Nathan Posner for the AJC
Credit: Nathan Posner for the AJC
MTG’S PATTERN. It’s become a familiar pattern: U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says something that, on its face, appears to be outrageous and often offensive. The media reports her comments, amplifying both her message and her critics. Greene says she was taken out of context and blames the media.
The latest example involves comments she made over the weekend while a speaker at a gala hosted by the New York Young Republicans Club. Greene said she and Steve Bannon “would have won” if they had been behind the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol and it “would have been armed.”
That drew rebukes from the Biden administration and even late night TV hosts who said Greene appeared to be condoning or at least making light of the violence of the Jan. 6 riot. Greene said she was being taken out of context and was merely responding with hyperbole to those who have blamed her for that day’s violence.
“The White House needs to learn how sarcasm works,” she wrote in a statement Monday.
Greene has often played both sides when it comes to the deadly Capitol riot, condemning the violence but also sympathizing with the hundreds of people who carried out the attack and spreading conspiracy theories about its origins.
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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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