While Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was in Warm Springs on Tuesday, state House Speaker David Ralston was in Savannah, shoring up his Republican caucus against any blue wave that might come next week.
And we’ll have the details on that effort later.
Ralston is Doug Collins' most important backer in his bid to oust U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed last December by Gov. Brian Kemp. An AJC poll released Monday has the pair neck-and-neck, but well behind Democrat Raphael Warnock. A Jan. 5 runoff is a near certainty.
Last week, Ralston caught some flak while campaigning for Collins in Ellijay. He focused on Loeffler’s wealth, but also said this: “I know she married well.”
Many women, Republican and Democrat, were displeased by the remark.
“They were using the word ‘sexist’ – people that know me know that there’s not a bone in my body of that,” Ralston said a week later. "Somebody reminded me the next day, when everything was kind of settling down, that they’ve heard me say a dozen times or more that Doug Collins had married well.
“It’s just a kind of thing I say – that I will not say again,” the House speaker said.
But Ralston added this. “I hardly know Senator Loeffler. I’ve invited her to come by the Capitol on two or three different occasions. I think the House might have gone in a different direction if an effort had been made to form relationships,” the speaker said. “Relationships are important to Doug – always have been.”
Loeffler may have a vast personal fortune, the speaker said, but Collins has a statewide network of House members. That alliance worked for Nathan Deal in the 2010 race for governor, the speaker noted.
“Personally, I like that model better than I do this outrageous expenditure of money,” he said.
We also gave Ralston an opportunity to respond to the announcement by state Rep. David Clark, R-Buford, that he intends to challenge Ralston’s bid for a fifth term as House speaker once we’re past Nov. 3.
Ralston declined, saying he would remain focused on protecting Republican members of the House.
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Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
Georgia has crossed a staggering early-voting threshold: More than 3.1 million people have cast their ballots so far, according to the Secretary of State’s Office, including 2.1 million who have voted in-person.
That number could conceivably surpass the 2016 vote total of 4.1 million by Friday, particularly since the last days of the three-week early voting period are typically the heaviest. Even early voters are procrastinators.
According to the number-crunchers over at GeorgiaVotes.com, about one-quarter of them didn’t cast ballots in the 2016 election. Around the same proportion also didn’t vote in the 2018 contest.
While Republicans are favored to win the vote on Election Day, the final days of the early-voting period are expected to tilt toward Democrats. Ryan Anderson from GeorgiaVotes explains why:
In general, the voting population tends to get younger and less white as early voting goes along, with the former being much more pronounced than the latter.
They’re getting plenty of encouragement from state Democrats. The Democratic Party of Georgia bought more than $500,000 worth of radio ads this week to push voters to the polls early.
They include calls from national figures Stacey Abrams, Julian Castro, Cory Booker and multilingual ads from local leaders like state Rep. Sam Park, D-Lawrenceville, and House candidate Zulma Lopez of DeKalb County in Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.
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Most of you are familiar with the Lincoln Project, the group of never-Trumpers (and former Republicans) who have churned out cutting videos aimed at President Donald Trump and his supporters.
On Tuesday, several readers spotted this Tweet from Lincoln Project member Rick Wilson:
Someone asked me this morning what happens to @ProjectLincoln when this is over.
For starters, we'll see you in Georgia for the special election...and we sure as hell aren't coming to help QAnon Kelly or [harsh descriptive word] Doug Collins.
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The Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen will be making a stop in Savannah at 6 p.m. today. Details are here.
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Also from Savannah this evening, WTOC-TV will be hosting a 7 p.m. debate for U.S. Senate between Republican incumbent David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff. It’s their second meeting.
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Credit: Greg Bluestein
Credit: Greg Bluestein
Republicans led by Gov. Brian Kemp orchestrated a rally in Warm Springs on Tuesday to counter the appearance by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. From the piece:
Standing in front of a shuttered textile mill in Manchester, U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson told a crowd of more than 100 supporters to send pictures of the worn-out building to voters who rely on the oil industry — a nod to Biden's remarks that he wanted to “transition" away from fossil fuels.
The national spotlight apparently made organizers very optic-conscious. GPB’s Grant Blankenship had this revealing tidbit:
About 200 people were on hand for the event.
Mark Stephens watched the small Trump rally from the flatbed of his truck, with a Confederate battle flag flying next to him. He was asked to leave because of the flag. Several attendees showed up in gear supporting the QAnon conspiracy, but were asked to keep the gear covered for the duration of the press event.
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Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
One of the more poignant passages in Joe Biden’s nationally televised speech from Warm Springs on Tuesday deserves a deeper look. Standing not far from FDR’s private retreat, Biden spoke of an address by the New Deal president that went undelivered:
In his last hours, President Roosevelt was at work on a speech to be delivered the next day.
In it he was to say: “Today … we must cultivate the science of human relationships — the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same world at peace."
To live together and work together.
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There’s more to those unspoken words. From historian Jon Meacham’s book, “The Soul of America”:
In his cottage at Warm Springs — where a porch had been designed to resemble the prow of a ship, giving the paralyzed president the illusion of movement, of freedom—Roosevelt left the draft of a speech he had been scheduled to deliver on Saturday, April 13, 1945, on the occasion of the birthday of Thomas Jefferson.
“Today, science has brought all the different quarters of the globe so close together that it is impossible to isolate them one from another," Roosevelt was to have said. “Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace….The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."
They were, in a way, his last words.
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At his drive-in rally in Atlanta last night, Joe Biden slipped in a shot at U.S. Sen. David Perdue for mockingly mispronouncing the name of Kamala Harris, the Demcoratic nominee for vice president.
“It’s got to stop, and it’s gonna stop with us,” Biden said.
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Last month, former state House member Alisha Thomas Morgan, a Democrat, cut a YouTube video endorsing Joyette Holmes, the Republican district attorney of Cobb County – who was appointed to the position when Gov. Brian Kemp named Vic Reynolds as GBI director, and is facing her first electoral contest.
Morgan’s backing was hailed as an example of “cross party” support. What wasn’t said was that Morgan was on Holmes' campaign payroll.
Morgan was paid $750 in August, and another $750 on Oct. 2, according to Holmes' latest campaign disclosure filing.
“The explicit intention of an endorsement is to give credibility to a candidate without favor,” said Flynn Broady Jr., the Democratic candidate for DA. “If [Holmes] isn’t going to campaign with honesty and integrity, how can we expect her to keep a fair, balanced and honest court system?”
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Our AJC colleague James Salzer reports that a fundraising committee established by Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, is spending big:
Reports filed this week show Advance Georgia has raised about $1.5 million, mostly from lobby groups and companies interested in state legislation and funding. It has spent about $600,000 in recent weeks, including more than $400,000 on campaign mailers.
…Duncan, the Senate's president, is working to maintain the Republican majority in his chamber. Republicans currently hold a 35-21 advantage over the Democrats in the Senate.
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Already posted: political parties and special interest groups have spent nearly $25 million to influence Georgia’s two most competitive congressional races. This money, which has paid for countless TV and digital ads, mailers and text messages, is in addition to the direct campaign spending by Republican Karen Handel and Democratic incumbent Lucy McBath in the Sixth District and Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux and Republican Rich McCormick in the Seventh.
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Politics, race and tradition are at play in a slight controversy that has popped up with Dr. Rich McCormick’s Seventh District congressional campaign. Alumni of Morehouse College say that McCormick, a graduate of the nearby and independent Morehouse School of Medicine, is improperly referred to as a “Morehouse Man” in his latest ad. McCormick’s team is aware of the criticism, but has refused requests to take down the spot. More here.
