U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock will hold a news conference today with voting rights activists that is likely to focus on a recent interpretation of state law that will eliminate Saturday voting ahead of the Dec. 6 runoff election.
As our colleague Mark Niesse reported, a 2016 state law banned Saturday voting within two days of a state or national holiday. Then in 2021, Republican lawmakers shortened the state’s runoff period from nine weeks to four as part of the election overhaul they pushed through in the wake of Democrats’ successes on the ballot.
Under the new runoff window, the Saturday that would have accommodated early voting is too close to both Thanksgiving and the state holiday formerly known as “Robert E. Lee Day” to allow it under state law. The Friday after Thanksgiving was traditionally the Lee holiday.
Credit: Steve Schaefer/AJC
Credit: Steve Schaefer/AJC
Chief election official Gabriel Sterling said he initially thought there would be Saturday early voting during the runoff election for the U.S. Senate, but he now says he misspoke and the law doesn’t allow it. Counties do have an option for three additional early voting days the week of Thanksgiving.
The prohibition on the only Saturday available for early voting is infuriating Democratic leaders.
Former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was among those who were incredulous that a holiday that once celebrated a Confederate general is now being used to prohibit Saturday voting before the runoff. Democrats say the decision will negatively affect voters.
Sterling clapped back at her on Twitter: “The law says a Thursday or Friday holiday would not allow a Saturday vote. I’m going to assume someone didn’t tell you the truth about the law because I’m sure you wouldn’t intentionally mislead folks.”
However, the issue might not be settled. An attorney aligned with Democrats said that the Secretary of State’s office is misinterpreting the law by applying it to runoffs instead of just primaries and general elections. Marc Elias, representing the Democratic Party, sent a letter to officials in Fulton County and other parts of Georgia urging them to move forward with Saturday voting.
“The provision of the law cited in the Secretary of State’s November 12 Official Election Bulletin which prohibits early voting from occurring on a Saturday following a state holiday simply does not apply to runoff elections,” he wrote.
Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis appears to agree, writing on Twitter that the state elections officials’ interpretation of the law is “not great. Georgia law distinguishes between ‘primary, election, and runoff.’”
Later in his Twitter thread, Kreis wrote that the state’s interpretation is plausible but, because the law appears to be ambiguous, election officials should err on the side of voters and allow Saturday early voting.
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TRUMP FACTOR. Former President Donald Trump is set to announce tonight that he’ll run for president in 2024, a move that will deepen an internal divide that has split Republicans in Georgia and in other states.
On one side of the chasm are mainstream Republicans who are ready to move on. The de facto leaders of the Georgia faction are Gov. Brian Kemp, Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who all triumphed over Trump-backed candidates in the GOP primary before prevailing over Democrats in last week’s midterms.
On the other side is Senate GOP hopeful Herschel Walker, the longtime Trump ally who was endorsed by the former president before he even entered the race. Without hesitating, Walker said at the October debate he supports a comeback by his friend.
Nowhere was this split more evident than the days before the midterm election, when Kemp and Walker held dueling events a few miles apart with starkly different messages. The governor focused mostly on the economy, while Walker leaned into culture wars issues to rally his supporters.
Trump’s entry into the presidential race will inject new questions into the Dec. 6 U.S. Senate runoff between Walker and Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock.
Will Walker want Trump to help juice unexpectedly low turnout in the midterm? Will Democrats seek to capitalize on Trump’s polarizing persona — or avoid him altogether?
We got an early glimpse of the pushback at Kemp’s victory party, where he dinged Trump subtly, but publicly, for the first time.
The conservative Club for Growth recently released a poll showing Trump trailing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Georgia.
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ON THE HOT SEAT. Gov. Brian Kemp will appear today before the Fulton County special grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election.
The grand jury will meet with Kemp behind closed doors and is expected to ask him about the pressure he faced by Trump and his allies to help reverse Joe Biden’s win during the 2020 general election, the AJC’s Tamar Hallerman and Greg Bluestein reported.
Prosecutors have said they want to ask Kemp about the identities of the people who tried to get in touch with him and evidence the Trump campaign provided in support of its theory that Georgia’s election was rigged.
A judge allowed Kemp to delay his testimony until after the November election.
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Credit: Nicole Craine/The New York Times
Credit: Nicole Craine/The New York Times
TODAY ON THE TRAIL:
- Herschel Walker campaigns in Jefferson with Riley Gaines, the former NCAA swimmer who has been outspoken about competing against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.
- U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock kicks off his “One More Time” statewide tour with a “Coffee with the Rev” in Douglasville. He’ll head to Macon, Fort Valley and Warner Robins later in the week.
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DEBATE UPDATE. Herschel Walker has not yet responded to the Atlanta Press Club’s invitation to debate U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock next Monday.
Warnock said he wants voters to see the contrast between him and Walker no matter “what form that’s in.”
“I’ve already shown up at an Atlanta Press Club debate, by the way he did not,” Warnock said, adding later, “He ought to answer the questions that are relevant to wanting to represent the people of Georgia in the United States Senate.”
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Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC
Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC
GAVEL UP. In a sign of respect for state House Speaker David Ralston, both Republican candidates seeking to replace him promoted themselves as admirers of his leadership style. But it was his ally Jon Burns who won the vote over Barry Fleming.
Burns framed himself as an heir to Ralston’s more consensus-driven approach and boasted the endorsement of key members of the speaker’s inner circle.
But it was more surprising that Fleming, a sometime rival of Ralston, tried to cast himself as a protege of the Republican. The two had clashed for years, and Fleming promised a more assertive strategy and open-door policy.
Fleming admitted the two had a strained relationship for months, which he said stemmed from his role in crafting new legislative-leave rules after Ralston was accused of abusing the privilege. In 2021, he was suspicious when Ralston tasked him with shepherding the state’s new election rewrite.
“At first I thought, ‘Man, what a good way to get back at me,’” said Fleming, who said he later came to recognize that Ralston had “put aside the differences we had” to entrust him with the difficult assignment.
As he spoke, phones in the chamber lit up with text messages mocking Fleming for asserting he was a Ralston protege. We’re told by two officials that Fleming lost the secret ballot vote to Burns by a roughly two-to-one margin.
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PLUS ONE. Herschel Walker is being used as reason by U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., to call for to delay the Senate GOP leadership elections.
Speaking at the Capitol, Hawley said members should wait until the Georgia runoff election is done.
The full quote, courtesy of our colleague Jamie Dupree:
Well, why would they want to disenfranchise Herschel Walker? That's my question. I don't understand why this argument that Georgia is so important we have to win Georgia — which I agree with — and Herschel is down there battling it out, but then you say that but we're not going to give you any voice in our leadership elections for two years. … It just doesn't make any sense to me.
While Hawley and other conservatives seem intent on making things rough for Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, for now he appears to have no real competition for the post and is likely to keep his position whether Walker is in the room or not.
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Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
MCCARTHY’S DAY. Republicans in the U.S. House will vote today on whether Kevin McCarthy will become House Speaker if the party retakes control of the chamber once all midterm races are settled.
Although some conservatives have indicated they want a different person in the role, McCarthy faced no serious challengers on Monday when the House Republican Conference met to hear speeches and ask candidates questions. McCarthy also got a somewhat surprising co-sign from Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“If we don’t unify behind Kevin McCarthy, we’re opening up the door for the Democrats to be able to recruit some of our Republicans, and they may only need one or two since we don’t know what we will have in the majority — how many seats we’ll have — and I will not allow that to happen,” she told reporters Monday.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson is among three candidates for whip. He is considered a long-shot but possible consensus choice if the two others — Reps. Tom Emmer and Jim Banks — split the vote.
And Politico reported Monday that U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, the freshman from Georgia, is campaigning for the GOP conference’s secretary position. Although he circulated a letter and appears to be making calls, Politico says Clyde, who lives outside of Athens, isn’t considered a serious contender for a job expected to go to Michigan’s Lisa McClain.
Clyde is not well-liked among his conference colleagues. He has his friends in the pro-Trump Freedom Caucus, but beyond that he's turned off a broad swath of fellow Republicans with a manner they describe as prickly – not to mention his comparison of last year's Capitol riot to a “tourist" visit .
One House Republican who recently got a call from the Georgian, presumably to ask for support, quipped that “I don't know why Clyde's calling me."
“We've got to have our country work and … I sort of see him as a Marjorie Taylor Greene Junior," this lawmaker said, adding that Clyde “would just run over the moderates" if elected to leadership.
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TODAY IN WASHINGTON:
Both the U.S. House and Senate are back in session this week. Next week, they are off for the Thanksgiving holiday. Newly elected members of the U.S. House are in town for orientation all week and members of the GOP conference are participating in the aforementioned leadership discussions.
- Allegations that women detained at immigration centers in Georgia received unnecessary and invasive medical treatments are the topic of today’s hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chaired by Georgia’s Jon Ossoff.
- The U.S. House has scheduled votes on two Georgia-related bills. One bill would name the Veterans Affairs hospital in Decatur after former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland. The other bill names the Department of Veterans Affairs’ administrative offices on the same campus after former U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson.
- The House will also debate a bill that already passed in the Senate that would ban non-disclosure agreements from being used to silence people who say they were victims of sexual misconduct.
- President Joe Biden is in Bali attending the G-20 summit.
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Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
CIVIL RIGHTS COLD CASES. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s bill that will allow more time for a board to review unsolved murders of Black people during the Civil Rights era is headed to President Joe Biden to sign into law.
The Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board was created in 2019, but then-President Donald Trump never appointed any members. Biden appointed four people to the board in June of 2021, three with ties to Atlanta, who were all confirmed in February.
Ossoff’s bill — which he filed with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — extends the board’s term through 2027.
The Senate approved the legislation in September, and the House signed off on Monday.
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Credit: File photo
Credit: File photo
GAS GUZZLERS. Herschel Walker, the GOP U.S. Senate nominee, was in Augusta on Monday making a pitch to his audience for “the good emissions” of “gas-guzzling cars.”
“If we was ready for the green agenda, I’d raise my hand right now. But we’re not ready right now,” he said. “So don’t let them fool you like this is a new agenda. … What we need to do is keep having those gas-guzzling cars, ‘cause we got the good emissions under those cars.”
Although nearly all Americans drive cars and trucks with internal combustion engines, Georgia’s GOP leadership has worked feverishly and successfully to position the state as the new hub for EV manufacturing. The result has been multibillion-dollar plants coming from Rivian and Hyundai, along with battery and component plants popping up elsewhere.
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Credit: Nicole Craine/The New York Times
Credit: Nicole Craine/The New York Times
HISTORY BOOKS. Here’s a fun fact from The New York Times: If U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock wins his December runoff, it will make 2022 the first year Democrats haven’t lost any Senate seats under a Democratic president since 1962 — and the first time no Senate incumbent has lost in either party since 1914.
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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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