Post-election autopsy reports from defeated political parties are typically filled with introspective soul-searching or at least advice for future political candidates on how to do things better.
But in the Donald Trump era in Georgia Republican politics, there are no losers anymore, only candidates who fell victim to cheats, even in a year following the GOP’s devastating defeats in the presidential race and the U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia.
That was the takeaway from the high-gloss “After Action Report” distributed by the Georgia GOP at district meetings around the state over the weekend and obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The publication read more like pro-David Shafer boosterism than a serious look at what went wrong, by design.
“No one fought harder for me in Georgia than David Shafer,” reads a cover-page endorsement of Shafer from Trump. “HE NEVER GAVE UP!”
Shafer faces re-election to the party post in June, so he and his allies used the report as a chance to tout his pro-Trump leadership rather than an examination of went wrong and how the party can win in 2022.
In fact, the document only makes brief mention of the fact that Republicans lost Georgia for the first time in a presidential race since 1992 and were subsequently swept in the two Senate runoffs that cost the GOP control of the chamber. And it was framed through the lens of Trump’s false claims about Georgia election fraud, with plenty of blame heaped on Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
“But in the top races, even this massive increase in Republican turnout was unable to overcome an electoral system rendered defenseless by foolish legal settlements and feckless ‘emergency’ rules,” it read. “The Georgia Republican Party, on three separate occasions, sued the Secretary of State to force him to obey the law and do his job.”
Left unmentioned was the fact that state and federal elections officials, including the above-mentioned Raffensperger, found no evidence of widespread irregularities. Three separate tallies of the results confirmed Joe Biden’s victory, an audit of absentee ballot signatures found no cases of fraud, and the pro-Trump lawsuits were laughed out of court.
The report provides a window into the ongoing focus from state GOP activists who continue to repeat pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the election despite no proof of any systemic wrongdoing.
A section called “election integrity efforts” highlighted the eight staffers assigned to monitor recount efforts, along with nearly 4,000 volunteers who monitored the tallies at 290 voting locations. For the runoff, 12 paid staffers and about 5,600 volunteers were stationed in all but two of Georgia’s counties.
It lists five separate lawsuits filed by the state party against Raffensperger, all that failed to yield any substantive victories. (The report asserts that one case led the secretary of state to expand access for poll watchers before asserting without evidence that “massive violations of state law remained unchecked.”
There were some other tidbits: The party trained nearly 14,000 volunteers during the election cycle, aided by a field staff that numbered 154 in the general election and 1,022 in the runoff. The team knocked on more than 7 million doors in the runoff and placed another 7 million calls.
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POSTED: In the good news department for the Georgia GOP, the weekend meetings across the state featured something every political party wants to see -- full seats and new faces.
Reports from the 13 district Republican conventions detailed record attendance at the sometimes sleepy party organizing affairs, with about half of attendees saying they were participating for the first time.
Also, despite about a dozen earlier county-level censures of Gov. Brian Kemp, Kemp mostly avoided any rebuke at the district-level events. Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, did not get as lucky, with at least six of the 13 districts passing resolutions condemning them for failing to follow former President Donald Trump’s demands to overturn Georgia’s election results.
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One GOP convention did not happen as scheduled this weekend. Disputes and worries of disruptions between two opposing factions forced the last-minute cancellation of the planned 1st District GOP convention in Jesup, the Savannah Morning News reports.
The standoff is between the existing GOP leadership of the group and the newer group of “Chatham Patriots.”
District chairman Carl Smith told the Morning News of the newcomers, “The only track record I have of them is doing what the only county out of 150 counties in the state did, which was people bringing signs and bringing their own speakers, people wearing Viking hats and completely destroying and disrupting the convention.”
But members of the Patriots organization said they were only planning to network before the district convention got started and then leave.
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U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock joined 26 other Democratic senators on a joint statement Sunday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the rapidly escalating violence in the Middle East.
“To prevent any further loss of civilian life and to prevent further escalation of conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories, we urge an immediate ceasefire,” the statement read.
Ossoff took the lead on the joint statement, which did not include the highest-ranking foreign policy hands in the Senate, namely Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez.
Ossoff is Georgia’s first Jewish senator, while Warnock made his close relationship with the Jewish community a key message in his 2020 Senate campaign.
Also on Sunday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS News an immediate ceasefire is not in his plans.
“We’re trying to degrade Hamas’s terrorist abilities and to degrade their will to do this again,” he told CBS. “So it’ll take some time. I hope it won’t take long, but it’s not immediate.”
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Sunny skies across most of Georgia this weekend coincided with graduations across the state, including at the University of Georgia, which held three separate undergraduate commencement ceremonies.
Among the proud parents between the hedges at UGA’s Sanford Stadium were Gov. Brian Kemp and First Lady Marty Kemp, whose daughter, Jarrett, was a member of the class of 2021.
Also celebrating were U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson and his wife, Meena, whose son, Alex, graduated from Kennesaw State University with a pre-med degree in Biology.
“One of the happiest days of my life,” Johnson wrote on Twitter. “I’m so proud of my son, I don’t know what to do!”
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s investigative team has a deep dive into Democrat-turned-Republican Vernon Jones’ lengthy history of controversies, particularly many allegations of intimidating or assaulting women over a period of three decades.
More:
“The Journal-Constitution reviewed civil and criminal complaints filed against Jones and interviewed more than a dozen elected officials, activists and lawyers who have clashed with him. This examination found numerous previously unreported details about Jones' conduct toward women spanning more than three decades.
One woman accused Jones of threatening her with a gun in her home. Another, a DeKalb County commissioner, said he purposely bumped into her after a contentious public meeting. A community activist was so unnerved by an encounter with Jones that she upgraded her home security."
Jones has never been criminally charged and, although he has lost several past elections for higher office, he remains prominent in Georgia politics. He is also a favorite of former President Donald Trump, although Trump has never endorsed Jones in his primary challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp.
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U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene holds two current homestead exemptions on separate homes in Georgia, according to a recent Channel 2 Action News investigation.
That would be a violation of state law, but the congresswoman said that Fulton County officials are to blame for a delay in updating her paperwork.
WSB-TV’s Justin Gray reports Fulton County tax officials confirmed that Greene never stopped getting the tax break on the Fulton property.
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Damon Weaver, the kid reporter who interviewed President Barack Obama in 2009 at the age of 11, has died at the age of 23, the AP reports.
Weaver had been studying communications at Albany State University.
From the AP:
Weaver was 11 when he interviewed Obama for 10 minutes in the Diplomatic Room. He asked questions that focused primarily on education. He covered school lunches, bullying, conflict resolution and how to succeed.
Weaver then asked Obama to be his “homeboy," saying then-Vice President Joe Biden had already accepted.
A smiling Obama replied “Absolutely" and shook the boy's hand.
