Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Good morning! We start today with indications of light — very light — turnout in early voting for the May 21 primary. We then look at a bill signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp last week that adds considerably to the list of criminal offenses requiring cash bail. Finally, we take up some odds-and-ends in the local political world, including our 1st District congressman’s swipe at a conservative colleague. Questions, comments, or story ideas? You can reach me at craig.thecurrent@gmail.com
NEWS
‘Surprisingly low’
Early voting for the May 21 primary so far appears to be light in Coastal Georgia.
Very light.
- In Glynn County, 1,050 votes were cast in the first four days of early, in-person voting, while 159 absentee ballots were registered. A county elections board official called the turnout in Glynn “surprisingly low.”
- In Liberty County, 1,463 votes were recorded the first five days of in-person voting, while 121 absentee ballots were posted through the mail or deposited in a drop box.
- In Bulloch County, 752 votes were cast in the first five days of in-person voting, while 82 absentee ballots were submitted by mail or deposited in a drop box.
- In Chatham County, in-person balloting in the first five days totaled 1,446; the number of absentee ballots returned, 590.
Chatham County Election Board supervisor Billy Wooten said that like Glynn and other Coastal Georgia counties, early turnout in Chatham was exceptionally low. Pre-May 21 voting will have to pick up considerably to equal the more than 18,500 voters who cast ballots in three weeks of early voting in the 2022 primary, he said.
For the candidates, the initial numbers add to the pressure to get out the vote — particularly by knocking on doors — in a primary election year where the two main candidates in the presidential race are already decided and there are few statewide races to speak of, said Spencer DeMink, a political and campaign consultant in Coastal Georgia.
For incumbents facing a primary challenge, the initial trend is especially worrying, said DeMink, whose Savannah-based firm is working for seven local candidates in this year’s elections.
“The lower the voter turnout, the potentially easier it is to flip a seat and beat an incumbent because the margins are so much smaller.”
NEWS
Stopping the ‘revolving door’?
Among the bills that Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law last week was Senate Bill 63, which adds more than 30 offenses to the list of those that require cash bail to be released from jail.
Kemp hailed the measure, which goes into effect July 1, saying it would “ensure dangerous individuals cannot walk our streets and commit further crimes.”
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones said it would stop the “revolving door” of people being arrested and released, and would end the “leniency” that “some counties and municipalities” have extended to “criminal activity in their communities.”
Longtime advocates of criminal justice reform in Georgia were less sanguine, describing the new law as overwrought and draconian.
A good portion of the new offenses now requiring cash bail are nonviolent misdemeanors such as marijuana possession or trespassing — “not the type of offenses that threaten public safety,” said Coco Guthrie-Papy, director of Public Policy and Communications at Savannah’s Deep Center.
Instead, Guthrie-Papy said, the new law will put more people — often poor people — into incarceration. That, in turn, will only increase recidivism and deepen the burden on the courts, jails, law enforcement personnel, and the taxpayer, she said.
By limiting organizations, nonprofit businesses, churches, and individuals from using bail funds more than three times a year, Guthrie-Papy also said the new law also curtails a practice dating back to the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 1960s.
In all, the new measure is “disappointing,” Guthrie-Papy said.
By reverting to “old tough-on-crime practices that force even more people to languish in jail because they are poor or mentally ill,” it will serve only to undo the progress in criminal justice reform made under the administration of former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal and do little to make people and communities safer.
NOTES
7 things for your radar
- Stay tuned: Today is the deadline for Gov. Brian Kemp to act on bills passed by the state legislature. He can sign or veto a pending bill, or simply allow it to become law. Of special interest: Senate Bill 189, which could help independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., eliminate counting ballots using computer QR codes in future elections, and strengthen the ability of election system skeptics to challenge the eligibility of voters who appear to have moved.
- Daggers drawn: A subcommittee of the GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee is set to hold a hearing this week on ideological bias at National Public Radio. Expect 1st District U.S. Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter and other Republicans to show up at the hearing with daggers drawn.
- ‘Bless her heart’: Congressman Carter called Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s promise to submit a motion this week to remove Mike Johnson from the speakership of the House the “worst thing you could do right now.
- Johnson himself went beyond Greene’s timing, as former Republican state Rep. Scot Turner notes in the Peach Pundit. After dropping a withering “bless her heart’ on the two-term lawmaker from Rome, Johnson was asked whether he considered her a “serious lawmaker. He replied: “I don’t think she is proving to be, no.”
- ‘A witch hunt’: That’s how conservative talk show host Brian Pritchard on Monday described efforts by state Republican officials to remove him as the Georgia GOP’s first vice chair, just days ahead of Friday’s meeting of the Republican state committee to decide the matter.
- Chatham County GOP chair Brittany Brown, 1st District Republican Committee chair Kandiss Taylor, and state Chairman Josh McKoon have called on Pritchard to step down, after an administrative law judge in Atlanta fined him $5,000 in March for voting illegally nine times while serving probation for a pair of felony convictions dating back nearly 30 years. The reason the GOP establishment really wants to oust him is that he supports Donald Trump, and insists the 2020 election was stolen from the American people and Gov. Kemp certified a fraudulent election, Pritchard tells The Current.
- Internet safety: Ladies on the Right is hosting a luncheon at The Landings on Skidaway Island on May 16 featuring Donna Rice Hughes (yes, that Donna Rice.) She’s president and CEO of Enough is Enough, whose mission is to make the internet safer for children, the group’s internet page says.
- Water: One the Tybee Island City Council’s four strategic goals, as set forth in its FY 2024-2025 budget for the island: “Determine status of Floridian Aquifer for supply of projected water needs and develop plan to remedy, if necessary.”
- Media notes: In recent weeks, the City of Savannah has switched to using the generic “City of Savannah spokesperson” as an attribution for any responses the city public information staffers provide to media outlets on behalf of the city. Josh Peacock, the Savannah city press secretary, defended the generic credit as the “industry standard” when answering an email inquiry from The Current about the anonymous credit. Some media outlets are accepting the blanket unnamed sourcing from taxpayer-funded staffers; some — including The Current and the Savannah Morning News — will not.
- Long drive: It isn’t especially noteworthy that state Rep. Rick Townsend (R-Brunswick) held a news conference last week to discuss his legislative accomplishments during the latest session of the Georgia General Assembly. Except that he held the news conference not in Brunswick, Glynn County, or elsewhere in his district but 270 miles away on the South Wing steps of the state capitol in Atlanta.
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