Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024
Good morning! This week, we look at news from top state Republicans meeting in St. Simons last weekend and the importance of knowing how the legislative process works under the Gold Dome. We top it off with Coastal Georgia political news from Glynn County to Atlanta and beyond. Questions, comments, or story ideas? You can reach me at craig.thecurrent@gmail.com.
Georgia GOP vote to endorse Trump fails
A vote by senior Georgia Republican Party officials to endorse Donald Trump as their 2024 presidential nominee failed over the weekend but voting will be redone in “a couple of days,” a top Coastal Georgia Republican official said.
During a closed-door meeting on Saturday of the party’s executive committee, party secretary Caroline Jeffords made a motion to endorse the former U.S. president, according to two people present at the St. Simons Island event, The Current’s Craig Nelson reports.
At least 150 people cast votes in person or by proxy. After the endorsement failed to win enough votes, those present passed another motion to keep the original tally secret, the two people said.
Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor, who participated in the ballot, blamed the failed endorsement vote on technical glitches. The vote “wasn’t correct,” she said. “It wasn’t a legitimate vote.” She didn’t detail the technical problems.
How or exactly when state party officials will conduct a new vote to endorse Trump or any GOP presidential candidate wasn’t clear. Georgia’s presidential preference primary takes place March 12.
Jeffords did not reply to a message seeking comment.
The previous evening, members of the executive committee and other state party luminaries attended a gala hosted by Taylor and the 1st Congressional District Republican Party, which she chairs.
Among those who gathered at the dinner were U.S. Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter, Labor Commissioner Bruce Thompson, state GOP chairman Josh McKoon, former state senator William Ligon, Georgia Republican Assembly 1st vice president Brant Frost V, Glynn County District Attorney Keith Higgins, Chatham County Republican Committee chair Brittany Brown, and state Senate District 1 candidate Beth Majeroni.
An auction overseen by state Sen. Colton Moore and including paintings of Trump and the Statue of Liberty took in more than $25,000, which will be used for grassroots political efforts in the upcoming elections, Taylor said.
Learn the process
Earlier this month, Republican state Rep. Jesse Petrea of Savannah, introduced a resolution calling for an amendment to Georgia’s constitution that would “clarify” that only U.S. citizens shall have the right to vote in elections in the state.
Last week, Democratic state Rep. Carl Gilliard, also from Savannah, announced that a colleague, Rep. Roger Bruce (Atlanta), was introducing legislation calling for the creation of a commission to study the issue of reparations and who among Black Georgians might qualify — an initiative akin, he said, to one recently undertaken by the state of California.
While representing the sharply different priorities of the two Coastal Georgia lawmakers, the two measures are part of the deluge of measures that Georgia legislature takes up each session in a process that to outsiders — and frankly, to many insiders, too — seems impenetrable and unaccountable.
Which is why The Current’s Maggie Lee, a reporting veteran of the Gold Dome, and visual journalist Justin Taylor teamed to put together a primer on how the legislative process in the state capitol works and how best to monitor legislation that you care about.
As the current, 40-day session gathers steam, we urge you to consult it and make your voices heard to those who represent you.
5 things for your radar
1. Achieving fiscal responsibility — 1st District U.S. Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter last week voted in favor a bill that would create a government commission “on fiscal responsibility and reform.” The bill, H.R. 5779, doesn’t explicitly mention Social Security and Medicare, but in a statement during a hearing of the House Budget Committee, Carter said changes to the two programs would be on the proposed commission’s agenda. “At our current pace, cuts to these programs are guaranteed, if the programs continue to exist at all,” the Republican from St. Simons said.
Carter’s Democratic colleagues differed over the path to debt reduction and government fiscal responsibility, among them Rep. Dan Klee of Michigan, who said those goals should be achieved by “ensuring that the tax code makes the wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations pay their fair share, not by advancing cuts in Social Security and Medicare.”
2. They’re off! — Savannah attorney Frank Pennington last week announced he was joining Christopher Middleton in the nonpartisan race for the open seat on the bench of the six-member Chatham County Superior Court. Pennington is currently an assistant U.S. attorney in the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force unit; Middleton currently serves as judge pro tem in the Recorder’s Court and Juvenile Court.
In Glynn County, Amy Abbott, a mathematics instructor residing on St. Simons, also announced her run for the District 2 seat on the county’s Board of Commissioners.
3. Us, too — “We’ve made a lot of promises to these companies telling them we can supply the workforce,” Gov. Brian Kemp said during a panel discussion on the electric vehicle industry at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, citing the $7.6 billion Hyundai plant in Ellabell and the $5 billion Rivian complex in Stanton Springs.
“What keeps me up [at night] is being able to supply the workforce to do all of the different things that these companies want to do. We’re trying to let them know that we have hard-working people. We believe in a lot of things that they’re doing . . . and we want to support their corporate goals.”
4. No can do — Butting heads with House Speaker Jon Burns from Newington — not to mention the determined opponents of Georgia’s voting system — Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told lawmakers in Atlanta last week it was too late to eliminate the QR code on the state’s ballots and replace it with plain text for this year’s elections.
To change the current operating systems and software would require six to nine months and cost $25 million, Raffensperger said in a statement a day after testifying at the capitol, adding that he has asked the legislature to fund deployment of an auditing tool that “would read and tally, not the QR code, but the text of the ballot summary.”
5. Polling — Per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 60% of Georgians “strongly” or “somewhat disapprove” of school vouchers and 69% support Medicaid expansion.” Both issues a high on the agenda of state lawmakers in Atlanta. In the same poll, 57% are “very confident” or “somewhat confident” that the 2024 presidential election will be conducted “fairly and accurately.
The AJC poll was conducted Jan. 3-11 by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs and involved 1,007 registered voters The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points.
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