Tuesday, July 23, 2024
Good morning! We start today with a U.S. senator back home in Coastal Georgia and talking up the Democratic Party’s heir apparent to Joe Biden. We then look at yet another troubling campaign finance story out of a Savannah-area state House district. Finally, we spell out what wage promises by Hyundai and its Georgia boosters really mean and note the decline of a housing development in one of Savannah’s oldest neighborhoods. Questions, comments, or story ideas? You can reach me at craig.thecurrent@gmail.com
NEWS: POLITICS
‘My bet is on the prosecutor’
What will it take for Georgia to vote for another Democrat for president?
With Raphael Warnock, Georgia’s junior U.S. senator, back in his hometown Savannah for a working visit yesterday, he was an obvious person to ask, following a historic, head-spinning weekend that began with many Republicans basking in the glow of their national convention and ended with President Joe Biden announcing he wouldn’t seek reelection and instead support Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.
“I know a couple of things about winning in Georgia,” Warnock told The Current’s editor-in-chief, Margaret Coker, at one of his stops in the Savannah yesterday. “I have run several races here, and I think that you have to center the people.”
Warnock had a lot more to say about the upended landscape of this year’s president election, Harris, the role of Georgia and Black women in the election — not least, “My bet is on the prosecutor,” Coker reports. Savannah Mayor Van Johnson and Chatham County Democratic Committee chairman Aaron “Adot” Whitely weighed in, too.
INVESTIGATIVE: CAMPAIGN FINANCE
‘Grotesquely illegal’
Keith Padgett is no political novice.
The south Savannah Republican, the Republican candidate for the District 162 state House seat held by Democrat Carl Gilliard, ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the school board two years ago.
Yet in a recent fundraising letter to local Republicans, the 38-year-old Padgett misstates both state and federal campaign finance laws or flouts them altogether. That includes making the assertion that that contributions to his campaign are 100% tax deductible and can be made anonymously, The Current’s Craig Nelson reports.
He also says that cash donations can be made to his committee using Zelle, a digital payments network. These contributions, he states, will be “only for personal expenses not covered under the political campaign,” though he doesn’t specify what those “personal expenses” might be.
That, unfortunately, is just the start of a fundraising pitch that one elections law attorney described as “contrary to law and grotesquely illegal.”
Padgett’s apparent breaches of reporting requirements for all political candidates in Georgia mirror those of Gilliard, who from 2020 to 2023 failed repeatedly to file paperwork concerning his campaign donations and expenditures and personal financial disclosure statements as required by law, according to a recent investigation by the Georgia Campaign Finance Commission.
For what the commission called his “egregious” misuse of campaign contributions, Gilliard agreed last month to pay a $17,000 fine and reimburse his campaign committee $30,000. He was allowed to pay the fine from the coffers of his campaign committee.
EXPLAINER: JOBS
Not what it seems
Since Hyundai Motor Company announced in May 2022 that it would build a $7.5 billion electric vehicle plant in Bryan County with the help of $2.1 billion in tax breaks, construction costs and discounted land from the state, boasts about “good-paying jobs for hardworking Georgians” have seldom been far from the lips of Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and House Speaker Jon Burns (R-Newington).
In a revealing in-depth report by The Current’s Amira McKee analyzed the agreements signed by the companies that will be based at the Metaplant site and in surrounding counties and found that only two of the eight publicly available agreements — Hyundai Metaplant and Hyundai Mobis — promise salaries higher than $58,000.
In poring through the agreements and speaking with employees at the fledgling plant in Ellabell, that isn’t all that McKee learned.
EXPLAINER: HOUSING
Leaving home isn’t always easy
“Yamacraw, which has been home to generations of Savannah families, is dying,” writes The Current’s Julia Gentin, unpacking the forces sapping the life from a public housing development in Savannah’s oldest neighborhood. Read how choices to move are tougher when your options are limited.
“It all happens at the precinct level. If you have any concern about the election process, volunteer to be a poll worker.”
— Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, replying Monday when asked whether the confidence-building measures that he and his office are undertaking across the state will head off challenges to the vote in November. He was speaking at the offices of the Chatham County Board of Elections.
We want to meet your friends! If you like this newsletter be sure to share it.
Warnock on Kamala Harris candidacy: ‘My bet is on the prosecutor’
By Margaret Coker
What will it take for Georgia to vote for another Democratic presidential candidate? Sen. Raphael Warnock believes Georgia is definitely in play.
State House candidate’s fundraising letter strikes out
By Craig Nelson
Padgett’s apparent breaches of Georgia campaign finance law raise questions about the degree to which state political parties examine past compliance with those laws when they recruit and vet their candidates.
As workers train, Hyundai Metaplant salary picture takes shape
By Amira McKee
Price tags on the first electric vehicles off the assembly line will exceed a year’s salary for most of the Georgia workers who made it.
Diminished Yamacraw community subject to rampant neglect, widening disparities
By Julia Gentin
Yamacraw Village’s declining occupancy and rampant neglect set it apart from neighboring downtown areas. Demolition plans have been in the works for years, with little progress. Some residents attempt to maintain a semblance of community, while others who are forced to leave are not so lucky.
Red-state cities, suburbs become more diverse
By Tim Henderson/Stateline
Growth in the number of Black residents propelled Georgia to a near non-white majority, up about 1 point to 49.9% of state population, amid continuing Black migration that helped turn the state’s 2020 vote Democratic for president and U.S. Senate.
Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris. What happens next?
By Grace Panetta/The 19th*
Move is unusual but not unprecedented, so party has a process for rebuilding around new candidate.
Federal lawsuit challenges constitutionality of blank check ‘leadership committees’
By Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder
Leadership committees are available to just a few politicians, whose special committees can accept contributions during legislative sessions when others are barred from fundraising while voting on legislation and allocating state funds.
Lawsuit calls for PSC elections as soon as possible
By Emily Jones/WABE, Grist
Under the new law, most of the current commissioners would end up serving at least two years beyond their regular six-year terms.
We want to meet your friends! If you like this newsletter be sure to share it.
Support independent, solutions-based investigative journalism without bias, fear or favor on issues affecting Savannah and Coastal Georgia.
You must be logged in to post a comment.