Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024
Nov. 12, 12:52 p.m. Correction: The story has been updated to reflect the correct nickname for Camden County sheriff-elect James Chaney.
Good morning! We start today with Coastal Georgia election boards readying to certify the results of last week’s general election where, in all but two counties, Donald Trump scored a decisive victory in the presidential contest. We continue with a first look at the repercussions of the elections and then conclude with the post-election counsel of Savannah’s mayor, a Democrat. Questions, comments, or story ideas? You can reach me at craig.thecurrent@gmail.com
NEWS: ELECTIONS
Certifying the vote
County election boards across Coastal Georgia are convening this week to certify the results of last week’s elections.
In the region’s most populous county, Chatham, election board staff were finishing the counting of a handful of absentee ballots on Monday, as they prepared for a meeting today at noon of the five-member election board headed by Thomas Mahoney III to verify the county’s results. “Pretty straightforward,” is how one board member described the process.
Two hours earlier, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is scheduled to hold a news conference in Atlanta in which he plans to discuss what he has already praised as a successful voting process.
At 9:19 a.m. last Wednesday, some three hours and 45 minutes after The Associated Press declared Donald Trump the winner of the presidential race, Raffensperger tweeted:
“The voters of Georgia have spoken, and we are prepared to defend the election results against any legal challenge. This election was free, fair, and accessible to every eligible Georgian. As always, we will follow the law and the Constitution to protect the will of The People.”
According to the secretary of state’s office, a record 5.29 million Georgians — or 73% of the state’s active voters — cast ballots in the general election, including early in-person voting that topped 3.76 million, also a record. In the 1st Congressional district, which encompasses Coastal Georgia, more than 355,600 voters cast ballots — or roughly 59.2% of all registered voters in the region.
Still, political clashes over Georgia’s voting system, most of them fueled by ultra-conservative election integrity groups who say Trump was cheated out of reelection in 2020, are likely to continue to roil Georgia politics and in particular, the state GOP.
Fueling the struggle will be the continued insistence by Raffensperger and other state officials that nothing essentially has been amiss in the state’s voting system.
Appearing on CBS’ “60 Minutes” two days before the election, Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer of the secretary of state’s office and who, like Raffensperger, is a Republican, said a majority of Americans with questions about voter fraud are “savable souls” who want to understand.
“These voters think that if there’s this much smoke, there must be something. Nobody would lie this much about it.” He went on: “Voter suppression is fake. Voter fraud is fake. It’s used to raise money and make you angry.”
NEWS: POLITICS
Election consequences
The results of last week’s elections in Coastal Georgia will soon start to play out, starting with the victories of first-time sheriffs in the counties of Camden, Chatham and McIntosh.
Though they ran on issues peculiar to their counties, James “Kevin” Chaney in Camden, Richard Coleman in Chatham, and Thornell King in McIntosh shared one thing in common: platforms calling for more accountable and more transparent sheriffs’ departments, writes Jake Shore, The Current’s public safety reporter.
In the immediate aftermath of the voting, Shalena Cook Jones, who won a second, four-year term as Chatham County District Attorney by nearly seven points over Republican challenger Andre Pretorius, was talking change, too. She claimed a mandate to continue her efforts to make the criminal justice system more effective and equitable.
Voters “still want that reform, and they still believe that (I’m) the best candidate to deliver it,” Cook Jones told Shore.
Jones, King, and Coleman ran as Democrats and won. Overall, however, state’s Democrats had little to cheer about. State Sen. Harold Jones II cautioned against intraparty bloodletting.
At a meeting of state Senate Democrats in Savannah over the weekend, where he was elected Senate minority leader, the Augusta lawmaker sought to quash calls for an overhaul of the state party, telling The Current’s Craig Nelson that the party’s defeat in the presidential race was a “team loss.”
The Current’s elections reporter, Gillian Goodman, is cobbling together the final episode of Coastal Navigator, her podcast series on the elections. If you want to share your reactions to the elections and thoughts about the road ahead, contact her at gillian.thecurrent@gmail.com.
NEWS: POLITICS
‘Respect for the process’
How confident was Savannah’s Democratic mayor, Van Johnson, that Kamala Harris would prevail in last week’s election? So confident, evidently, that he scheduled his annual state of the city address a day after the presidential election.
Johnson, who is a member of the Democratic National Committee, wasted little time at the start of his 49-minute speech in addressing what he called the “proverbial elephant in the room.”
“Last night was a very long night, joyful for many, disappointing for many,” especially, he acknowledged, for someone who had gone “hard in the paint” for the Harris-Walz ticket.
But, he went on: “Beloved, democracy is not just democracy when our person wins. Y’all hear that young people? Democracy is not just democracy when our person wins. Democracy is how we respond when the process says, ‘No.’ True democracy demands respect for the process, even when it doesn’t go our way.”
“So hopefully, prayerfully, we remain neighbors, we remain friends, we remain partners, and of course, always we remain Savannahians.”
For more of Johnson’s address, which The Current will look at in more detail in the weeks ahead, click here.
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