U.S. Rep. Doug Collins rallied in his hometown Gainesville during his campaign for U.S. Senate on Aug. 28, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins announced Monday he will not run for any office in the 2022 election cycle, ending speculation over potential bids for top statewide seats.
Collins, who lost an open-format election for one of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats last fall, said he aims to play a role in “shaping our conservative message” to help Republicans win back majorities in Congress.
“For those who may wonder, this is goodbye for now, but probably not forever,” Collins said in an announcement on social media Monday. “I believe that we, as conservatives, must be able to clearly communicate our values, and I will help keep that fight going.”
A Baptist pastor and U.S. Air Force Reserve chaplain from Gainesville, Collins joined the Clarkesville-based law firm Oliver & Weidner in February after placing third in the open-party special election to replace retired Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson last November.
Collins waged a fierce battle for a majority share of conservative voters in the special election against then-Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to hold Isakson’s seat until the election. Loeffler then lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock in the Jan. 5 runoff.
Collins served four terms from 2013 until 2021 representing Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, which stretches from Gainesville and Athens northeast to the South Carolina border. U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde of Jackson now holds that seat.
Prior to his Senate campaign, Collins served a stint as ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, where he gained national attention as one of then-President Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters during Trump’s first impeachment inquiry in 2019.
Collins was Trump’s preferred pick over Loeffler for Gov. Brian Kemp’s appointment to the vacant Senate seat, opening a rift within Republican ranks between the president and Georgia’s governor that continued through the January runoffs and amid Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 elections that state officials and federal courts repeatedly rejected.
Georgia Republican losses this past election cycle prompted speculation Collins might challenge Kemp in his 2022 reelection campaign or seek a rematch against Warnock, who has already drawn several Republican challengers in recent weeks.
Collins’ backing out of 2022 races comes amid mounting speculation that former University of Georgia football star Herschel Walker may challenge Warnock in the upcoming cycle.
Walker’s potential candidacy picked up steam last month after Trump urged him to run for the Senate as a Republican, calling the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner “fantastic” and “unstoppable.” Walker has not yet announced whether he will run against Warnock.
Recently enacted law changes for Georgia elections have become a lightening rod for national debate on voter integrity following the 2020 election cycle. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgians’ support or disapproval of the state’s controversial new voting law largely broke along political party lines in a survey the University of Georgia released Wednesday.
Republican voters in the survey supported while Democratic voters opposed the more high-profile measures in the recently enacted elections bill, which has become a lightning rod for national debate on election integrity and voter access following the 2020 election cycle.
Democratic leaders in Georgia and across the country have framed Georgia’s new voting law as an attempt at voter suppression targeting minority voters who helped the state’s 2020 presidential election and both U.S. Senate seats go to Democrats.
Republican leaders mostly have argued the voting measures were needed to boost confidence in the state’s election system amid former President Donald Trump’s fraud claims, which state election officials and federal courts rejected.
The survey, conducted by UGA’s School of Public and International Affairs, asked questions to 887 Georgians split about evenly among Republican and Democratic voters over a three-week period after the bill’s enactment late last month. It had a 95% confidence level.
The party-line trend held true for Georgia Republican and Democratic voters when asked if they thought the new voting measures would strengthen the state’s election system or harm it, as well as whether the intent was to bolster election integrity or make it harder to vote for certain groups to cast ballots.
The vast majority of surveyed Republicans responded that the measures will help improve election integrity and voter access. Most Democrats responded in the opposite.
Similarly, a wide majority of Republicans responded that they lacked confidence in their 2020 votes being fairly counted and that President Joe Biden won Georgia’s presidential election due to fraud. Democratic respondents dismissed fraud claims and doubt in Biden’s win.
Among the most testy proposals in the bill was a requirement for mail-in voters to provide a driver’s license or other official form of identification when casting absentee ballots. Roughly 93% of Republicans supported that measure, while 61% of Democrats opposed it.
Republicans overwhelmingly favored shortening Georgia’s runoff period from nine weeks to four, requiring absentee drop boxes to be placed in county election offices and voting precincts, moving back the deadline to request absentee ballots from four days before an election to 11 days, and barring election officials from sending voters unsolicited absentee ballot applications.
Democrats mostly opposed those measures in the survey. Independent voters were generally divided half in favor, half opposed.
Republicans also overwhelmingly supported a new prohibition against allowing voters to cast provisional ballots at precincts that they have not been officially assigned. Democrats mostly opposed that measure.
In contrast, both partisan and independent voters largely supported new rules for counties to keep polls open for two mandatory Saturdays and two optional Sundays during the three-week early voting period.
Fewer Republicans supported measures allowing state election officials to temporarily take over poor-performing county election boards and a ban on non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters waiting in line outside precincts.
Those measures attracted nearly 50% of support from Republicans, with the bulk of Democrats opposing.
The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held arguments for and against Georgia’s new election laws on April 20, 2021. (Official Senate video)
Georgia’s controversial new voting laws took center stage Tuesday at a U.S. Senate hearing where majority Democrats blasted changes in state voting rules as a revival of the Jim Crow era of segregation.
The hearing, entitled “Jim Crow 2021: The Latest Assault on the Right to Vote,” featured several Georgia leaders including Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Georgia House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton, who helped draft the Georgia law changes.
Leading members of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which held Tuesday’s hearing, took turns echoing stances on Georgia’s election law from Democrats who frame the changes as acts of voter suppression and Republicans who argue the legislation was needed to bolster election integrity.
The Georgia bill, which Gov. Brian Kemp signed last month after party-line approval in the General Assembly, requires tighter absentee voter identification, empowers state officials to take over poor-performing county election boards, expands early-voting weekend hours and bans non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters waiting in line outside precincts.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the committee, said Georgia’s bill is among hundreds Republican lawmakers in several states have brought since the 2020 elections as part of a “wave of voter suppression laws” aimed at curbing minority voter participation.
“It seems Republican lawmakers in Georgia have concluded that the solution to their election problems is to make it harder to vote,” Durbin said. “That is fundamentally un-American. … It is democracy in reverse.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee’s ranking Republican, scoffed at Democrats’ attempts to paint Georgia’s new voting laws as racist, stressing the need to shore up election rules amid distrust among conservative voters following former President Donald Trump’s fraud claims.
“Baseless claims of voter suppression are just as corrosive to our democracy as baseless claims of voter fraud,” Grassley said. “We should all be committed to making elections accessible and secure to maintain the confidence of voters in elections.”
The law changes in Georgia have become a lightning rod for national lawmakers to push for passing federal legislation that would broaden access to mail-in and early voting and revive oversight provisions in the 1965 Voting Rights Act that were pushed by the late Congressman John Lewis of Atlanta.
Warnock, who won election to the Senate in January, said federal legislation is needed to tamp down “a full-fledged assault on voting rights” spurred by the new Georgia law.
“We’ve got to act,” Warnock said at Tuesday’s hearing. “History is watching us, our children are counting on us and we must pass federal voting rights legislation no matter what.”
Abrams, who founded the voting-rights advocacy group Fair Fight and will likely challenge Kemp in a 2022 rematch for governor, also called for federal election legislation to stave off the impacts of law changes such as those seen recently in Georgia.
“When the fundamental right to vote is left to the political ambitions and prejudices of state actors … federal intercession stands as the appropriate remedy,” Abrams said. “Simply put, [federal voting-rights legislation] is essential to the advancement of democracy.”
Republicans testifying before the committee batted back claims Georgia’s election laws would disenfranchise voters. They also condemned some companies that have denounced the new laws including Major League Baseball, which pulled the All-Star Game from Atlanta earlier this month.
Jones highlighted changes lawmakers passed that limit outside funding in elections, add more weekend days to early voting and replace signature matching for mail-in ballots.
“It’s easy to write alarming words and give misleading sound bites that would lead people away from the facts,” Jones said. “And it’s just plain wrong.”
Not present at Tuesday’s hearing was Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who has largely supported the new law changes despite facing attacks from Trump’s allies for not overturning last year’s elections results. Raffensperger slammed the Senate committee for not inviting him to testify.
“While I don’t love every part of this bill, it is no return to Jim Crow by any stretch of the imagination,” Raffensperger said in remarks he planned to read before the committee. “The comparison is insulting, morally wrong and factually incorrect.”
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (left) and Gov. Brian Kemp (right) are eying reelection in 2022. (Photos by Beau Evans)
Controversial changes to Georgia’s voting laws are quickly taking center stage in the upcoming 2022 elections as Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp look to defend their seats.
Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church who won a historic runoff in January, said Sunday the country is “at an inflection point” with GOP lawmakers in many states including Georgia pushing bills that Democrats have labeled voter suppression.
Meanwhile, Republicans including Kemp have loudly backed Georgia’s recently passed bill overhauling mail-in and early voting as a move to bolster election integrity after the 2020 cycle saw Democrats win the state’s presidential election and both U.S. Senate seats.
The Georgia bill, which Kemp signed last month following party-line approval in the General Assembly, requires tighter absentee voter identification, empowers state officials to take over poor-performing county election boards, expands early-voting weekend hours and bans non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters waiting in line outside precincts.
Warnock, who is seeking election to a full six-year term after defeating Republican then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler, pushed for passing national legislation in Congress called the “For the People Act” allowing voter registration on Election Day, minimum early-voting periods and no-excuse absentee voting.
That legislation would reverse changes Georgia Republicans made to the state’s voting system that prompted Major League Baseball (MLB) to move this year’s All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver earlier this month.
“Let’s be very clear: They’re trying to restrict voting,” Warnock said in an online talk held Sunday by the Union Theological Seminary. “Some people don’t want some people to vote.
“You will see me very much engaged on this issue in the next several weeks because nothing less than our democracy is at stake.”
Republicans have slammed the proposed national voting-rights legislation as federal overreach into states’ authority to set election rules that would give Democratic incumbents and candidates an advantage in future elections.
They have also scorched MLB’s decision to ditch Atlanta for the All-Star game, arguing misinformation from Democrats about Georgia’s election bill sparked the move, which will damage local businesses relying on the game’s economic boost.
“The last thing we need is to be playing politics with people’s paychecks during a global pandemic,” Kemp said in recent Twitter comments about the All-Star Game. “Unfortunately, minority-owned businesses will be among the hardest hit by MLB’s decision to pull the game out of Atlanta.”
Kemp, who is seeking a second term in 2022, has given dozens of interviews on the All-Star issue and voting bill in recent weeks as he aims to shore up rifts in the state Republican Party due to election-fraud claims from former President Donald Trump, who narrowly lost Georgia.
Kemp’s refusal to intervene more in certifying the 2020 presidential election results drew official censures from several local GOP branches over the weekend including in Lowndes, DeKalb, Appling and Jasper counties.
Warnock and Kemp both face tough reelection campaigns in 2022, which is already assembling an early field of candidates.
Two Republican challengers have lined up so far against Warnock including Latham Saddler, an Atlanta banking executive and U.S. Navy SEAL veteran, and Kelvin King, an Atlanta small-business owner in construction and U.S. Air Force veteran.
U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter of Savannah is also considering a run against Warnock. Carter told Athens-based radio station WGAU last week he is doing “due diligence” before making deciding whether to campaign.
Kemp has drawn two primary challengers ahead of a likely rematch against 2020 Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams. Former Democratic state lawmaker Vernon Jones, who is among Trump’s most vocal allies in Georgia, and Appling County educator Kandiss Taylor have launched campaigns for governor.
Vernon Jones (at podium) speaks with supporters of then-President Donald Trump at a rally in Buckhead on Nov. 6, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Vernon Jones, a former Democratic state lawmaker and one of former President Donald Trump’s most vocal allies in Georgia, is the latest Republican to open a 2022 primary challenge against Gov. Brian Kemp.
A controversial figure, Jones served as DeKalb County CEO from 2001 to 2009 between terms in the state House of Representatives. He did not seek reelection last year after trumpeting support for Trump and drawing backlash from Georgia’s Democratic party, which he left to become a Republican.
He announced his gubernatorial campaign in a news conference Friday outside the state Capitol building in Atlanta.
Jones’ candidacy marks a test for backers of the former president who lobbed claims of election fraud in the 2020 cycle, as well as for Kemp, who faced attacks from Trump and hardline conservatives for not moving to overturn the state’s election results that saw President Joe Biden by a narrow margin.
Kemp has sought to rebuild support among Georgia Republican voters by defending changes to mail-in and early voting laws that he signed last month, calling them necessary to bolster election integrity. Democrats and voting-rights advocates have slammed the changes as attempts at voter suppression.
Jones is the second Republican to open a primary challenge against Kemp after Appling County educator Kandiss Taylor launched her bid in February. He could face a slew of other primary contenders before likely battling his 2018 Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams in a rematch for governor.
Georgia’s candidate field for 2022 is taking shape early with several high-profile announcements in recent weeks, including Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan’s run for state attorney general against the Republican incumbent, Chris Carr.
Republican U.S. Rep. Jody Hice of Greensboro has also launched a primary challenge against Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, as has former Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, has drawn two Republican challengers in his bid to hold the seat he won in historic fashion during the 2020 election cycle.
Republicans Latham Saddler, an Atlanta banking executive and U.S. Navy SEAL veteran, and Kelvin King, an Atlanta small-business owner in construction and U.S. Air Force veteran, announced their candidacies this week.
Democrats in Georgia are pushing to continue building momentum amid changing suburban demographics and strong grassroots efforts that saw the party win the state’s presidential election and the two Senate seats in the 2020 cycle.
Republicans are angling to lock in their current statewide seats and reverse 2020 losses such as Warnock’s seat and suburban Atlanta congressional districts that flipped for Democrats in recent years but could swing back to Republicans after redistricting this fall.
Republicans will be in charge of the redistricting process because they control both chambers in the General Assembly.
Also up for grabs statewide in 2022 will be Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan’s seat, though his office recently signaled he may not seek a second term. Contenders are likewise lining up to run for Georgia labor and insurance commissioners.
The upcoming primary elections are set for May 24, 2022, and the general elections set for Nov. 8, 2022.
Rev. Raphael Warnock (front) campaigns with Stacey Abrams (back) on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock has drawn the first Republican challengers in his bid to hold the seat he won in historic fashion during the 2020 election cycle.
Latham Saddler, an Atlanta banking executive and U.S. Navy SEAL veteran, opened his candidacy in an announcement highlighting his tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and tenure as a National Security Council official in former President Donald Trump’s administration.
Saddler’s candidacy comes after Kelvin King, an Atlanta small-business owner in construction and U.S. Air Force veteran, jumpstarted his campaign earlier this week. A Black man, King aims to unseat Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator in Warnock.
Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, rocketed to national prominence along with fellow Georgia Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff after winning runoffs Jan. 5 to hand Democrats control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.
It marked the first time Democrats have held both Senate seats in Georgia since 2002.
Their races against former Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue attracted record-setting campaign donations and put Georgia on the political map as a battleground state for years to come.
Unlike Ossoff, Warnock will need to win election in 2022 for a full six-year term after claiming victory in the recent runoff to fill the remaining two years of retired U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term.
Warnock’s 2020 campaign focused on boosting health care for Georgians via Medicaid expansion and protecting voter rights, both issues the freshman senator will likely lean on during his 2022 reelection bid.
Election laws should also feature prominently in the race after Republican state lawmakers overhauled Georgia’s mail-in and early voting rules, sparking controversy in the legislative session that ended late last month.
Georgia’s candidate field for 2022 is taking shape early with several high-profile announcements in recent weeks, including Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan’s run for state attorney general against the Republican incumbent, Chris Carr.
Republican U.S. Rep. Jody Hice of Greensboro has also launched a primary challenge against Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, as has former Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle.
Gov. Brian Kemp, the state’s top Republican, has drawn a primary challenger in Appling County educator Kandiss Taylor. He could face a slew of other primary contenders before likely battling his 2018 Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams in a rematch for governor.
Democrats in Georgia are pushing to continue building momentum amid changing suburban demographics and strong grassroots efforts that saw the party win the state’s presidential election and the two Senate seats in the 2020 cycle.
Republicans are angling to lock in their current statewide seats and reverse 2020 losses such as Warnock’s seat and suburban Atlanta congressional districts that flipped for Democrats in recent years but could swing back to Republicans after redistricting this fall. Republicans will be in charge of the redistricting process because they control both chambers in the General Assembly.
Also up for grabs statewide in 2022 will be Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan’s seat, though his office recently signaled he may not seek a second term. Contenders are likewise lining up to run for Georgia labor and insurance commissioners.
The upcoming primary elections are set for May 24, 2022, and the general elections set for Nov. 8, 2022.
