ATLANTA – The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) is holding the line on electric rates by aggressively pursuing renewable and nuclear power while de-emphasizing coal, two Republican commissioners seeking reelection said Tuesday
But their Democratic challengers said the PSC is letting Georgia Power Co. keep too much of the profits from its operations while passing on too much of the financial burden to customers.
District One Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald and District Four Commissioner Jason Shaw took on Democrats Daniel Blackman and Robert Bryant in separate online debates sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club. Also on the virtual platform Tuesday were Libertarian candidates Nathan Wilson and Elizabeth Melton.
McDonald, who has served on the PSC since 1998, said he has led the way during the last decade as the commission has approved plans to retire coal-fired power plants and boost the state’s commitment to solar, nuclear and wind energy.
“In 2013, Georgia Power did not have a single watt of solar power,” he said. “We put in 525 megawatts. … We’ll have 2 gigawatts of solar power by the end of next year.”
But McDonald said the Green New Deal being floated by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would tilt the scales toward renewable energy too far because Americans can’t afford the massive price tag.
Blackman, who is opposing McDonald, differed with the incumbent.
“Let’s be honest: What we’ve been doing has not been working,” said Blackman, who has served as an advisor to the Congressional Black Caucus and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on environmental justice issues.
The incumbents and their challengers also disagreed over the PSC’s decision last March to suspend disconnections of service to electric customers having trouble paying their bills due to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Bryant, who is challenging Shaw’s reelection bid, criticized the commission for lifting the moratorium on disconnections in July.
The Democrat from Savannah also argued the PSC should not let Georgia Power pass on to ratepayers either the costs of cleaning up coal ash ponds around the state or the cost overruns at the Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion, which have nearly doubled the project’s budget from the $14 billion the commission approved in 2009.
“Every time Vogtle is prolonged or delayed, Georgia ratepayers pay an additional $1 billion,” Bryant said. “That’s just not how we should be treating Georgians.”
Shaw, appointed to the PSC last year and now seeking his first full term, said the commission’s job is to strike a balance between protecting ratepayers and making sure Georgia utilities have the resources to provide safe reliable service.
“We’ve taken advantage of low-cost natural gas,” he said. “Consumers are paying the same [for electricity] as back in 2011.”
Melton, the Libertarian challenging Shaw, said there are free-market solutions to the lack of broadband connectivity in rural Georgia. She pointed to a project that has equipped a rural county in Kentucky with some of the fastest internet connections in the nation.
“They were able to do this voluntarily, on their own, using existing institutions,” Melton said.
Nathan Wilson, the Libertarian taking on McDonald, suggested letting businesses rent portions of their properties to be used for installation of solar panels as a way to boost solar power in Georgia.
While members of the PSC are elected statewide, they live in and represents districts. District 1 covers all of South Georgia, while District 4 includes North Georgia and the state’s border with South Carolina down to Augusta.
The line stretched around the block at South Cobb Regional Library in Mableton where voters waited in line for hours to cast ballots on the first day of early voting in the Nov. 3 general election on Oct. 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Early voting in the momentous 2020 general elections started off with a bang Monday as thousands of Georgians poured into precincts, eager to cast perhaps the most important ballots of their lives.
More than 128,000 people piled into polling places across the state to kick off the three-week stretch of early voting, according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.
It was a record number of first-day ballot casters who turned out amid the lingering health terror of coronavirus and unprecedented nationwide doubt in the legitimacy of voting processes in the United States.
“It’s a very important election,” said Theressa Odums, a longtime Cobb County voter. “So I wanted to make sure I was here to vote.”
Seated in a fold-out chair beneath an umbrella in the hot sun, Odums was one of many voters who spent their entire day waiting in line to vote at the South Cobb Regional Library in Mableton.
They were among the thousands of people who queued up from morning to dusk at precincts throughout the state, forming lines that stretched around entire street blocks, particularly in urban areas like metro Atlanta and Savannah.
The line outside South Cobb Regional Library in Mableton stretched around the block on the first day of early voting for the Nov. 3 elections on Oct. 12, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Bernadine Conner, who stood in line with Odums from 9 a.m. until well past 4 p.m., said she wanted ample breathing room to cast her ballot before Election Day on Nov. 3 when lines outside polling places could very well stretch far longer.
“I’m just being patient and having the fortitude to stick it out,” Conner said. “That’s what it takes.”
Voter turnout in Georgia is expected to top 5 million next month with a presidential contest, double the usual number of U.S. Senate seats and a fierce push by Democrats to flip the balance of power in the Georgia House of Representatives for the first time in 16 years.
Looming over all is the highly contagious, vaccine-less respiratory virus that has splintered social interactions and local economies, coupled with the most decisive test yet for Georgia’s new paper-and-scanner voting machines that drew intense scrutiny even before the global pandemic struck.
Janine Eveler, the elections director for Cobb County, said her nine early-voting precincts saw no technical issues with voting on Monday save for a few minor hiccups that were quickly mended.
Contributing more to the hours-long lines, Eveler said, were revised processes to check in early voters via certifications and signature oaths, which took longer than normal in order to abide by social-distancing practices.
On top of that, droves of voters had requested absentee ballots prior to arriving in-person at polling places Monday, representing a fraction of the roughly 1.6 million Georgians seeking to vote by mail amid the pandemic.
Every voter who requests a mail-in ballot but shows up in-person must formally cancel their ballot by signing an affidavit, which adds more time to the already long waits at precincts, Eveler said.
Despite the relatively smooth sailing at her precincts, Eveler said late Monday that in her more-than two decades as Cobb’s election chief, she had never seen such a busy first day of early voting.
“The first day is always heavier because there’s pent-up excitement,” Eveler said. “But this has been a perfect storm.”
Uncommonly long lines have been anticipated for months now, following the shocking wait times that confronted Georgia voters during the primary elections on June 9 during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak.
To prepare, Raffensperger’s office has pushed to recruit more poll workers, doled out grant funds for absentee drop boxes, invested in new technology to broadcast line waits in real time and let voters apply for mail-in ballots online, and mustered more on-site technical assistance to help local poll workers rapidly solve potential equipment issues.
But the true test will come on Nov. 3 when millions of voters head to the polls across the state, election officials hunker down to count mounds of mail-in ballots and Georgians conclude what is shaping up to be one of the most impactful elections in decades.
Take it from Scott Traslavina, a Cobb County voter who ditched a day of work as an appliance repairman to stand in line to vote at the Mableton library.
Departing the voting booth after hours of waiting, Traslavina said he felt anxious to have missed so much work with times as tough as they are now. But even more so, he said he felt great relief knowing that his vote for the state and country’s future leaders will count.
“I didn’t trust that my vote would be counted with mail-in because I thought current administrations here in the state and country might impede that,” Traslavina said. “But now I know it’s done.”
Early voting continues in Georgia through Oct. 30.
Democrat Jon Ossoff (left) is challenging Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue
ATLANTA – U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., and Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff lobbed the same criticisms at each other Monday that Georgia TV viewers have grown used to from their relentless attack ads.
During an hourlong debate sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club, Perdue labeled Ossoff as a “radical socialist” pushing an agenda that includes de-funding the police and a government takeover of health care.
Ossoff accused Perdue of downplaying the threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic while doing nothing to respond to the demands of millions of peacefully protesting Americans for criminal justice reform.
Perdue, seeking a second six-year term in the Senate after a career as a corporate executive, and Ossoff, an investigative journalist running for statewide office for the first time, have been locked in a dead heat for months, according to numerous polls.
With Democrats needing to capture just three or four seats to take control of the Senate, depending on the outcome of the presidential election, the Perdue-Ossoff contest is one of a handful of Senate races that could sway the outcome.
On Monday, the two took turns charging the other with corruption.
Ossoff accused Perdue of selling special access to campaign donors, including at lavish retreats at his home in coastal Georgia.
“He works for his donors, not ‘We the People,’ ” Ossoff said.
Perdue said Ossoff has received financial backing from the Chinese government and was endorsed by the Communist Party of the USA, the latter charge later declared false by an Associated Press fact check.
“One of his largest clients is Al Jazeera, a mouthpiece for terrorism,” Perdue said.
While denying those charges, Ossoff countered that Perdue supports a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
At the same time, Ossoff said, Perdue and his Senate Republican colleagues are working to ram through a U.S. Supreme Court nominee who would overturn the ACA and thereby deny Georgians health coverage for pre-existing conditions. Those same Republicans refused to consider then-President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick in 2016, arguing Congress shouldn’t act on a court nominee during an election year.
“[Perdue] has thrown those so-called principles aside,” Ossoff said.
Perdue said the political landscape has changed since 2016, when the Senate’s Republican majority blocked a Democratic president’s pick for the Supreme Court.
Now, Perdue said, Ossoff wants to join a Senate Democratic caucus that plans to offset the expected confirmation of conservative court nominee Amy Coney Barrett by adding more seats to the court.
“[Ossoff] will be nothing but a rubber stamp when [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer wants to pack the court,” Perdue said.
Ossoff said he wants to champion criminal-justice reform in the Senate, a demand made during street protests following the deaths of several Black Americans this year at the hands of white police officers. He specifically cited the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, near Brunswick and the subsequent arrest of three white men.
“We have to recognize that racial profiling and police brutality are systemic,” Ossoff said.
Perdue defended the Trump administration’s record on the issue, including congressional passage of criminal justice reform legislation in December 2018.
“The [1994] crime bill was written by Joe Biden, and it locked up more Black men than any law in the last 25 years,” Perdue said.
On COVID-19, Ossoff charged Perdue with echoing President Donald Trump’s response early on in the pandemic.
“You assured us the risk was low,” Ossoff said to Perdue. “You told us this disease was no more deadly than the flu.”
Perdue said both Trump and Congress responded quickly to the economic impact of coronavirus by approving a relief package that brought $47 million to Georgia and created 1½ million jobs.
“We’re doing everything we can to break through the regulations to bring a vaccine quicker,” Perdue said.
Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel criticized the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided loans to small businesses affected by the pandemic, as an overreach of the federal government’s powers under the U.S. Constitution.
Hazel also took Gov. Brian Kemp to task for the statewide stay-at-home order he handed down during the pandemic’s early stages to discourage the spread of the virus.
“Governor Kemp does not have the right to block us from assembling,” Hazel said. “Good ideas don’t require force. … Evaluate the risks on your own and go out and do what you need to do.”
Andrew Clyde (left) and Devin Pandy (right ) are competing for the 9th Congressional District seat in the 2020 general election. (Photos by candidate campaigns).
Andrew Clyde, a gun store owner and the Republican nominee in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, fielded attacks on his business dealings and a recent lawsuit against Athens-Clarke County during a debate Monday ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.
His Democratic opponent, actor and U.S. Army veteran Devin Pandy, jabbed Clyde for costing Athens taxpayers “tens of thousands of dollars” amid the cash-strapped days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pandy also called Clyde “another millionaire attempting to buy an election.”
But Clyde took the criticism in stride during the debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club. His reluctance to punch back at Pandy likely stemmed from the position he holds as the Republican nominee in a heavily conservative district covering northeastern Georgia from Gainesville to Athens.
The June 9 primary election tells the tale: More than 140,000 Republican voters turned out for that election, while Democrats only cast around 31,000 ballots.
A U.S. Navy veteran, Clyde absorbed similarly fierce blows from his Republican opponent in the Aug. 11 primary runoff, state Rep. Matt Gurtler, R-Tiger, before winning by a comfortable margin.
On Monday, the two general-election candidates squaring off ahead of next month’s contest stuck with party lines on bread-and-butter issues, forcing Pandy to go on the offensive to distinguish himself in the Democrat-averse district.
Pandy slammed Clyde for suing Athens-Clarke officials to keep his business open during the county’s shelter-in-place order in March, drawing parallels between that case and contracts Clyde held with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after he sued the federal agency for asset forfeiture and pushed legislation to reform the practice.
“Andrew Clyde only wants to be involved in government when it impacts his own bottom line,” Pandy said during Monday’s debate.
Ignoring those attacks, Clyde embraced his past battles with the IRS as a pillar of his conservative personality and limited-government political beliefs.
“This experience showed me there’s a very thin line between we the people running our government and our government running us,” Clyde said. “And I believe that we the people need to run our government.”
Pandy also had sharp criticism for Clyde on the issue of climate change, which the Republican nominee on Monday said he does not think exists beyond the normal four-season cycle each year. Claiming that scientists have “changed their tune on climate change,” Clyde argued “there are scientists who believe it and many who don’t.”
“I will hold court with those scientists who don’t believe in man-made climate change,” Clyde said.
Pandy poked holes in that stance, arguing signs of rising global temperatures have been seen in worsening natural disasters like wildfires in California and that “97% of scientists around the world agree climate change is real.”
“Humans may not have started it, but we are definitely making it exponentially worse,” Pandy said. “It wouldn’t be something that sets the entire West Coast on fire if it wasn’t real.”
Clyde also used the debate stage to tout his support for dismantling the IRS through a so-called FairTax levy on spending only, while Pandy called for establishing a universal basic income.
The election on Nov. 3 is poised to decide who in the 9th District will replace U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, who has opted to run for U.S. Senate. Early voting began Monday.
Rev. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church (Credit: Warnock for Georgia)
ATLANTA – A second poll of Georgia’s free-for-all U.S. Senate race shows Democrat Raphael Warnock in the lead over Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville.
Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, drew the support of 36.2% of Georgians surveyed in a poll released Friday by WSB-TV and Landmark Communications.
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp late last year to succeed retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson on an interim basis, is second at 25.8%, followed by Collins at 23.3%.
A poll published Sept. 29 by Quinnipiac University Polling Institute was the first to show Warnock in first place.
As a special election contest, the race between Warnock, Loeffler and Collins did not feature any primaries. Thus, it is open to Republicans, Democrats and independents, and 21 signed up to run.
With such a crowded field, no one is likely to win more than 50% of the vote on Nov. 3. if that’s the case, a runoff between the top-two finishers would be held in early January to decide who will fill the remaining two years of Isakson’s six-year term.
The Landmark poll also showed the race for Georgia’s 16 electoral votes between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden remains tight.
Republican Trump leads with 48.6% of the vote to 46.8% for Democrat Biden. That’s well within the poll’s margin of error of 4%.
Georgia’s other U.S. Senate contest also remains essentially tied due to the poll’s margin of error. Incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue leads with 47% of the vote, with Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff close behind at 45.5%.
Libertarian Shane Hazel polled just 1.5% of the vote, but he could attract enough votes on Election Day to force a runoff between the two major-party candidates.
The poll of 600 likely Georgia voters took place on Oct. 7.
