ATLANTA – First-time unemployment claims in Georgia were down significantly last month, even as the state’s jobless rate rose.
Initial unemployment claims fell by 92,491 in November from the previous month to 104,175, a 47% drop, the Georgia Department of Labor reported Thursday. At the same time, the state’s unemployment rate increased by 1.2% to 5.7%.
The rise in the jobless rate was due to a dramatic increase in Georgia’s workforce, which hit a record high of 5.17 million last month, state Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said.
“The fact that our labor force is at an all-time high in the midst of a crippling pandemic is pretty remarkable,” Butler said. “While many focus on the unemployment rate increasing, what is more important is the increases in jobs and employment.”
The number of employed Georgians increased by 12,759 in November to 4.87 million, while the number of jobs grew by 20,900 last month to nearly 4.52 million.
The labor department has paid out nearly $16.5 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits to nearly 4.16 million Georgians since the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the state back in mid-March, more than the last nine years combined.
During the week ending Dec. 12, the job sector accounting for the most initial unemployment claims was accommodation and food services with 6,267 claims. The administrative and support services sector was next with 2,672 claims, followed by health care and social assistance with 2,337.
Of more than 162,000 jobs currently listed on the website EmployGeorgia, more than half advertise annual salaries above $40,000.
Resources for reemployment assistance along with information on filing an unemployment claim can be found on the labor department’s webpage at dol.georgia.gov.
Voters wait in line to cast ballots at Chastain Park in Atlanta during the early-voting period for the U.S. Senate runoffs on Dec. 15, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
A lawsuit seeking to restore nearly 200,000 Georgia voters with canceled registrations before the U.S. Senate runoff elections next month was shot down by a federal judge on Wednesday.
Forcing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office to overhaul the state’s voter rolls so close to the Jan. 5 runoffs would pose “significant risk of confusion” for carrying out the election, Judge Steve Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled.
The suit claimed more than 68,000 voters had their registrations canceled in 2019 despite still residing in Georgia, while another roughly 130,000 were removed from the rolls as part of a faulty process for verifying address changes.
Raffensperger’s office argued four groups suing to restore those voters to the rolls used inaccurate change-of-address data and did not give enough advance legal notice they planned to file suit.
Jones agreed, noting the groups could have filed suit much sooner than Dec. 2 and that their data showed “discrepancies” with records Raffensperger’s office uses to cancel dead or relocated Georgians. He urged state officials and the suing groups to work together on fixing the discrepancies.
Raffensperger hailed the judge’s ruling Wednesday and called the suing groups’ claims of improper voter purging based on “sloppy analysis.”
“This office abides by the law regardless of criticism and oversees fair and accurate elections open to all eligible voters – but only eligible Georgia voters,” Raffensperger said in a statement.
Attorneys for the suing groups pressed Raffensperger to set up a meeting soon to go over the change-of-address data discrepancies.
“The judge strongly encourages a meeting to resolve these issues,” said Gerald Griggs, an Atlanta attorney representing the suing groups. “We await [Raffensperger] to set the meeting.”
The suing groups framed their push for Raffensperger to restore registrations of “wrongfully removed” voters as a potential game changer for the Senate runoffs, which are expected to be close.
The runoffs pit Republican U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock. Wins by both Ossoff and Warnock would give Democrats control of the White House and both houses of Congress for at least the next two years.
The four suing groups include the Atlanta-based Black Voters Matter Fund, the Washington, D.C.-based Transformative Justice Coalition, the Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the Texas-based Southwest Voter Education Project.
Their lawsuit followed previous litigation brought by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ group Fair Fight Action last December, which prompted Raffensperger’s office to restore around 22,000 Georgia voters to inactive status rather than remove them from the rolls.
Raffensperger’s office has repeatedly dismissed claims of improper roll purges, noting state law requires officials to remove voters from registration lists if they have not voted in general elections or responded to warning notices for several years.
ATLANTA – The New York-based Open Space Institute (OSI) Wednesday announced its fourth acquisition of undeveloped land in southeastern Georgia.
The nearly 2,500-acre Wayne County Conservation property is adjacent to more than 1,600 acres the OSI acquired and transferred to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) last year.
The new acquisition, made through a discounted sale and transfer by Southern Power, brings the public-private Gopher Tortoise Conservation Initiative to more than 80% of its goal of preserving enough pristine acreage to keep the gopher tortoise from being listed under the Endangered Species Act.
“The Open Space Institute is proud to have protected this amazing property for Georgia’s state reptile, the gopher tortoise, and the incredible array of other species that call this land home,” said Maria Whitehead, OSI’s senior project director. “I thank Southern Power for their incredible generosity in selling this property at a significantly discounted price to make the permanent protection of the land a reality.”
In addition to gopher tortoises, two other high priority species have been identified on the Wayne County Conservation property: the federally threatened eastern indigo snake and the federally endangered hairy rattleweed, a critically imperiled species that has shown significant population declines over the last 30 years.
“The hairy rattleweed is … found only in Brantley and Wayne counties, and this will become one of three conserved populations,” said Jason Lee of the DNR. “In addition, there is a viable population of the gopher tortoise, Georgia’s imperiled state reptile, on the property. The permanent protection of the site will contribute significantly to the recovery goals for both species.”
In the coming years, OSI plans to sell the Wayne County Conservation property to the DNR as a strategic addition to the adjacent OSI-protected property.
The OSI also has been involved in preserving two other undeveloped coastal properties: Cabin Bluff and the Ceylon tract.
The Georgia Board of Natural Resources voted this month to acquire 4,420 acres of the Ceylon tract from the OSI and The Conservation Fund. Board members signed off in October on the acquisition of nearly 8,000 acres of the Cabin Bluff property from the OSI and The Nature Conservancy.
Both properties are slated to become state wildlife management areas.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s two U.S. Senate races are too close to call heading into the final three weeks before the Jan. 5 runoffs, according to a new poll from Insider Advantage and Atlanta’s Fox 5.
The poll of 500 likely Georgia voters, conducted Monday by telephone, found Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue holding a slight lead over Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, 49.0% to 47.8%.
In the other contest, GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler held a similarly narrow advantage over Democrat Raphael Warnock, 49.2% to 48.0%.
In both cases, the difference between the two candidates was well within the poll’s 4.4% margin of error.
“The Republican candidates have found their footing,” said Matt Towery, chairman of Insider Advantage and a former Republican state legislator. “However, that footing is tenuous, given that turnout in absentee ballots cast and early voting thus far has shown a high level of African American voter participation.”
Offsetting that is the huge lead Perdue and Loeffler enjoy among white voters, at 68.4% for both candidates. African-American voters heavily prefer Warnock, the pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, at 82.2%, and Ossoff, who polled 79.6% of Black voters.
Independent voters, who used to lean Republican in Georgia, are going for the Democrats, according to the poll. Warnock has the support of 62.9% of the survey respondents, with Ossoff at 55.7%.
Men prefer Loeffler and Perdue, with the Republican incumbents garnering the support of 55.2% and 53.2% of the male vote, respectively. Women went the other way, backing Ossoff with 54.6% of their vote and Warnock polling 53.7% among female voters.
Broken down by age, the strongest support for the Republicans comes from voters 65 or over, with 56.7% for Loeffler and 56.4% for Perdue. Warnock and Ossoff polled highest among voters ages 18 through 39, with Warnock at 50.0% support among those younger voters and Ossoff at 48.7%.
“[Perdue and Loeffler] need to up those [senior voter] numbers to feel comfortable about a potential win in January,” Towery said. “Meanwhile, Ossoff and Warnock must cut into the 15% share of the African American vote that the two Republicans currently enjoy. That number usually slips below 10% for most Republicans by Election Day.”
President-elect Joe Biden urges supporters in Atlanta on Dec. 15, 2020, to turn out the vote for Georgia’s two Democratic candidates in the upcoming U.S. Senate runoff elections. (Biden campaign video)
President-elect Joe Biden campaigned in Atlanta Tuesday for the state’s two Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate ahead of their runoff elections on Jan. 5.
Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are locked in a fierce battle with incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, with control of Congress hanging in the balance.
Ossoff, who owns an investigative journalism company, and Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, have been constantly portrayed by their Republican opponents as too extreme for conservative Georgians to tolerate.
Biden, who won the presidential election last month, stepped in to punch back at the attacks from Perdue and Loeffler, pointing out the two Republican senators “fully embraced” a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn Georgia’s election results that the U.S. Supreme Court shot down last week.
“Maybe they thought they represented Texas,” Biden said at the Pullman-Pratt Yard on Tuesday. “Well, if you want to do the bidding of Texas, you should be running in Texas, not in Georgia.”
Perdue and Loeffler said in a joint statement they backed the lawsuit for transparency purposes to make sure President Donald Trump had “every legal recourse available” to probe the election’s integrity following his loss to Biden in Georgia by 11,779 votes.
Biden also pushed back on the images of Ossoff and Warnock as too radical for Georgia, noting he needs Peach State voters to put the two candidates in Congress to advance an agenda of unity after years of divisive politics under Trump.
“If you do, the doors of promise and progress are going to open in Washington,” Biden said. “We’re going to start to get done what we have to do, and more than anything, we’ll make the lives of every Georgian [and] the lives of every American better.”
That bipartisan message has not convinced national and local Republican leaders backing Perdue and Loeffler, who have made fears over a Democrat-controlled Congress and White House central to their runoff campaigns.
A Republican National Committee spokeswoman dismissed Biden’s speech as a smokescreen meant to obscure a “far-left, radical agenda” that Republicans say Ossoff and Warnock, if elected, would follow on orders from national Democratic leaders.
In particular, Republican leaders have sought to tie Ossoff and Warnock to calls from some national Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups to reduce funding for local law-enforcement agencies – though both Democratic candidates in Georgia have stressed they do not support defunding police.
“It’s crazy talk to say you want to defund police,” Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway said Tuesday. “I urge all Republicans, Independents and conservative Democrats to make sure we don’t have a government controlled by one party.”
Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway (center) joined Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds (left) and Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman (right) to denounce the “defund police” movement outside the State Capitol in Atlanta on Dec. 15, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Fending off the attacks, Ossoff and Warnock have largely stuck to platforms of expanding access to health care, increasing COVID-19 relief, raising the federal minimum wage and strengthening voting rights.
The importance of next month’s election for American government has been the main focal point since the four contenders advanced last month to the runoffs, particularly as Georgia flipped for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1992.
Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock would give Democrats control of Congress and the White House for at least the next two years. A loss by either would hand Republicans a check in the Senate on the Biden administration.
Biden drove that point home Tuesday in Atlanta, echoing politicians on both sides who have spent weeks traveling to Georgia to stir up voter excitement for their preferred pair of candidates.
“I need two senators from this state who want to get something done, not two senators who are going to get in the way,” Biden said. “Because, look, getting nothing done just hurts Georgia.”
Biden’s visit to Georgia came a day after Electoral College members from states across the country sent him enough votes to formally claim victory over Trump, whose loss in Georgia was certified after two statewide recounts overseen by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.
Trump still has not conceded defeat even as his most prominent backers like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, have acknowledged Biden’s win since Monday after weeks of silence.
Instead, the president has stuck to a strategy of casting doubt on the election by making fraud claims, posing a risk that many Georgia voters loyal to Trump may skip the runoff out of disillusionment in the state’s election system and scuttle Republicans’ efforts to keep a grip on the Senate.
Republican leaders are counting on conservative voters to outmatch the huge Democratic turnout seen in the Nov. 3 general election, largely by casting Ossoff and Warnock as “socialist” candidates bent on increasing spending in government programs and carving up police budgets.
“The moment of truth is right now,” Perdue said at a Monday night rally in Atlanta. “We’re going to stand up to this onslaught that will perpetrate a socialist state here in Georgia.”
U.S. Sen. David Perdue urges supporters to turn out the vote at a rally alongside his wife, Bonnie, at the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport on Dec. 14, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Ossoff and Warnock have portrayed their opponents as out of touch with average Georgians by invoking controversial stock trades the wealthy Republican incumbents made early during the COVID-19 pandemic – though Loeffler and Perdue say federal investigators cleared them of any wrongdoing.
“[We’re] running against the Bonnie and Clyde of politics,” Ossoff said at a rally Monday afternoon in Atlanta. “We have two United States senators more concerned with using their offices to enrich themselves than taking care of ‘we the people’ who pay their salaries.”
The three-week early voting period for the Senate runoff elections started on Monday.
Jon Ossoff (left) and Rev. Raphael Warnock (right) stop for a campaign bus-tour rally at the site of the old Turner Field in Atlanta on Dec. 14, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
