ATLANTA – The Republican-led Georgia Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee adopted a redrawn Senate map Friday Democrats and citizen activists criticized as partisan and rushed.
The panel voted 9-4 along party lines to send a proposed map to the full Senate an independent nonpartisan analysis showed could let Democrats reduce the Republican majority by one seat.
But opponents said a fairer map such as an alternative prepared by Senate Democrats would result in districts that more accurately reflect minority population growth in Georgia during the last decade.
The map’s opponents also criticized the committee’s timing – releasing the proposed map last Tuesday on the same day as municipal elections were being held across the state and voting on it even as the Atlanta Braves celebrated this week’s World Series victory with a parade within a few blocks of the Georgia Capitol.
“Georgians have demanded fair maps and a transparent redistricting process, and Georgia Senate Republicans are failing on both fronts,” said Scott Hogan, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia. “Georgians deserve an open redistricting process – not one that rushes a decision that will affect Georgians for the next decade.”
The General Assembly redraws Georgia’s congressional and legislative district lines every 10 years to accommodate changes in population reflected in the U.S. Census.
The Peach State grew during the last decade by about 1 million to 10.7 million, primarily the result of increasing numbers of minority residents.
“Georgia’s growth has been driven by Black, Hispanic and Asian Georgians,” Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, D-Stone Mountain, told committee members Friday. “Every map must reflect that reality.”
Instead, Butler complained the map proposed by Senate Republicans would split several counties with large minority populations to dilute minority voting strength. She cited as examples Bibb, Chatham, Athens-Clarke, Douglas and Henry counties.
The alternative map Senate Democrats proposed would give minority voters a better chance to elect candidates of their choice by keeping Athens-Clarke together inside a single district and putting most of Henry County in a single district, Butler said.
Sen. Harold Jones, D-Augusta, said the courts frown on “racial gerrymandering,” redrawing districts in a way that reduces minority voting power.
“If you have the opportunity to create a majority-minority district without a lot of crazy gerrymandering, you ought to take it,” Jones suggested to the committee.
Other Democrats as well as representatives of civil and voting rights groups who testified Friday during a public-comment period accused Republican leaders of rushing the Senate map through the committee in just three days without sufficient chance for public review.
“Transparency is a big deal,” said Sen. Ed Harbison, D-Columbus. “If you subscribe to that, you can’t go wrong.”
But committee Chairman John Kennedy, R-Macon, said the Senate map was the product of weeks of public hearings across Georgia.
Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, said interested members of the public have had access to 2020 Census data since September and have been able to submit comments on an online portal set up by the committee.
Cowsert said the Republican map complies with the federal Voting Rights Act as well as such general redistricting principles as keeping districts as close to equal in population as possible.
“These districts are compact,” he said. “There are no pairings of incumbents and very minimal splitting of counties.”
The map will head next to the Senate floor for a vote, probably next week.
Meanwhile, the Georgia House Legislative and Reapportionment Committee began work Friday on drawing new House districts. The panel was presented with both Republican and Democratic maps.
“We’re proud of our map, and we think it’s the best for all Georgians,” said House Minority Leader James Beverly, D-Macon. “This is a map that people will look at and say, ‘Hey, they got it right.’ ”
Rep. Bonnie Rich, R-Suwanee, who chairs the committee, introduced the GOP leadership map, which she said complies with all constitutional and federal voting rights requirements.
Rich said the map includes 48 House districts that are majority Black, and 78 “minority opportunity” districts.
The committee will hold a hearing on both maps on Monday.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan isn’t running for reelection.
That means he’s free to offer his opinions on former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s current political trajectory, which he’s done in a new book entitled “GOP 2.0: How the 2020 Election Can Lead to a Better Way Forward for America’s Conservative Party.”
“The book began before the last national election debacle that played out also here in Georgia,” said Duncan, who remains a supporter of Trump’s policies but has become a nationally outspoken critic of the former president himself.
“We have to find a better way to talk about our politics and move forward with the party. It’s becoming an unwinnable strategy, and Donald Trump has zero percent chance of becoming president again in 2024. The sooner we come to grips with that reality, the better it will be for the Republican Party.”
Duncan had a front row seat as Georgia became the focus of Trump’s national battle to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“I didn’t start out to take on a sitting president as I wrote the book,” he said. “But Trump forgot to remind 250 million American voters why our conservative values are so good and what he stood for.”
“A vocal portion of the Republican Party had become unquestioning followers of the man in the White House,” Duncan writes in his new book. “He had convinced these good people that if you didn’t carry his same tone and support his every decision, you were with them, not him.
“When the president strayed from long-standing Republican positions, his fans went right along, egged on by other party leaders. At the extreme, some acted as if anyone who dissented didn’t count — as a member of the party or, increasingly, simply as a citizen. A chilling tone had descended on the party: You’re either with us or against us. … That’s not how you govern a state like Georgia.”
Duncan, who was elected to the state House in 2012 following the 2011 House redistricting, is finishing up his one and only term as lieutenant governor. Earlier this year, he announced he would not seek reelection after contradicting Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
Now, Duncan acknowledges a freedom to express his political views without worrying about future electoral ramifications.
“It’s an unfair reality, and it shouldn’t be the case, but Trump was continuing to wreak havoc inside the state and trying to disrupt the election process from top to bottom,” he said.
Trump continues to have a strong presence in Georgia. He returned to Georgia back in September for the first time since the January 2021 U.S. Senate runoffs and has endorsed University of Georgia football legend Herschel Walker in his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock next November. Duncan is taking a wait-and-see approach regarding the first-time candidate.
“It’s encouraging to see Walker beginning to distance himself from Trump,” Duncan said. “Some of his recent ads don’t mention the former president. It’s going to be imperative for him to continue doing that, because it doesn’t help the party or the nation for him to win a primary and then lose a general election. … We still need to figure out who Herschel Walker is.”
Duncan is noncommittal about his future political plans.
“I enjoy the job of lieutenant governor,” he said. “In Georgia, conservative values over the last 18 months have balanced lives and livelihoods more than any other state in the country. I’m not certain about my future, but I want to build support for using empathy to grow the conservative tent.
“We have to find a better way to talk about our politics and move forward with the party. The last election shows honesty should be our No.-1 political philosophy. We have to look for opportunities to put our conservatism on display.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of downtown and Midtown Atlanta Friday as the World Series-champion Atlanta Braves held a massive parade.
The parade began at Five Points in downtown as World Series MVP Jorge Soler, face-of-the-franchise Freddie Freeman and the entire team and front office drove along Peachtree Street.
From downtown, the parade proceeded through Midtown, where it halted at Peachtree and 10th streets and relocated to Cobb County and Truist Park.
Another celebration was set to begin later Friday in The Battery, the Braves’ nationally recognized entertainment complex outside Truist Park.
The parade began at noon with dozens of motorcycled law enforcement officials moving along Peachtree across from Woodruff Park. Brave General Manager Alex Anthopoulos, whose mid-season moves to remake the team’s depleted outfield sparked the World Series run, was in one of the first vehicles.
Gov. Brian Kemp got in on the Braves’ excitement, proclaiming Nov. 5 as Atlanta Braves Day and encouraging all Georgians to join in celebrating the team’s second world championship since moving to Atlanta in 1966.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The new legislative maps Georgia Republicans proposed this week are fair and provide multiple opportunities for minority representation, the chairman of the state Senate’s Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee said Thursday.
But advocates for voting rights and minority groups attacked both the content and timing of the maps during the their first public airing since Republican leaders released them on Tuesday.
State Sen. John Kennedy, R-Macon, the committee’s chairman, painstakingly outlined each of the 56 proposed Senate districts during the first portion of Thursday’s hearing.
He acknowledged the process of creating the new maps has been compressed because U.S. Census data wasn’t released until August.
Under the proposed map, Democrats could gain up to three seats, reflecting the growth of Georgia’s minority populations, voters who historically have supported Democratic candidates. The GOP currently holds the majority in the chamber with 34 seats, to 22 for the Democrats.
During a series of public hearings held across the state during the summer, members of civil rights and voting rights groups urged Republicans to take minority population growth into account when drawing new legislative and congressional district maps.
Kennedy and other Republicans on the committee stressed the new map is less politically divisive than others drawn back when Democrats controlled the General Assembly.
“In 2001, Democrats paired 12 of 56 incumbents, including 10 of 24 Republicans, but only two of 32 Democrats were paired,” Kennedy said. “These new maps are respectful of incumbents returning but also include 14 majority-Black districts and 20 non-white majority districts.”
Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, who is vice chair of the committee, said the proposed maps comply with state and federal voting laws. He said the maps were created after 11 hearings held around the state, including several online public hearings.
Other Republicans said the Senate map includes requests from the Democratic Party, recognizes state and federal constitutional requirements, and acknowledges past instances of racially polarized voting.
But Janet Grant, vice chair of the nonprofit Fair Districts Georgia, said the GOP map is too partisan.
Grant said the Princeton Gerrymandering Project gave the Democratic Caucus an “A” for an alternative Senate map Democrats released last week in terms of fairness and overall representation and handed the Republican map an “F.”
“There’s an opportunity to improve these maps from both a partisanship perspective and a competitive perspective,” Grant said.
Cowsert questioned Princeton’s methodology in developing its grade.
Salik Sohani, a volunteer for the Georgia Muslim Voter Project, complained that the release of both the GOP House and Senate maps came on a municipal election day throughout the state.
“The only way I found out about the maps was to follow the General Assembly’s Twitter feed,” Sohani said. He urged the committee to reconsider the maps and provide more transparency and translations for non-English-speaking and hearing-impaired residents.
Stephanie Ali, policy director of the New Georgia Project, complained that the committee has scheduled a meeting on Friday to possibly vote on the Senate map during a parade to celebrate the Atlanta Braves World Series championship.
Also on Friday, the House Legislative & Congressional Reapportionment Committee will hold its first meeting on the proposed House map.
The General Assembly redraws Georgia’s congressional and legislative district maps every 10 years to account for population shifts reflected in the U.S. Census.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgians turning back their clocks by an hour this weekend to begin observing standard time might be excused for thinking they don’t have to make the time change this year.
But legislation the General Assembly passed last March adopting year-round daylight saving time won’t take effect unless and until Congress makes the change at the national level.
Georgia lawmakers approved the permanent daylight saving time bill on the final day of this year’s legislative session following a session-long debate that included consideration of a second measure calling for the Peach State to observe standard time all year long.
The state Senate showed a preference for standard time in February by passing a bill putting Georgia on standard time permanently.
The Georgia House of Representatives sided with daylight saving time, passing its bill during the waning days of the 2021 session. The Senate then went with that version on final passage.
While the House and Senate initially disagreed over standard versus daylight time, lawmakers in both chambers were united in their desire to stop forcing Georgians to switch back and forth twice a year.
Switching to daylight time every spring and back to standard time every fall has been shown to be unhealthy, said Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, who sponsored the standard time bill in the Senate.
“If you look at the scientific and medical journals, the sleep studies, you see an increased hazard to us changing back and forth,” he said.
Rep. Wes Cantrell, R-Woodstock, who sponsored the House measure, used the same argument in favor of sticking with daylight time all year.
But Cantrell cited an additional argument in favor of daylight saving time, citing polls showing Americans prefer daylight time over standard time by a wide margin.
Watson also noted that Georgia’s neighboring states of South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida are among 19 that have passed laws establishing daylight saving time permanently.
One advantage to year-round standard time is that states have the legal authority to make that switch unilaterally, while Congress must act before states can switch to daylight time all year.
But help for daylight time advocates may be on the way. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has introduced legislation making daylight time permanent.
While the bill hasn’t gained significant support, Rubio said recently he may try to attach it to other legislation that is moving through the Senate by the end of this year.
This story available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
