Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue is expected to announce his candidacy for Georgia governor as soon as today, Washington, D.C.-based Politico reported Sunday.
Perdue is an ally of former President Donald Trump, who has been urging him for months to challenge incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in next May’s GOP primary.
Kemp angered Trump when he refused to help him overturn the results of last year’s presidential election in Georgia. Democrat Joe Biden carried the Peach State by fewer than 12,000 votes, the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.
Perdue’s announcement will come less than a week after Democrat Stacey Abrams, who lost to Kemp in 2018 by a narrow margin, formally entered the gubernatorial race again.
While Abrams looks to have a clear path to the Democratic nomination, the primary contest between Kemp and Perdue is sure to aggravate divisions already apparent inside Georgia’s Republican Party between Trump loyalists and those who want the GOP to put last year’s election behind and move forward.
Democrats responded to word of Perdue’s candidacy by labeling him a “failed” senator.
Perdue finished first in last year’s general election but fell short of the 50%-plus-one margin needed to win reelection to a second term. He then lost a runoff to Democrat Jon Ossoff last January.
“Republicans like Brian Kemp and David Perdue have failed Georgians at every level of leadership,” said Scott Hogan, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia.
“No matter who emerges from Republicans’ messy, race-to-the-right gubernatorial primary, voters know that Democrats are the only ones who will deliver on the issues Georgians care about, like recovering from COVID-19 and expanding access to health care.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King (right) shakes hands with Gov. Brian Kemp Friday at a swearing-in ceremony inside the state Capitol.
ATLANTA – Former Doraville Police Chief John King was officially sworn in Friday as Georgia’s insurance commissioner.
King actually has been on the job since June 2019, when Gov. Brian Kemp appointed him on an interim basis after then-Insurance Commissioner Jim Beck was indicted on federal fraud and money laundering charges.
Beck, a Republican elected to the office in 2018, was convicted last July and sentenced to more than seven years in prison in October. He began serving his sentence this week.
King, who also serves as a major general in the Georgia National Guard, is Georgia’s first Hispanic statewide officeholder.
“General King has already made great strides in restoring public trust in the agency and putting Georgians first,” Kemp said Friday after swearing in King during a ceremony in the Georgia House chambers. “He has dedicated his life to service, and we look forward to the positive impact he will continue to have on the agency.”
King will seek the Republican nomination next year to continue as insurance commissioner. State Rep. Matthew Wilson, D-Brookhaven, is running for his party’s nod to challenge King.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Invariably, the once-a-decade partisan redrawing of congressional and legislative districts in Georgia is accompanied by calls for taking that task away from the General Assembly and giving it to an independent commission.
Just as surely, leaders of the legislature’s majority party dismiss the idea as impractical.
“The [U.S.] Supreme Court says redistricting is inherently a political process,” Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, said late last month after his Republican-controlled chamber approved a new congressional map aimed at increasing the GOP’s hold on Georgia’s congressional delegation. “You can’t take it out.”
But many states are trying to take politics out of redistricting, although with mixed results.
Ten states have created independent redistricting commissions to draw congressional maps for their states, while 15 have formed commissions to handle redistricting of state legislative districts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Still others have created commissions that advise their legislatures on redistricting but don’t have the final say over maps.
Georgia has flirted with the idea of independent redistricting. Then-Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue introduced a constitutional amendment in 2007 to establish an independent commission to redraw Georgia’s legislative and congressional district boundaries following each U.S. Census update.
“The people should pick their legislators, not the other way around,” Perdue said at the time. “You can’t take politics out of politics, but an independent commission would come closer.”
Nothing came of the GOP governor’s proposal, and legislative Democrats pushing independent redistricting more recently have fared no better.
Redistricting legislation state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, and Georgia Rep. Matthew Wilson, D-Brookhaven, introduced into their respective chambers this year has fallen on deaf ears thus far, but both measures remain alive heading into the 2022 General Assembly session.
Some states that have chosen to go with independent redistricting have run into bumps along the way. Ralston cited Virginia, Ohio and the state of Washington as examples.
In all three states, redistricting commissions missed deadlines this fall for delivering their recommendations, citing delays in delivery of census data caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Missing those deadlines forced them either to turn over the job to the state legislature or – in Virginia’s case – have the state Supreme Court choose a special master to draw new maps.
Even when redistricting commissions have met their deadlines, they have been subject to the same accusations of partisanship that plague maps drawn by state legislators, particularly in the way commission members are chosen.
“The California approach tried to keep partisanship out,” said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia who has written extensively about redistricting.
“There was a lengthy selection process, and candidates had to jump through a series of hoops. [But] some argued Democrats figured out how to get their partisans through the selection process.”
In New Jersey, an equal number of Republicans and Democrats were appointed to the redistricting commission, but the chairman was given the deciding vote in case of ties, Bullock said. Whichever party the chairman supported thus got the advantage, he said.
Parent said the key to success with redistricting commissions lies in the membership selection process.
“You need to make sure the people on it are actually independent, or if members of a party are on it, they’re not elected,” she said.
Parent also opposes creating commissions that let legislatures have the final say over their recommendations.
“[Commissions] need to have powers to reform, to have teeth,” she said.
Bullock said Iowa stands out as a state that has carried out independent redistricting successfully for years.
Rather than have a commission draw the maps, Iowa gives that role to Iowa’s Legislative Services Agency. Under state law, maps are not allowed to protect incumbents.
“The legislature can reject their proposals,” Bullock said. “After two rounds of rejection, the legislature takes it over. But with the congressional plan, that’s never happened.”
Republican legislative leaders in Georgia aren’t anxious to voluntarily give up their power over redistricting to an independent commission.
Democrats weren’t either in 2001, the last time they controlled the General Assembly during redistricting and drew heavily gerrymandered maps to try to retain legislative majorities in a state that was fast trending Republican. That strategy ultimately failed when the GOP won full control of the General Assembly in 2004.
Bullock said Republican worries of a similar meltdown after the 2030 census could create the only scenario that might convince GOP leaders to change their minds about turning over redistricting to an independent commission.
Georgia has been trending Democratic in recent years, as shown by Stacey Abrams’ narrow loss to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2018 and the capturing of Georgia’s two U.S Senate seats in last January’s runoffs by Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
Minority population growth across metro Atlanta during the last decade makes it likely Democrats will gain seats in the General Assembly next year, even in districts that have been redrawn by Republicans.
“In 2030, if the Democrats are poised to take over the legislature, the Republican majority might say, ‘We can’t let control go over to the Democrats. Let’s create an independent commission,’ ” Bullock said.
Absent creating an independent redistricting commission, Parent said help in making redistricting in Georgia less partisan could come from the federal level.
The Freedom to Vote Act Democrats have introduced in the U.S. Senate would prohibit drawing maps for partisan advantage. However, Republican opposition to the bill in the 50-50 Senate renders its chances dubious at best.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Power’s nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle has suffered another scheduling delay, an independent expert wrote this week in testimony filed with the state Public Service Commission (PSC).
Recently discovered “construction quality” issues mean the first of two new nuclear reactors being built at the plant south of Augusta may not be completed before February 2023, according to Don Grace, vice president of engineering for the Vogtle Monitoring Group (VMG), hired by the commission’s staff to evaluate Georgia Power sister company Southern Nuclear’s ability to manage the project.
That’s three months behind Georgia Power’s current timetable calling for completion of the unit by next November.
Grace wrote the second reactor also could be delayed until February 2024 instead of being completed in November 2023.
The Vogtle expansion was originally projected to be finished in 2016 and 2017. But the project has been plagued with a series of delays, first when original prime contractor Westinghouse went bankrupt, then when COVID-related workforce shortages slowed up construction.
Georgia Power has been forced to announce several delays in the timetable this year alone, driving up the cost of the project each time.
“These new forecasts represent another five months of schedule slip and another $1 billion in cost increase from previous VMG forecasts,” Grace wrote Wednesday.
The PSC voted last month to let Georgia Power pass on to customers $2.1 billion of the costs of completing the first of the two new reactors. That will raise the average residential customer’s bill by $3.78 a month.
But the Atlanta-based utility will not be allowed to start recovering that money until one month after the unit goes into commercial operation.
The project was projected to cost Georgia Power and three utility partners $14 billion when the PSC approved it in 2009, but the price tag has soared to at least $26 billion.
Georgia Power officials have argued some cost increases were to be expected since the Vogtle expansion is the first new nuclear project to be built in the United States in 30 years.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s need-based, low-interest student-loan program has a high default rate that serves to limit its success, a new state audit has found.
About 31% of borrowers participating in the Student Access Loan (SAL) program default within three years of entering repayment, the Georgia Department of Audits & Accounts concluded in a report issued late last month.
That’s more than three times the default rate of federal student loan participants.
“Borrowers were more likely to default if they were enrolled in a technical college (vs. a four-year institution), were eligible for the federal Pell Grant, did not receive HOPE or Zell Miller aid (with the exception of the HOPE Grant), or did not earn a postsecondary credential prior to repayment,” according to the audit.
“We also found that on average defaulted borrowers earned approximately 40% less than those who remained in good standing.”
Since its inception in fiscal 2012, the SAL has provided about $266 million in loans to nearly 36,000 students. SAL receives $26 million in Georgia Lottery proceeds each year to help borrowers with postsecondary costs.
Since the lottery-funded HOPE Scholarships program is purely based on merit, the SAL is the primary vehicle for need-based student aid in Georgia.
Because of the HOPE and Zell Miller Scholarship, which goes to HOPE recipients with the highest grade-point averages, Georgia awards more grant dollars per undergraduate student than any other state in the country. However, Georgia devotes a smaller proportion of its state assistance to need-based aid compared to other Southeastern states.
The audit concludes it’s no surprise a program that primarily attracts low-income students would suffer from a high default rate.
The report recommends that the General Assembly codify into state law SAL’s intent and define the program’s goals and priorities. It also suggested the Georgia Student Finance Commission consider easing some of the program’s overly burdensome repayment terms.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
