ATLANTA – Georgia Democrat Charlie Bailey is giving up his bid for attorney general to run instead for lieutenant governor.
Bailey, a former prosecutor who lost the 2018 attorney general’s race to Republican Chris Carr, said he was persuaded to run for lieutenant governor by Democratic Party leaders.
“All of the issues this team has fought for can be advanced by leading the Georgia Senate as lieutenant governor,” Bailey wrote on his campaign website.
“We can fight together for regular people against powerful forces by ensuring that we provide health-care access for working Georgians by finally expanding Medicaid. We can make sure that we fully fund our schools, reduce our class sizes, and pay our teachers more. We can make sure our law enforcement officers are at least paid a living wage so that thousands aren’t living below the poverty line.”
Bailey also called for funding the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab, which has long been plagued with backlogs for ballistics tests and sexual assault kits.
Bailey’s entrance into the lieutenant governor’s races further crowds the Democratic field while at least for now leaving state Sen. Jen Jordan of Atlanta the sole Democrat challenging Carr’s reelection bid this year.
Other Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor include Bryan Miller of Watkinsville, grandson of the late Gov. and U.S. Sen. Zell Miller; state Rep. Renitta Shannon of Decatur; and Georgia Reps. Erick Allen of Smyrna and Derrick Jackson of Tyrone.
Republicans running for lieutenant governor include Georgia Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller of Gainesville, state Sen. Burt Jones of Jackson and Savannah activist Jeanne Seaver.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia lawmakers didn’t let the start of the 2022 General Assembly session Monday get in the way of college football’s national championship game.
The state House and Senate held truncated sessions Monday morning to give legislators time to head to Indianapolis for Monday night’s showdown between the Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide.
House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, even gaveled his chamber into session 90 minutes earlier than the usual 10 a.m. start time.
“Go Dawgs!” were the last words out of his mouth as he wrapped up the brief floor session.
The House also showed Dawgs highlights on a video screen before and after the session began.
Not to be outdone, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Georgia Tech graduate who presides over the Senate, also wished the Dawgs well in their quest to finally beat Alabama after seven straight losses, including this year’s Southeastern Conference championship game and the 2018 national championship contest.
Both chambers will be off Tuesday to allow celebrating or mourning lawmakers – as the case may be – to get back to Atlanta.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s hefty budget surplus is about to pay off for state employees.
Gov. Brian Kemp will include a $5,000 raise for most state workers in the fiscal 2022 mid-year budget proposal he will release later this week. Putting the raise in the mid-year budget means it would take effect as soon as the General Assembly passes it and he signs it into law rather than at the beginning of fiscal 2023 in July.
More than 57,000 state employees earning less than $80,000 per year received one-time $1,000 raises last year. But pay increases for state workers have been rare since the Great Recession caused state tax revenues to plummet, forcing lawmakers to make severe spending cuts.
But the state’s coffers have recovered from the double impacts of the Great Recession and another economic downturn brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, with the help of federal COVID-19 aid money.
By the end of the last fiscal year last June, the state had built a budget surplus of $3.7 billion.
State agency heads have long complained they’re losing workers because state salaries are failing to keep up with pay offered by other governments and in the private sector.
“State government positions must remain competitive with other government entities to attract and retain a talented and capable workforce,” Kemp wrote in a letter Friday to state department heads outlining the planned pay raise.
Kemp also announced he will recommend making the $5,000 pay increase permanent starting with his fiscal 2023 budget.
The governor will outline highlights of his spending recommendations on Thursday during a joint session of the General Assembly.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Gregory McMichael (left) and Travis McMichael (right) were sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. (Glynn County Sheriff’s Office)
ATLANTA – The father and son convicted of murdering Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery nearly two years ago near Brunswick were sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In a case that received national attention and led to an overhaul of Georgia’s citizens arrest law, a third defendant received life with a chance for parole in 30 years based on the prosecution’s recommendation.
Arbery, 25, was shot to death in February 2020 after Greg McMichael and his son, Travis, chased him down a street in the Satilla Shores neighborhood in a pickup truck after observing him on the property of a nearby home under construction.
With the help of William “Roddie” Bryan, who drove a second truck, the men cornered Arbery, and Travis McMichael pulled the trigger.
The three were convicted of a range of murder charges last November by a jury made up of 11 white jurors and one Black juror.
Before Friday’s sentencing, Arbery’s parents and sister asked Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley to impose the maximum sentence on the defendants.
“They were fully committed to the crime,” said Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother. “Let them be fully committed to the consequences.”
In imposing the maximum sentence on the McMichaels, Walmsley said neither showed any remorse for the murder. The judge cited Greg McMichael’s threats to Arbery heard on a video of the crime shot by Bryan and the “chilling, truly disturbing” picture of Travis McMichael taking aim at Arbery with a shotgun.
“The record speaks for itself,” Walmsley said. “Ahmaud Arbery was hunted down and shot. He was killed because individuals in this courtroom took the law into their own hands. … Taking the law into your own hands is a dangerous endeavor.”
Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly reacted to the McMichaels’ vigilantism last year with a bill essentially repealing Georgia’s 19th-century citizens arrest law.
Owners of retail shops and restaurants are still permitted to detain shoplifters on their premises, while police officers who are off-duty or outside their jurisdiction can make arrests if they witness a crime or have knowledge a crime was recently committed.
In sentencing Bryan to life with a possibility of parole after 30 years, Walmsley said the third defendant did demonstrate remorse by showing he had “grave concerns” about the killing at the crime scene. However, Bryan still shared responsibility for the murder by blocking Arbery’s escape with his truck, the judge said.
The three defendants also are facing federal hate-crime charges, with a trial set to begin next month.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Voting rights organizations and a group of Georgia voters filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging new congressional district lines the Republican-controlled General Assembly drew during a special session last fall.
The suit claims the new boundaries for Georgia’s 6th, 13th and 14th congressional districts unlawfully diminish the voting strength of voters of color.
“The Georgia legislature has ‘cracked’ and ‘packed’ communities of color in the congressional districts map, denying voters of color an equal voice in elections,” said Jack Genberg, senior staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “This map must be remedied to prevent harm to Georgia’s communities of color for years to come.”
The legal challenge to the congressional map follows a lawsuit filed last month making similar arguments in opposition to new state House and Senate maps Republican lawmakers drew over the objections of legislative Democrats.
The new lawsuit charges the newly drawn congressional map (congress-prop1-2021-packet.pdf (ga.gov) violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by intentionally denying Black communities in Georgia representation and, therefore, equal protection under the law.
Specifically, the plaintiffs accuse GOP legislative leaders of shifting voters of color out of Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s 6th Congressional District in Atlanta’s northern suburbs and replacing them with white voters from suburban and rural counties further north.
McBath, D-Marietta, responded to the changes by declaring her candidacy for the 7th Congressional District seat, pitting her against incumbent Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, D-Lawrenceville, in May’s Democratic primary.
On the other hand, according to the suit, Republicans pieced together Black voters from six counties to pack the 13th Congressional District served by Rep. David Scott, D-Atlanta, reducing Black voting strength in surrounding districts.
The suit also objects to a move late in the special redistricting session to draw voters from predominantly Black portions of Cobb County into the 14th Congressional District of conservative Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Rome, made up primarily of white rural voters.
“Georgia’s political maps must reflect the interests of the people – not the politicians,” said Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia. “These maps intentionally discriminate against Georgians of color by silencing our voices at the ballot box.”
The League of Women Voters is also a plaintiff in the case.
During the special session, Republicans cited the need to balance the populations of each congressional district within a single voter in drawing a new map that is expected to help the GOP build its majority in Georgia’s congressional delegation from 8-6 to 9-5.
State legislature across the country redraw legislative and congressional maps every 10 years to reflect changes in population reflected in the decennial U.S. Census.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
