ATLANTA – The two Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for Georgia Secretary of State agreed on the issues Monday while focusing most of their fire on Republican incumbent Brad Raffensperger.
State Rep. Bee Nguyen gave Raffensperger credit for standing up to former President Donald Trump and refusing to go along with Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
But she accused the Republican secretary of state of harping on the need to ban non-U.S. citizens from voting and prohibit “harvesting” of absentee ballots when there’s no evidence either is a problem in Georgia.
“We have a secretary of state who upheld the law,” Nguyen said. “But he’s running his campaign based on conspiracy theories.”
Former state Rep. Dee Dawkins-Haigler, who finished second to Nguyen in the May 24 Democratic primary, criticized Raffensperger for supporting legislation the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed last year requiring Georgians to show a photo ID to cast an absentee ballot. She said the incumbent also favors assigning armed security to polling places.
“The last thing we need is an armed guard at any polling place,” Dawkins-Haigler said. “That intimidates people.”
Dawkins-Haigler said her fight against voter suppression dates back to before Raffensperger took office in 2019. She sued the state in 2016 over the use of voting machines without a paper backup, action she said prompted the state to equip the machines with paper backups for the current election cycle.
Nguyen said she has dedicated most of her life to working in the nonprofit sector for the public interest on issues ranging from legal reform to access to health care.
If elected, Nguyen said she would create a division in the agency to clear up the “disinformation” Republicans spread among voters and work to provide more resources to local elections officials.
“Our local election boards do not feel adequately supplied by the secretary of state,” she said.
Dawkins-Haigler said her experience as an educator, community activist and political strategist would let her hit the ground running as secretary of state.
“I have the experience where it matters,” she said. “This job doesn’t need training wheels.”
The winner of the Democratic primary runoff June 21 will face Raffensperger in November. Despite Trump’s endorsement of one of his Republican primary opponents, Raffensperger won renomination for a second term outright, avoiding the need for a GOP runoff.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The two Republican candidates for Georgia’s 10th Congressional District seat agreed on the major issues in a debate Monday.
But that didn’t stop trucking executive Mike Collins and former state Rep. Vernon Jones from delivering some sharp exchanges during the 30-minute debate livestreamed by Georgia Public Broadcasting, mostly over which of the two is the real Republican.
Both Collins and Jones said they oppose abortion with no exceptions.
Both said they would oppose any efforts to increase restrictions on guns in the wake of the recent mass shootings in New York state, Texas and Oklahoma and called instead for arming teachers.
“Having a gun and protecting your family is important,” Jones said.
Collins compared the need to arm school personnel to the nation’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“If we can secure our airports … we’ve got to secure our schools,” he said.
Where the two parted ways was over which is more loyal to the Republican Party.
Jones hammered away at Collins for being the son of a former congressman, the late Mac Collins, who was elected to the Butts County Commission as a Democrat in the late 1970s before turning Republican two years later.
“He was raised as a Democrat,” Jones said of Collins. “Mike is a RINO (Republican in Name Only.)”
Collins said his father became a Republican when the younger Collins was just 10 years old. The younger Collins said he started a chapter of the Young Republicans while a student at Georgia College and State University.
Collins noted that Jones, on the other hand, served in the General Assembly as a Democrat and voted in the Democratic presidential primary in 2020.
“He has spent his entire life as a Democrat,” Collins said of Jones.
The two did agree on the need for Georgia to switch to closed primaries, where voters must register their party affiliation and can only vote in their party’s primaries.
Jones accused Collins of sending mailers to Democratic voters urging them to cross over and vote for him in the Republican primary, a charge Collins denied.
“I have never been in favor of crossover voting,” he said.
In closing, Jones touted his endorsement by former President Donald Trump.
“I stand for election integrity,” he said.
Collins said as a political outsider, he would bring business experience to Congress.
Collins won 25.6% of the vote in last month’s primary in a crowded Republican race featuring eight candidates. Jones made the runoff by finishing second with 21.5% of the vote.
The winner of the June 21 runoff will face the winner of the 10th District Democratic runoff between Tabitha Johnson-Green and Jessica Allison in the general election in November.
The seat is vacant because U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Greensboro, decided to leave Congress in what turned out to be an unsuccessful run for Georgia secretary of state.
The heavily Republican 10th Congressional District stretches from Butts County and a portion of Henry County north and east through Athens and Elbert County to the South Carolina line.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Jake Evans and Rich McCormick at Monday’s Atlanta Press Club runoff debate
ATLANTA – Jake Evans and Dr. Rich McCormick, the two Republican candidates competing in the runoff for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District seat, faced off in a debate Monday.
The candidates focused on core conservative issues such as abortion, gun control, law enforcement, and election integrity.
Both said they were opposed to abortion. Evans, a lawyer, said he would only make an exception to save the life of the mother.
“I support rolling back and eliminating Roe v. Wade,” Evans said. “We have to make sure that Christianity, the foundational principles that our country was based on, are pushed forward because I think that will solve a lot of the major issues facing our country today.”
McCormick, an emergency room physician, called himself a “100% life doctor” and said that the idea of choosing between the baby and mother’s life is a false dichotomy.
“I don’t make exceptions because I don’t believe they’re contrary to each other,” McCormick said. “I believe if you take a human life, it’s never beneficial.”
McCormick also said that he has seen “the horrors of gun violence” firsthand in his work as an emergency room doctor and that he is aware of the nation’s mental health crisis.
“But I will say that taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens has never been the solution,” McCormick said. “You can talk about security of schools, you can talk about mental health, but if you’re talking about taking weapons from law abiding citizens, no.”
Evans also painted himself as a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights.
When asked whether he would support one of the compromise gun control measures currently being considered in Washington, Evans said, “I would have to know what the compromise is, but if it any way unconstitutionally infringes on our Second Amendment rights, I would not stand for it.”
McCormick criticized Evans for a 2015 paper in which Evans called for criminal justice reforms. Evans countered that he drafted the paper while in law school and that he is a strong supporter of law enforcement.
McCormick also called for pharmaceutical reforms.
“We need pricing transparency across the board, including with health-care centers, with the access to medicine, and there’s a ton of things we could do, but we need to first of all defeat the things aren’t working, that [President Joe] Biden and [U.S. House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi have instituted,” McCormick said.
Evans criticized McCormick for accepting donations from out-of-state organizations and “liberal special interests” that do not represent core conservative values.
Evans also called for closed primaries, in which Georgia voters could only vote in the primary for the party with which they are registered.
“What I’m out for is ensuring Republicans elect Republicans that will represent them and Democrats don’t infiltrate, manipulate, influence our elections, which is what happened two Tuesdays ago,” said Evans.
Evans also said that he would disband the Jan. 6 commission scheduled to hold public hearings later this week on the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He called the panel a “political weapon” against conservatives.
“There are conservatives throughout Georgia, throughout the country that are being denied their due process right to a speedy and fair trial,” said Evans. “We have to make sure that conservative voices throughout this country are protected.”
Evans contended that he is a true conservative who is not beholden to liberal interests and extolled his endorsement by former President Donald Trump.
“I’m endorsed by President Trump – you’re not,” Evans said to McCormick. “He endorsed me because he knows I fight. I fight when it matters.”
McCormick touted his leadership experience as an emergency room doctor and former Marine helicopter pilot.
“In the emergency room and in combat zones, I make tough decisions in tough places,” McCormick said.
In the May primary, McCormick pulled 48,967, or 43%, of the vote, while Evans earned 26,160, or 23%, of the vote.
The runoff will be held on Tuesday, June 21. The winner of the primary runoff will face Democrat Bob Christian in November.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Alabama company looking to open a titanium mine near the Okefenokee Swamp is being confronted with an additional hurdle.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has reversed an earlier approval of the project and now will require Twin Pines Minerals to reapply for a federal permit. The company already is seeking permits from the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.
In a memorandum issued late last week, Michael Connor, assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, wrote that Twin Pines has not properly consulted the Muscogee Creek Nation despite their request for such a consultation.
The mine’s opponents, who argue the project would threaten the hydrology of the largest blackwater swamp in North America, applauded the Corps’ decision.
“Thanks to everyone who has supported the Okefenokee Swamp and the Suwannee and St. Marys Rivers during this long permitting process,” said John Quarterman, executive director of the Hahira-based environmental advocacy group Suwannee Riverkeeper.
“Special thanks to the Valdosta mayor and council for their resolution of September 11, 2021, supporting the swamp and opposing the mine. This recent decision was one of the requests of that resolution.”
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who visited the swamp last year, has lobbied the Corps and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to stop the mine.
“The Okefenokee is a sacred natural resource,” Ossoff said. “It is a wildlife resource that must be protected.”
Twin Pines officials have indicated they plan to continue pursuing the project despite the Corps’ decision.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Dr. Sarah Vinson (photo credit: Morehouse School of Medicine)
Georgia child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Sarah Vinson is featured in a new documentary by nationally acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns about youth mental health in America.
“We hope this film will save lives,” Burns said in a news release.
The young people featured in the documentary describe their struggles with addiction, depression, anxiety, trauma, racism, social media, and the pandemic.
Expert commentary, including Vinson’s, is interwoven throughout.
Vinson is one of 99 child and adolescent psychiatrists practicing in Georgia, according to the latest Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce’s data from 2019-2020.
She grew up in northwest Florida and studied medicine at the University of Florida, where she decided to study psychiatry.
“What I saw … is how critical mental health is, especially early on at these really important junctures for people, especially in terms of self-identity, educational, and career paths,” she said.
After training in psychiatry at Harvard University, Vinson returned to the South.
“The goal was always to come back and try to make things better down here,” said the triple board-certified doctor, who is now an associate professor at Morehouse School of Medicine.
Some of those recommendations were adopted in House Bill 1013, an overhaul of mental health-care delivery in Georgia the General Assembly passed in March.
The recent changes are just a start, though, said Vinson. Raising Medicaid payment rates for mental health providers is essential to building the mental health workforce, she said.
“When Medicaid rates aren’t competitive …. it can make it hard for hospital systems or group practices to be incentivized to take people who are publicly insured,” Vinson said.
Close to 40% of Georgia children are covered by state-sponsored insurance plans like Medicaid and PeachCare for Kids, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“House Bill 1013 set the stage for increasing reimbursement rates, though it did not increase them directly,” said Roland Behm, a board member of the Georgia Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Increasing the rates will be a top priority for mental health advocates during the next legislative session, Behm said.
In the documentary, Vinson and others explain how childhood trauma and instability contribute to long-term mental health problems.
“There’s a reason there’s so many cases in the first place,” Vinson said. “And it’s because [kids are] growing up with so much instability and uncertainty.
“We have to collectively decide that we want to provide them with an environment that’s more likely to [create] a mentally healthier outcome. Safe housing, food security, for kids, are huge.”
Expanding Medicaid would also help address youth mental health, Vinson said.
“We need Medicaid expansion in Georgia if we are serious about shoring up mental health services, especially for adults,” Vinson said. “If the adults that are responsible … can’t get the help they need, they can’t get their children what they themselves don’t have.”
Georgia governors Nathan Deal and Brian Kemp have chosen not to expand Medicaid, citing the costs.
Vinson also talked about how children are increasingly exposed to traumatic events like the recent shooting in Uvalde, Texas, via social media.
Vinson said that in today’s media-saturated landscape, parents should help their children cope with their feelings and not abandon them to the internet.
“It’s important for the parents to be the one to have those talks, to model those feelings and emotions that come with something this terrible, and that causes so much grief and sadness and maybe even anger,” Vinson said. “There is hope – we just have to make a decision as a state to be supportive.”
“Hidden in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness” will begin airing on PBS platforms, including on major streaming services, on June 27 and 28.
Georgians needing mental health assistance can call the Georgia Crisis and Access Line 24 hours a day at 1-800-715-4225.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
