ATLANTA – U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., is continuing to raise more money toward his reelection bid than Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
Warnock brought in more than $17.2 million during the second quarter, the senator’s campaign reported Wednesday.
The Walker campaign received nearly $6.2 million in contributions during April, May, and June.
Warnock reported $22.2 million in cash on hand as of June 30, to nearly $7 million for Walker.
The Warnock campaign received contributions from more than 258,000 individual donors during the second quarter. The average donation was $37.
“This haul and the tens of thousands of grassroots donors lining up to support the campaign in record numbers are just the latest sign that Georgians see Reverend Warnock working on their behalf in the U.S. Senate, and they are ready to help propel our campaign to victory,” said Quentin Fulks, Warnock’s campaign manager.
Walker brought in contributions from nearly 70,000 donors from all 50 states in April, May, and June.
“Team Herschel and I are so grateful for the incredible outpouring of support we’ve received from people who truly believe in our campaign and what we will deliver for Georgia,” Walker said.
Walker, a star running back on the University of Georgia’s 1980 national championship football team, won the Republican nomination to challenge Warnock in May, easily defeating five GOP primary opponents.
Warnock defeated incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler to win the Senate seat in a special election runoff in January of last year. He captured the Democratic nomination for a full six-year term in May.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
The monkeypox virus (photo credit: CDC/Cynthia S. Goldsmith)
ATLANTA – The federal government is releasing monkeypox vaccine to Georgia in a phased approach.
The state will receive 5,943 doses of the Jynneos vaccine from the Strategic National Stockpile during the first two phases, Dr. Alexander Millman, chief medical officer for the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH), told the agency’s board Tuesday.
The DPH will focus that initial supply on two main groups: people who have “high-risk” exposure to a confirmed monkeypox case and others who have “certain risk factors that might make them likely to have had high-risk exposure” to the monkeypox virus.
The vaccine doses for Georgia must be carefully managed, especially because each person needs two shots a month apart, Millman said.
Millman explained that though there is another potential vaccine for monkeypox, the ACAM-2000 vaccine, the federal government is releasing the Jynneos vaccine because it is generally safer.
Georgia has identified more than 40 monkeypox cases so far, Dr. Cherie Drenzek, the state epidemiologist, said Tuesday.
Monkeypox is a viral disease that causes the skin to break out in pustules. The disease is usually mild but can be life threatening in some cases. The current outbreak is unusual because, as of last month, at least 3,400 cases had been identified in countries where monkeypox is not typically found.
Drenzek said monkeypox requires “very close person-to-person contact” for transmission, making it different from COVID or other respiratory diseases that are transmitted through the air.
She said the Georgia monkeypox cases have all been found in people who are from the “broad metro area of Atlanta,” though that interpretation may reflect a testing capability bias.
Drenzek said monkeypox in the current outbreak is primarily being found among men who have sex with men.
The greatest risk factor for monkeypox is close contact with someone else who had monkeypox lesions, she said.
The recent Georgia cases do not include histories of international travel, Drenzek said.
“This suggests…that there is established community spread,” she added.
The current global outbreak of monkeypox differs from prior known outbreaks in several ways, Drenzek said. Patients with monkeypox in the current global outbreak tend to have very few lesions – “even one to two,” she said.
“It just doesn’t look like what we knew monkeypox to look like in the past,” she said.
Drenzek said the DPH laboratory has been testing for monkeypox, and twonew commercial labs can now test for the disease as well. Other commercial labs in Georgia will soon be able to test for the disease she said.
Drenzek said the DPH has epidemiologists on call 24-7 to consult with clinicians about suspected cases of monkeypox at 1-866-PUB-HLTH.
In other news from Tuesday’s meeting, Drenzek told DPH board members a large number of cases of COVID-19 in Georgia are now attributable to the new BA.5 variant of the virus.
BA.5 currently accounts for 65% of all SARS-COVID circulating virus, according to the latest figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVID vaccines and boosters have played a key role in reducing severe COVID outcomes like hospitalization and death.
“These boosters are still holding very well against severe outcomes,” Drenzek said.
Drenzek said most hospitalizations and deaths have been among those who are not vaccinated, and the greatest numbers of those dying are more than 70 years old.
“It’s a matter of getting boosted now,” she said.
Drenzek suggested that soon the United States might approve a second booster for people under 50.
Nancy Nydam, communications director for the DPH, showed a new COVID vaccination ad campaign that encourages Georgians to get vaccinated.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Andrea Swartzendruber and Danielle Lambert, both professors in the College of Public Health, created the website, which allows users to identify crisis pregnancy centers in a given city, state or zip code.
Crisis pregnancy centers offer pregnancy testing and other limited medical services. They are often funded by religious and conservative groups and attempt to dissuade women from getting abortions, according to the website.
The website states the centers “frequently provide inaccurate and misleading health information,” and it calls them “fake women’s health centers.” The purpose of the map is to allow people to identify the centers and help facilitate academic research into the centers.
Hice and Clyde sent a letter to UGA President Jere Morehead July 8 demanding that the university end any support for the mapping website.
“The website is…clearly nothing more than pro-abortion activism masquerading as academic research,” the letter states.
Although the crisis pregnancy mapping website does not appear to be hosted on a UGA webpage, the letter points to the use of a UGA email address by the website’s creators as evidence that the university is “providing resources for these faculty members to run this website.”
The letter alleges – based on a Fox News report – that some groups are using the website to “locate targets for criminal acts of violence and destruction.”
A Fox News report from late June stated that left-wing organizations have made social media posts linking to the mapping website.
Only a few days after the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion, crisis pregnancy centers in Colorado and Virginia were vandalized and set on fire, the letter states.
But there’s no evidence in the Hice and Clyde letter that the website contributed to the recent attacks.
UGA officials did not comment immediately on the letter. However, the university’s College of Public Health respond to the issue with a statement dated June 25.
“The authors of the site condemn all threats or acts of vandalism or violence against crisis pregnancy centers,” the college stated.
The University of Georgia did not respond to our request for updated comment by deadline.
According to the map, there are 88 crisis pregnancy centers in Georgia.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
State Sen. Burt Jones is the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor.
ATLANTA – Republican state Sen. Burt Jones has jumped out to a huge fund-raising lead over Democrat Charlie Bailey in the race for lieutenant governor with fewer than four months remaining until Election Day.
Meanwhile, the Democratic challengers in the contests for secretary of state and state school superintendent are outpacing the GOP incumbents in the battle for campaign dollars.
Those are among the results of the latest campaign-finance reports filed with the state covering statewide down-ballot candidates’ fund-raising and spending through the end of last month.
Jones, R-Jackson, had raised $6.7 million through June 30, according to a report filed late last week with the Georgia Government Transparency & Campaign Finance Commission. Of that amount, $4 million came in the form of two loans.
Even without the loans, Jones still had raised more money from campaign contributors than Bailey, who had raised just less than $1.1 million through the end of last month.
The two are vying for a seat being vacated by Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who isn’t seeking a second term.
Jones was the only statewide Republican candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump to capture a GOP nomination in the May primaries. Several others – notably former U.S. Sen. David Perdue in the gubernatorial primary – went down to defeat.
In the race for secretary of state, Democratic state Rep. Bee Nguyen of Atlanta had raised about $2.2 million through June 30, slightly ahead of GOP incumbent Brad Raffensberger, who had brought in just less than $2 million.
Further down the ballot, Democratic former state Rep. Alisha Thomas Searcy had raised $97,821 in the contest for state school superintendent. Incumbent Republican Richard Woods had raised just $54,672 through June 30.
Elsewhere, Republicans were leading Democrats in fundraising in statewide contests for two open seats and two seats held by GOP incumbents.
Republican Attorney General Chris Carr’s campaign had brought in $3.2 million through the end of last month, while state Sen. Jennifer Jordan of Atlanta, his Democratic challenger, had raised $2.1 million.
GOP Insurance Commissioner John King dwarfed Democratic challenger Janice Laws Robinson in fundraising, bringing in just more than $900,000 through June 30 to $61,215 for the challenger.
The fundraising contest was equally one-sided in the race for the open agriculture commissioner seat. Republican state Sen. Tyler Harper of Ocilla had raised $1.27 million through the end of last month to just $50,567 for Democrat Nakita Hemingway.
In a more competitive fundraising contest involving the open labor commissioner seat. Republican state Sen. Bruce Thompson of White had brought in $663,029 through June 30, to $528,357 for Democratic state Rep. William Boddie of East Point.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – With four months left until Election Day, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams are on track to obliterate the Peach State’s record for gubernatorial campaign fundraising.
The Abrams campaign raised about $9.8 million during the last two months alone, while her One Georgia leadership committee brought in another $12.3 million in May and June.
That far surpasses the $3.8 million Kemp’s campaign raised during the same period, to go with $3 million in contributions to Kemp’s Georgians First Leadership Committee.
Abrams also enjoyed a huge advantage in cash on hand at the end of last month: $18.5 million for Abrams to just more than $7 million for Kemp.
And those numbers don’t count the millions of dollars being spent on TV ads by independent groups on behalf of the two candidates.
No matter which of the two ends up raising more money, it’s a cinch neither will be strapped for cash when they need it during the campaign’s final months, said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.
“They’ve got plenty of money to pay staff, buy up TV time, do mailings and hire people for social media,” Bullock said Friday. “They’ll leave no stone unturned.”
Kennesaw State University political science professor Kerwin Swint said it’s no surprise that Abrams and Kemp will break the gubernatorial fundraising record they set four years ago, when Kemp narrowly defeated Abrams. Since 2018, Abrams has launched the national voting rights organization Fair Fight, landed on the list of Democrats President Joe Biden considered for his vice presidential running mate, and gone on speaking tours across the country.
“Stacey Abrams is an international star,” Swint said.
Kemp, on the other hand, built momentum for the stretch run by soundly thumping former U.S. Sen. David Perdue in May’s Republican primary, overcoming former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of his opponent.
“Kemp has proven he can win a tough election without Donald Trump’s help,” Swint said. “He’s not going to have a problem raising money, either.”
Also contributing to the swollen fundraising numbers is that this year marks the first gubernatorial election in Georgia involving leadership committees. The General Assembly enacted legislation last year authorizing the formation of leadership committees that can raise and spend unlimited contributions on behalf of top statewide and legislative candidates.
Although majority Republicans passed the bill over Democrats’ objections, Abrams has made good use of her leadership committee.
But the Abrams campaign can’t afford to rest on the laurels of its fundraising prowess thus far, campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo warned in a lengthy appeal for contributions released Friday.
“To unseat an extreme incumbent who has championed a dangerous and unpopular far-right agenda, we know that we have to out-raise and out-work his built-in advantages of free media and doling out funds secured by federal Democrats that he opposed,” she wrote. “We have to continue this momentum so we reach millions of voters across the state.”
Kemp campaign spokesman Tate Mitchell said Abrams enjoys her own fundraising advantages in the wide net she is able to cast.
“Far-left radicals from across the country are bankrolling Stacey Abrams’ campaign to bring the failed agenda of D.C. Democrats to Georgia,” he said.
“Abrams and her liberal allies can – and will – continue to outraise and outspend our campaign, but we will continue to run on Governor Kemp’s record of putting Georgians first and securing historic economic success for our state.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
