Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – A voter mobilization group chaired by former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler is looking for a few good candidates to run in this year’s municipal election.
Greater Georgia announced its first-ever candidate recruitment program Wednesday ahead of the November elections, focused on identifying and recruiting a class of qualified conservative candidates.
“In Georgia and across the country, the Left is organizing to take control of cities and counties by recruiting candidates to carry out a dangerous progressive agenda,” Loeffler said. “This year, Greater Georgia is going on offense with a program designed to recruit top-tier candidates and empower them with the tools to run and win.”
Greater Georgia will target open and toss-up seats in cities across the state, including races for mayor and city council. Those interested in running for local office can learn more about the program at https://www.greatergeorgia.com/recruitment.
The candidate qualifying period begins on Aug. 21. Municipal elections will take place Nov. 7.
Loeffler was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Brian Kemp in January 2020 after the retirement of Sen. Johnny Isakson, who died late the following year. The Republican lost her bid to win a full term to Democrat Raphael Warnock in a runoff in January 2021.
ATLANTA – A Washington, D.C.-based group chaired by longtime Republican activist Bill Kristol is doubling down on an ad campaign taking former President Donald Trump to task for his handling of classified documents.
The Republican Accountability Project (RAP) launched a $500,000 ad campaign this week airing on Fox News and CNN in swing states including Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, as well as nationally on digital platforms. The new campaign brings the group’s spending thus far to $2 million.
The ad features Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and National Security Agency, accusing Trump of disregarding national security by keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
“We don’t know who saw them, but we have to assume these documents were compromised,” Hayden says in the ad. “Trump must face consequences for his actions.”
Trump was indicted last month on seven counts including obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and false statements, the first time in U.S. history a former president has faced federal charges. He also is accused under the Espionage Act.
With Trump holding a huge lead in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, his lawyers are seeking to delay the trial under after the election.
“General Hayden has dedicated his life to keeping America safe,” RAP Director Sarah Longwell said. “If there is an anyone who knows just how dangerous Trump’s actions were, it’s him. And we are going to make sure the American people know that, too.”
This week’s ad is the fourth RAP has released detailing Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Trump also was indicted in New York in April on charges of falsifying business records, while a grand jury was selected Tuesday in Fulton County to hear testimony on his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia that saw Joe Biden carry the Peach State, the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since Bill Clinton in 1992.
ATLANTA – Community-based organizations across the country working to reduce maternal mortality would get an influx of federal funding under legislation introduced Tuesday by U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.
Warnock and fellow sponsor Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., cited a study the Journal of the American Medical Association released last week showing maternal mortality doubled between 1999 and 2019, with most deaths occurring among Black women.
“The rate of maternal mortality is an ongoing and worsening crisis,” Warnock said. “Black woman are particularly at risk in the state of Georgia, where they are three to four times more likely to die related to childbirth or pregnancy than their white sisters.”
The national study came out at the same time the Georgia Department of Public Health released a study of maternal mortality in the Peach State.
The state study reported 113 deaths of women who either were pregnant or had delivered within the past year between 2018 and 2020. That translates to a rate of 30.2 deaths for every 100,000 live births, up from 25.1 deaths per 100,000 births in Georgia between 2015 and 2017.
Of those 113 deaths, the study concluded that 89% had at least some chance of being prevented, Katie Kopp, director of government relations at the public health department, told members of the Georgia Board of Public Health Tuesday.
The leading causes of maternal mortality in Georgia differed depending on the race of the mother. In the case of Black women, the leasing cause of death was myopathy, a disease of the heart muscle. For white women, underlying mental health conditions caused the most maternal deaths.
Geographically, the health districts centered around Columbus and Macon saw more maternal deaths than any other part of Georgia, according to the state study.
The General Assembly has sought to address maternal mortality in recent years, first by allocating $2 million to prevent maternal mortality in rural Georgia in 2018. Last year, lawmakers expanded Medicaid coverage for low-income mothers up to one year after giving birth.
At the federal level, Warnock’s new bill would create a five-year, $50 million grant program to help community-based organizations lower maternal mortality and reduce bias, racism, and discrimination in maternal-care settings.
The legislation is being cosponsored by Democratic Sens. Cory Booker and Bob Menendez – both from New Jersey – and Tina Smith of Minnesota.
ATLANTA – A Democratic state representative who was criticized by fellow Democrats for voting with Republicans during this year’s General Assembly session has gone over to the GOP.
Rep. Mesha Mainor of Atlanta announced Tuesday that she is turning Republican, adding to the GOP’s House majority.
Mainor voted with the Republicans on several key pieces of legislation this year, most notably her vote in favor of a controversial school voucher bill. Despite her support, the measure failed to pass when a number of rural Republicans opposed it, citing a lack of private-school alternatives in their areas.
On Tuesday, Mainor said the Democratic Party doesn’t have her community’s best interests at heart.
“As a lifelong Democrat … I blindly followed a vision that is far from reality,” she said. “It is time to put people and sound policy above politics and false narratives.”
Georgia Republican Chairman Josh McKoon, a former state senator from Columbus, welcomed Mainor to the House GOP Caucus.
“This is a historic day for Georgia Republicans,” he said. “Our party stands for empowering parents to be advocates for giving their children the best education possible.”
Mainor is in her second term representing a heavily Democratic district, making her prospects for reelection potentially difficult.
Indeed, U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, who also serves as chair of the Georgia Democratic Party, vowed Democrats will put up a stiff challenge to Mainor next year.
“Rep. Mesha Mainor’s switch to the GOP is a stinging betrayal of her constituents, who elected a Democrat to represent them in the state legislature,” Williams said. “House District 56 deserves a representative who will do the job they were elected to do, including fight for high-quality public education.”
There has been little party switching in the General Assembly in recent years. The most active period for party switching came during the early 2000s, when four state Senate Democrats turned Republican following the election of Sonny Perdue as Georgia’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction and in the aftermath of the GOP takeover of the House.
MARIETTA – Congressional Republicans launched a bid Monday to adopt election reforms modeled after controversial legislation Georgia lawmakers enacted two years ago.
Five GOP House members, including U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Cassville, introduced the American Confidence in Elections Act following a news conference in Marietta, part of Loudermilk’s 11th Congressional District. The Committee on House Administration then held a field hearing in Atlanta to hear testimony on the issue.
The new legislation would tighten voter ID requirements, prohibit non-U.S. citizens from voting, and end private funding of election administration, provisions already adopted by Georgia’s Republican-controlled General Assembly during the last two years.
“This legislation is the most substantive and conservative on election integrity to come before the House in more than a generation,” said Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, the committee’s chairman.
Steil and his GOP colleagues drew a sharp distinction between their bill and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act congressional Democrats introduced in 2021, named after the late Georgia congressman and civil rights leader.
Loudermilk described the Democrats’ bill as a proposed federal takeover of voting, a violation of the principle of federalism.
“I don’t believe the federal government should usurp the states on things [states] have the right to do,” he said.
Instead, the Republican bill would incentivize states to adopt the voting reforms outlined in the legislation. Those that don’t comply would face losing federal funds first authorized in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which Congress passed in 2002 in the aftermath of a 2000 presidential election that took more than a month to decide.
During Monday’s hearing, Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said the GOP bill was motivated by Republican accusations of voter fraud in Georgia during the 2020 presidential election that statewide audits and multiple investigations have disproven.
“We’re here because Joe Biden won in Georgia and Donald Trump lost,” he said. “There was no widespread voter fraud in Georgia.”
Morelle criticized Senate Bill 202, the election reform measure the General Assembly enacted two years ago, for significantly limiting the number of drop boxes for absentee ballots, banning the delivery of food and water to voters waiting in line for hours, and prompting a deluge of unwarranted individual voter challenges that tied up local elections offices.
Vernetta Nuriddin, who served on the Fulton County Registration and Elections Board during both the 2018 and 2020 elections, defended Senate Bill 202 for putting an end to third parties sending out unsolicited absentee ballot request forms, a practice that was widespread in 2020.
“All the changed made by SB202 were needed,” Nuriddin told the committee.
Steil said Monday’s hearing in Atlanta was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of Major League Baseball’s decision to pull the annual All-Star Game out of Atlanta following the passage of Senate Bill 202. He blamed the decision on “woke” corporate board rooms that bought into a false narrative surrounding the legislation.
