ATLANTA – Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker raised $3.7 million during the first five weeks of his campaign to unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock.
Contributions to the University of Georgia football great came from nearly 50,000 donors from all 50 states.
“Though we only had five weeks to fundraise this quarter, tens of thousands of Georgians and patriots across the country stepped up to the plate to help us take back the United States Senate,” Walker said.
“We are grateful for each and every cent and look forward to continuing to travel across this great state shaking hands with real Georgians and hearing about the issues facing their communities.”
Walker entered the race in late August at the urging of former President Donald Trump. The two have been friends since the 1980s, when the United States Football League team Trump owned, the New Jersey Generals, signed Walker to his first professional contract.
The other three Republican candidates for Senate – Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black; Latham Saddler, an Atlanta banking executive and former Navy SEAL officer; and Kelvin King, a small business owner and Air Force veteran from Atlanta, have yet to file fundraising reports for the third quarter.
Saddler reported in July that he had raised more than $1.4 million through the end of June, covering the first 10 weeks of his campaign.
At the same time, Black reported raising more than $703,000. However, that covered just three weeks because he entered the contest later than Saddler.
King raised nearly $680,000 during the third quarter, including a $300,000 loan he made to his campaign.
Warnock also has yet to report his third-quarter fundraising totals. However, the Democrat’s campaign got off to a strong start during the second quarter, raising $7 million in April, May and June.
Third quarter fundraising reports to the Federal Election Commission are due to be filed by Friday.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – While the General Assembly gears up for next month’s once-a-decade redrawing of Georgia’s legislative and congressional district maps, lawmakers also will soon renew a much more frequent debate over legalized gambling.
Bills that could lead to casinos, pari-mutuel betting on horse racing and/or sports betting in the Peach State will be on the table when the 2022 legislative session convenes in January for the second year of a two-year term.
Proposals to legalize gambling in Georgia in some form have come up virtually every year for the last decade, with most of the bills dedicating part of the proceeds to the hugely popular HOPE Scholarships and pre-kindergarten programs. But after years of failing to gain traction, the effort gained momentum during the 2021 session.
The state Senate passed a constitutional amendment last March calling for a statewide referendum to legalize sports betting. While Senate Resolution 135 failed to reach the floor of the Georgia House of Representatives, it marked the first time a gambling bill had made it through either legislative chamber.
“It looks more encouraging than ever,” said state Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah, a longtime supporter of legalizing gambling in Georgia.
Sports betting is a relatively recent player in the debate over legalizing gambling. States other than Nevada weren’t allowed to legalize sports betting until a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a New Jersey case.
Since that decision opened up the country, 26 states have launched sports betting, according to the American Gaming Association. Another five states have passed sports betting legislation that has yet to take effect.
Georgia’s sports betting legislation is modeled after a law in Tennessee, which permits online betting only.
A coalition of Atlanta’s pro sports teams – including the Braves, Falcons, Hawks and Atlanta United – is backing the idea. They want to use sports betting to gin up fan engagement, said Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, another supporter of legalized gambling.
“They want folks sitting in stadiums betting on their phones,” he said.
But Powell is not a fan of legalizing sports betting in isolation. App-based betting on sports wouldn’t raise nearly the revenue the state could bring in from bricks-and-mortar casinos, he said.
“There are no jobs created,” Powell said. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do this.”
Stephens agrees. While he introduced a standalone sports betting bill during this year’s legislative session, he now favors combining sports betting, casinos and horse racing into a single constitutional amendment to put before Georgia voters.
“Let the people decide: Do we want to gamble or do we not?” Stephens said. “That’s the cleanest way to do it.”
Indeed, the casino industry is betting on Georgia in a big way. At least 32 paid lobbyists are working for passage of legalized gambling in Georgia, according to reports filed with the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission.
Those lobbyists were hired by 10 mostly high-profile gaming companies, including Caesars Entertainment, Hard Rock, Wynn Resorts and Bally’s.
They and other supporters of casinos are pitching Georgia’s lack of legalized gambling as millions of dollars in tax revenue and billions of dollars in economic impact lost to neighboring states.
Rick Lackey, an Atlanta-based real estate developer behind several proposed casino resorts scattered across Georgia, points to the growth of casino projects across the Southeast.
Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort in Cherokee, N.C., just opened a $330 million expansion that includes a new 725-room hotel and convention center. A new casino off Interstate 85 in Kings Mountain, N.C., that just opened in July is already planning to double its gaming machines to 1,000.
Alabama boasts three Indian gaming casinos. And the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa is pulling in more revenue than all of the casinos in Mississippi combined, Lackey said.
“If you go in any of those casinos, you’ll see a lot of Georgia license plates,” he said.
Supporters of legalizing gambling in Georgia also point to numerous polls showing the idea is popular with voters.
But obstacles to gambling legislation remain, including the difficult-to-surmount two-thirds majorities of the state House and Senate necessary to pass a constitutional amendment.
Faith-based groups oppose legalized gambling as a threat to families and a magnet for crime. Religious organizations traditionally have held great sway under the Gold Dome, particularly with lawmakers representing districts in rural Georgia.
Rep. Billy Mitchell, D-Stone Mountain, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said he heard the same arguments during the 1990s before Georgia created a state lottery and dedicated part of the proceeds to the new HOPE program.
“I don’t think today anyone can say the Georgia Lottery has been bad for the state,” he said.
Stephens said legalizing gambling today offers the same opportunity to boost funding for education that convinced lawmakers to support the lottery nearly 30 years ago.
“Some of the folks who vote ‘no’ on this are going to be voting against $100 million [a year] for HOPE and pre-K,” he said. “It don’t think they want to do that.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Across-the-board increases in tax collections fueled a 30.2% jump in state tax revenues last month over September of last year, the Georgia Department of Revenue reported Friday.
In a sure sign of continued economic growth, individual income taxes were up 13.2%, driven up by a huge increase in tax return payments of 88.1% coupled with a 17% decline in tax refunds.
With Georgia’s economy fully reopened by last month, net sales tax collections soared by 104.8% compared to September 2020, when the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic was being felt to a much greater degree.
Corporate tax receipts also rose substantially, by 50.4%, despite a large increase in refunds issued by the revenue agency.
With a lot more Georgians driving last month than in September of last year, motor fuel tax collections by 9.1%.
During the first three months of the current fiscal year, state tax receipts rose by 14.6% over the first quarter of fiscal 2021.
The robust start to fiscal 2022 comes after the state closed out the last fiscal year at the end of June with a $3.7 billion surplus.
Those healthy finances likely will prompt Republican legislative leaders in the General Assembly to push for finishing the two-stage income tax cut they promised in 2018. Democrats argue the state can afford to spend more on health care and education after a period of austerity during the early stages of the pandemic.
The 2022 session of the General Assembly begins in January.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A former member of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents pleaded guilty to racketeering Thursday and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Dean Alford, who resigned from the board in 2019, admitted he took part in a scheme in which he sold fake accounts receivable invoices. In a common business practice known as “factoring,” businesses may sell their accounts receivable to a third party at a discount.
The goal of the scheme was to obtain approximately $1.7 million by selling fake accounts receivable invoices valued at about $2.2 million.
As part of the scheme, Alford created fake invoices, contracts, and other documents to show that his now-bankrupt energy development company was owed money from state agencies. He also forged the signatures of state employees on those contracts and other documents, using his position as a regent to further the scheme.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation partnered on the case with the state Attorney General’s office, the university system and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
“Our office is committed to prosecuting those who perpetrate fraud on businesses – regardless of their position in society,” Chief Deputy Attorney General Wright Banks said. “Alford tried to steal from a company, and he is paying a steep price for his crime.”
Alford pleaded guilty before Chief Superior Court Judge Robert F. Mumford, who sentenced him to 15 years under state supervision.
Following his eight-year sentence, Alford will spend seven years on probation. As a condition of his probation, he will not be allowed to conduct any business with the state.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s rapidly growing clean energy industry has scored another success.
Solar technologies company NanoPV plans to invest more than $36 million in a manufacturing and distribution facility in Sumter County, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Thursday. The project is expected to bring more than 500 jobs to Americus.
“This incredible investment … is a testament to Georgia’s thriving solar environment and our laser focus on bringing big projects to rural parts of our state,” Kemp said.
New Jersey-based NanoPV is a pioneering solar technology company with nearly 20 years of experience in solar panel manufacturing and system integration.
The new manufacturing plant will be the company’s largest, operating in an existing 56,000-square-foot facility.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Global Commerce Division worked in partnership with the Americus-Sumter County Payroll Development Authority, South Georgia Technical College and the state Department of Labor’s Quick Start workforce development program to land the project.
Georgia has emerged as a leader in the rebirth of the solar manufacturing industry in the U.S., state Commissioner of Economic Development Pat Wilson said.
Georgia’s electricity mix now consists of nearly 12% renewable energy, including more than 3% from solar power.
“We are proud to add NanoPV to the incredible ecosystem of manufacturing and technology companies that call Georgia home,” Wilson said. “It is exciting to bring these jobs to Sumter County.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
