ATLANTA – Gun shop owner Andrew Clyde handily defeated state Rep. Matt Gurtler Tuesday in a runoff for the Republican nomination for Georgia’s 9th Congressional District seat.
Clyde, who led Gurtler 56% to 44% with 100% of the vote counted, will face Democrat Devin Pandy in November in the contest to succeed U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, who is leaving the House to run for the U.S. Senate.
While Clyde has never run for public office, he touted his experience suing the Internal Revenue Service successfully in 2013 after the federal agency confiscated more than $940,000 from his company. He subsequently testified before Congress in support of legislation prohibiting the IRS from seizing legally earned money.
Gurtler, elected to the state House of Representatives four years ago, ran afoul of Georgia Republican leaders for constantly voting against GOP-backed bills, earning him the nickname “Dr. No.”
In his defense, he argued many of those measures gave government more authority than it was intended to have under the Constitution. That small-government stand drew the support of the Club for Growth, a national limited-government organization that funded television ads attacking Clyde.
Another group, Protect Freedom PAC, paid for ads touting Gurtler’s status as the most conservative lawmaker in the General Assembly who would serve as an ally to President Donald Trump.
Opposition to Gurtler prompted many state Republican leaders to back Clyde, a Navy veteran who served 28 years including three combat deployments in Iraq and Kuwait.
He grew the small firearms business he launched in his Athens garage in 1991 into a nationwide company with two locations.
Pandy, an actor and Army veteran, captured the Democratic nomination to oppose Clyde by trouncing Brooke Siskin. With 100% of the vote counted, Pandy held 68% of the vote to just 32% for Siskin.
Pandy pledged to become a voice for rural Georgia in Washington, D.C., and to push for improved services for the nation’s veterans. He also advocated an aggressive push to combat climate change and a pathway to citizenship for young people brought illegally to the U.S. as children.
Siskin maintained during the campaign that her experience as a business owner would help prepare her to serve in Congress, as would her activism on behalf of victims of domestic violence.
She was arrested in Gwinnett County last month for refusing to comply with a court order to turn over guns and ammunition in her possession.
Clyde enters the general election campaign as a heavy favorite in the conservative heavily Republican 9th District, which covers northeastern Georgia from Gainesville and Athens north to the North Carolina and South Carolina lines.
U.S. Sen. David Perdue speaks at the State Capitol after qualifying for the 2020 election on March 2, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – The federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has given the economy a critical boost by letting financially struggling small businesses keep their employees, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., said Tuesday.
But presidential politics is getting in the way of attempts to deliver more federal aid to small businesses, Perdue told an online audience of Georgia business and political leaders at the annual Congressional Luncheon sponsored by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
“In the middle of a presidential year, I’m hopeful but not optimistic a deal will get done,” he said.
Perdue said the PPP – part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act Congress passed back in March – saved about 1.5 million jobs in Georgia through loans to small businesses averaging $103,000.
Nationally, about 50 million Americans remained on payrolls because of the legislation, added Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who appeared on the chamber program as Perdue’s guest. The bill played a major role in reducing U.S. unemployment from a peak of 15% in April to 10.2% last month, Scott said.
“The PPP is like a friend showing up when you’re down,” he said. “Had we not stabilized those businesses, we would have lost those 50 million jobs.”
But Perdue said the current effort to put together another aid package in response to various impacts of COVID-19 is in trouble, with majority Democrats in the U.S. House, the Republican majority in the Senate and the Trump administration a long way from reaching agreement.
For his part, Perdue is trying to get legislation he introduced last month to help schools affected by COVID-19 included in the next coronavirus relief package. Legislation being offered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seeks about $104 billion for schools, $74 billion for K-12 and $30 billion for colleges and universities.
“We don’t want our children to lose six months or a year in educational progress,” he said.
Perdue said the need to reopen schools safely during a pandemic is particularly critical for at-risk students on the edge of failing and for children who live in rural communities without broadband access.
As he stated in a recent campaign ad, Perdue also called for policing reforms that while stopping short of de-funding police agencies, would include increasing the recruitment of minority officers, stepping up de-escalation training and improving databases used to track complaints of abuse.
“People want the law to be enforced,” Perdue said. “But we also have to have confidence that our police officers are one of us.”
Police reform legislation Scott is sponsoring in the Senate is another victim of the political polarization rampant in an election year. Scott said some House Democrats have expressed a willingness to work with him on the bill, but the effort has been sidetracked in the Senate.
The congressional luncheon, held every August in Macon, was conducted virtually for the first time. The program concluded with a video tribute to the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta, a youth leader during the Civil Rights Era, who died last month at the age of 80.
ATLANTA – The University System of Georgia is proposing an ambitious list of building projects for the next fiscal year, despite the state’s tight budget constraints.
The system’s Board of Regents Tuesday approved a fiscal 2022 capital budget request of $266.9 million, including $137 million for eight major construction projects on campuses across Georgia.
The General Assembly set aside $182.5 million for the university system in the state’s $1.13 billion bond package for fiscal 2021, which began last month.
The list of major projects the regents are seeking for the next fiscal year includes:
$36.7 million for a convocation center at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro.
$26.3 million to renovate the Humanities Building at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton.
$21.7 million for Phase I construction of a Poultry Science Complex at the University of Georgia in Athens.
$12.4 million for a performing arts center at Valdosta State University.
$12.2 million for renovations and infrastructure improvements at Fort Valley State University.
$11.8 million for improvements at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton.
$8.3 million to renovate the Bandy Gym student recreation center at Dalton State College.
$7.6 million for a Nursing and Health Science Simulation lab at Albany State University’s West Campus.
The new capital budget requests also recommends $12.1 million to design four construction projects, including $3.5 million for a Gateway Building on the campus of Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, and $15.1 million for equipment for three building projects the legislature already has funded, including $6.2 million for a planned convocation center at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta.
The board’s capital spending recommendations will be included in the fiscal 2022 budget request the regents submit to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget this fall.
Gov. Brian Kemp will present his budget proposals for next year to the General Assembly in January.
ATLANTA – Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jon Ossoff raised $2.9 million last month, the investigative journalist’s campaign reported Tuesday.
About $1 million of that money came during a five-day stretch at the end of July immediately after news coverage of a digital ad run by incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue’s campaign that appeared to alter Ossoff’s image by enlarging his nose.
The Democrat complained the ad was an anti-Semitic attack on Ossoff, who is Jewish. While denying that Ossoff was being targeted and describing the altered image as an accident, the Perdue campaign deleted the ad.
Ossoff’s campaign received 28,000 contributions from first-time donors in July. Thus far, the Democrat has received donations form 150 of Georgia’s 159 counties.
About 97% of the contributions to Ossoff last month were less than $200.
“Jon is building a massive grassroots movement across the Peach State, bringing Georgians from all walks of life together to fight for a government that works for the people,” said Ellen Foster, Ossoff’s campaign manager. “The wind is at our backs here in Georgia, and we’re ready to win in November.”
In a news release, the Ossoff campaign cited two recent polls that show Ossoff and Perdue virtually tied, within the polls’ margin of error.
The Washington, D.C.-based Cook Political Report recently moved the race from “leans Republican” into the “toss-up” column.
ATLANTA – Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and 43 of his colleagues around the country are urging Congress to make elderly victims of fraud eligible for federal assistance during the coronavirus pandemic.
The bipartisan group of attorneys general is pushing to include a provision for senior fraud victims in the latest COVID-19 relief package now before lawmakers.
“Scam artists are preying on seniors because they know this group is especially at risk from COVID-19,” Carr said. “Bad actors are targeting seniors as they are isolated at home, separated from families and support networks.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has warned that scammers are offering COVID-19 tests to Medicare recipients in exchange for personal information.
The attorneys general are proposing an amendment to the Victims of Crime Act of 1984 to make elderly victim of fraud eligible for reimbursement through the Crime Victims Fund, which is administered by the states. The bill also calls for depositing penalties and other fines collected from perpetrators of senior fraud into the fund.
The legislation would incentivize states to provide compensation to fraud victims but would not require them to do so.
Congressional Democrats and the White House remain far apart on how to craft a new coronavirus relief package. Disagreements include how much in weekly unemployment benefits to pay unemployed workers through a federal program that expired at the end of last month and whether aid to state and local governments should be included in the legislation.
