ATLANTA – Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black is telling University of Georgia football icon Herschel Walker to put up or shut up in next year’s Republican race for the U.S. Senate.
Walker, former President Donald Trump’s pick to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, has been hinting he may run for the seat but hasn’t made a firm decision.
Black, who is already in the race, has released a TV ad contrasting his Georgia background with the fact that Walker now lives in Texas.
The ad starts with a video showing Walker in front of car with a Georgia license plate, saying he’s ready to “run with the Big Dogs.” The spot then cuts to Black standing beside and then getting into a tractor.
“For fun, my ride’s a tractor, and I’ve had Georgia plates all my life,” Black said.
While some potential Republican Senate candidates are on the sidelines waiting to see whether Walker will run, Black and two others haven’t hesitated to get into the contest.
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 joined Black in declaring their candidates for the GOP Senate nomination.
Black and Walker attended the University of Georgia together during Walker’s freshman season.
“If my old classmate from UGA wants to join the conversation here in Georgia, I welcome hearing his ideas,” Black said. “But it takes more than pretending to change your car tags. Move here, pay taxes here, register and vote in some elections, and learn what Georgians have on their minds.”
ATLANTA – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has renewed his call for the General Assembly to end general election runoffs in the Peach State.
In a statement released last week, Raffensperger said getting rid of runoffs following the November elections would give Georgians a holiday-season pause from politics.
“Next year, there will be a contentious presidential election – and families across Georgia will be settling down for the holidays shortly after,” he said. “Let’s give them a break and take another costly and unnecessary election off the Thanksgiving table. I’m calling on the General Assembly to visit this topic next session and eliminate this outdated distraction.”
Raffensperger raised the issue of runoffs last December after incumbent U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a runoff. However, it didn’t gain any traction during this year’s legislative session.
While some second-place finishers in general elections have gone on to turn the tables and win runoffs, Warnock finished first in both the 2022 general election and runoff, lending credence to the argument that general election runoffs are an unnecessary waste of tax dollars.
Georgia lawmakers have made changes to the vote threshold general election candidates must meet to avoid runoffs since 1968, when voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring the governor’s race to go to a runoff if none of the candidates received a majority of votes in the general election.
After Democratic incumbent Sen. Wyche Fowler lost to Republican challenger Paul Coverdell in a 1992 runoff, the General Assembly’s then-Democratic majority reduced the 50%-plus-one vote requirement to avoid a runoff to 45%. That worked out for the Democrats four years later when the late Max Cleland won the seat of retiring Sen. Sam Nunn with more than 45% of the vote but less than 50%.
Republicans responded to that 1996 loss when the GOP won control of the legislature in 2004. During their first legislative session in power, Republicans changed the requirement back to the 50%-plus-one threshold.
Georgia and Louisiana are the only two states that feature general election runoffs. A handful of other states – mostly in the South – limit runoffs to primary elections in which no candidate receives a majority of the vote.
Then-President Donald Trump at the White House podium in 2020 (White House video)
ATLANTA – An anti-Donald Trump Republican political action committee has launched a new six-figure ad campaign warning voters to “wake up” to the threat it says the former president poses to American democracy.
The 60-second ad, being run by the Republican Accountability PAC, compares Trump to dictators who systematically dismantled their countries’ democracies, including Benito Mussolini of Italy, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Augusto Pinochet of Chile.
“Trump said he would terminate the Constitution so he could be president again,” the ad states. “Do you know who also did that? Mussolini, Chavez, Pinochet.”
The ad will run nationally on CNN and MSNBC and in the swing states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on the Hallmark Chanel and during TBS’ “A Christmas Story” marathon. The campaign began on Friday and will run through next week.
Trump continues to hold a huge lead in various polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, despite facing multiple criminal indictments for his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, including racketeering charges in Fulton County.
“Among Republicans and Democrats alike, not enough people have internalized that Trump is cruising to a third nomination,” said Gunner Ramer, political director for the Republican Accountability PAC. “He’s become even more conspiratorial, more dictatorial, more authoritarian – and he has a real chance of being the next president of the United States. It’s time to start confronting the problem head-on.”
The Republican Accountability PAC also ran ads targeting Trump in August after he was indicted in Georgia. Last year, the PAC ran ads aimed at then-U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker, the University of Georgia football icon Trump endorsed in what turned out to be an unsuccessful bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
ATLANTA – New Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns is taking a wait-and-see approach toward some key issues the General Assembly is being asked to consider during his first legislative session in the chamber’s top post.
Burns, R-Newington, said he’s waiting to see how a court challenge to Georgia’s 2019 abortion law plays out before deciding whether any additional anti-abortion legislation is necessary this year.
Ditto when it comes to whether lawmakers should enact a full expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act as legislative Democrats have advocated for years. The General Assembly should give fellow Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s limited Medicaid expansion a chance before going further, Burns told reporters Thursday during his first news conference since House lawmakers elected him speaker earlier this month.
Burns also pledged to consider a proposal to eliminate general-election runoffs in Georgia, which gained momentum after U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in November but was forced into a taxpayer-funded runoff when he failed to win a majority of the vote. Warnock won the December runoff by a larger margin.
“I’ll look forward to this discussion,” Burns said. “I have not made a decision.”
Burn did promise to give the latest proposal to overhaul the state’s decades-old k-12 student funding formula a good look, and he called further improving the delivery of mental health-care services “a front-burner issue.”
The new speaker’s predecessor, the late David Ralston, made overwhelming passage of a comprehensive mental health-care reform bill his major priority last year. Ralston died in November after an extended illness.
Burns said the House will do what it can to move forward Georgia’s bid to become a leader in the electric vehicles industry. He has rechristened the House Science and Technology Committee the Technology and Infrastructure Innovation Committee with that in mind.
“The opportunities for Georgia with [recently announced EV manufacturing plants] Rivian and Hyundai are exciting,” he said. “I’m convinced Georgia can lead the nation when it comes to technology.”
While the Georgia House and Senate have had their fair share of disagreements over the years, Burns predicted the two chambers will enjoy a smooth relationship. He pointed to the recent agreement House and Senate leaders reached to schedule the entire 40-day legislative session with a single resolution, something that hasn’t happened under the Gold Dome in memory.
“That speaks to the issue of are we going to be able to get along,” Burns said. “I think we’re going to get along well.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Kelly Loeffler at a campaign rally in 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Georgia Republicans rode a strong ground game and a ticket of proven incumbents to overcome financial and demographic challenges in last year’s elections, according to a new report.
The 2022 Impact Report was released Tuesday by former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., who chaired the conservative voter mobilization group Greater Georgia during the 2022 election cycle.
“Despite national media narratives, 2022 was a record-breaking year for Georgia Republicans,” Loeffler wrote in a news release. “Thanks to sustained and dedicated work on the ground, a commitment to growing the conservative movement, and proven Republican leaders, Georgia is a red state.”
Loeffler’s words ring true when looking at last year’s election results in Georgia. While Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., won a full six-year term over Republican challenger Herschel Walker, the GOP captured all eight statewide constitutional offices.
The incumbent-heavy Republican ticket included Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Attorney General Chris Carr.
Those GOP victories came despite Democrats vastly outraising Republicans, particularly in the Senate and gubernatorial races. Warnock outspent Walker by $100 million, and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams outspent Kemp by $30 million.
Loeffler attributed the Republicans’ success to a ground campaign that included direct contact with voters via telephone, text messages, targeted digital ads and direct mail. The GOP reached millions more though television and radio ads.
Republicans worked to diversify the conservative movement, holding more than 100 voter registration drives at colleges, churches, grocery stores, and gas stations. Outreach events were held with women, young voters, and with the Hispanic, Asian and Black communities.
Part of that outreach included educating voters on the new voting reforms the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed in 2021 requiring Georgians voting absentee to provide identification and restricting the location of absentee ballot drop boxes.
Nearly 340,000 “disenfranchised conservatives” had stayed home during the January 2021 runoff that elected Democrats Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the U.S. Senate because of concerns over election integrity, according to the report.
Georgia Democrats weren’t without some successes last fall. Besides Warnock’s victory over Walker, Democrats dented Republican majorities in the General Assembly, gaining two seats in the Georgia House of Representatives and one seat in the state Senate.
The report concludes with a challenge that Republicans must work hard if they are to turn back efforts by Democrats to turn Georgia blue.
The state is changing – economically, demographically, and politically – but that change is positive as long as conservatives put in the work,” Loeffler wrote. “If we continuously adapt to this dynamic environment, then conservatives will have the infrastructure and mobilization needed to succeed in even greater numbers in 2024 and beyond.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation
