Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for August 29, 2016

General Robert E. Lee’s Confederates met General John Pope’s federal forces at the Second Battle of Manassas on August 29, 1862.

Union General William T. Sherman’s forces tore up 12 miles of railroad between Red Oak and Fairburn on August 29, 1864.

The United States Air Force Academy moved to its permanent home in Colorado Springs on August 29, 1958

The Beatles played their final concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966.

On August 29, 1971, Hank Aaron broke the National League record for most seasons with 100 or more RBI, as he drove in his 100th run to make 11 seasons hitting that mark.

On August 29, 1977, Lou Brock stole his 893d base, to surpass the record set by Georgia-born Ty Cobb.

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

This Trump Trailer is situated on US 280 in Rex, Georgia and was probably not produced by the campaign. It’s an indication of how enthusiastic some Georgians are for the Republican nominee.

Mike Pence Tours Georgia

Indiana Governor and Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Mike Pence begins his tour of Georgia today with a Town Hall in Perry, Georgia at the National Fairgrounds & Agricenter, 401 Larry Walker Parkway, Perry, GA 31069, 2PM (Doors open at 11AM) Click here for your free tickets.

At 5 PM today,  Mike Pence will appear at an Atlanta fundraiser at 5 PM.

After that, he will head to the Cobb Galleria for a Rally at 7:30 PM. Doors open at 4:30 and you can get your tickets here.

On Tuesday at 3 PM (doors open at noon), Gov. Pence will hold a Town Hall Meeting in Dalton, Georgia at the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center, 2211 Dug Gap Battle Rd, Dalton, GA 30720. Click here for your free tickets.

This past Saturday, Hillary for America Georgia director Richard McDaniel spoke to a group of true believers in Athens.

“If you think it’s a battleground state, it’s a battleground state,” said McDaniel, currently the only paid Clinton staff member in Georgia.

McDaniel spent part of his time in Athens on Saturday urging Clinton supporters not to spend time arguing with Trump supporters as they canvass for Clinton votes.

“Don’t try to engage with people who don’t agree with you,” McDaniel told the dozens of people who jammed the Clarke County Democratic Committee headquarters on Saturday afternoon for a meeting hosted by local Clinton supporters organized as Athens for Hillary.

Max Doty, a regional field director for the Democratic Party of Georgia, was more blunt as he and McDaniel worked Saturday to get people interested in participating in phone banks and canvassing the community.

“I don’t want anybody in here talking to a Trump supporter,” Doty said.

Emory University Political Scientist Alan Abramowitz called the nascent Clinton Georgia campaign a “head-fake.”

“They appear to be making a very limited commitment — maybe only a ‘head fake’ at this point,” Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz said, adding: “The fact is, Clinton doesn’t need Georgia. Georgia would just be icing on the cake, so they’re probably going to focus much more on the usual suspects in the South — Florida, Virginia and North Carolina.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp spoke to Politico about what he calls overblown threats of hacking the machines that run U.S. elections.

“It seems like now it’s just the D.C. media and the bureaucrats, because of the DNC getting hacked — they now think our whole system is on the verge of disaster because some Russian’s going to tap into the voting system,” Kemp, a Republican, told POLITICO in an interview. “And that’s just not — I mean, anything is possible, but it is not probable at all, the way our systems are set up.”

During an earlier interview with the site Nextgov, Kemp warned: “The question remains whether the federal government will subvert the Constitution to achieve the goal of federalizing elections under the guise of security.” Kemp told POLITICO he sees a “clear motivation from this White House” to expand federal control, citing Obama’s health care law, the Dodd-Frank financial-reform legislation and the increased role of the Education Department in local schools.

Johnson told reporters Aug. 3 that DHS “should carefully consider” that question. Twelve days later, he held a conference call with state election officials in which he discussed a possible role for Washington.

But Kemp called it “troubling” for Johnson to raise the critical-infrastructure issue “before ever talking to the secretaries of state or the election officials.”

Kemp also argued that “a definition of critical infrastructure” in current law “would allow the Department of Homeland Security or anybody else to come in and get into our systems.”

Asked which laws the secretary had been referencing, David Dove, Kemp’s chief of staff, pointed POLITICO to severalsections of the U.S. code that direct DHS to develop best practices and response plans for critical infrastructure protection. But these statutes do not grant the department clear authority to impose itself on states.

Kemp’s office also released the ballot language for four Constitutional Amendments on the November ballot.

Any amendment to the constitution needs to be approved by voters before they can go into effect, and while some of the proposals have bipartisan backing, others have stoked controversy and division.

Amendment No. 1 is the Opportunity School District amendment, which would give the state the authority to take over schools that “have been determined to be failing through any governance model allowed by law.”

Amendment No. 2 is the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Fund amendment. The fund would take money collected from fines levied on sex traffickers and fees paid by adult entertainment businesses and spend it on support programs designed to help children who have been victims of sex crimes.

Amendment No. 3 would abolish the state’s existing Judicial Qualifications Commission, create a new one where members would be appointed by the governor, president of the Senate, Speaker of the House and the Georgia Supreme Court.

Amendment No. 4 deals with excise taxes on firework sales. It would let the state use proceeds from those taxes to fund trauma care and public safety purposes, as well as pay for firefighters equipment and training.

Democrat Jim Barksdale is running a strange campaign for Senate, according to everyone Cook Political Report Senior Editor Jennifer Duffy.

The Georgia Democratic Senate candidate “has run one of the strangest campaigns I’ve ever seen,” said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “Limited advertising. He doesn’t seem to be out on the stump much. He seems a little bit invisible.”

Those are not good descriptors for a soft-spoken political novice already struggling with limited name recognition.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article98153757.html#storylink=cpy

The Barrow County Republican Party held a straw poll for Governor in 2018 at its barbecue this weekend with the following results courtesy of Chairman Ken Young:

2016 Barrow GOP BBQ Straw Poll – 2018 Republican Candidates for Governor.

Brian Kemp – 20 votes (35.1%)
Undecided – 10 votes (17.5%)
Casey Cagle – 7 votes (12.3%)
Tom Price – 6 votes (10.5%)
Sam Olens – 5 votes (8.8%)
Jack Kingston – 3 votes (5.3%)
Gary Black – 3 votes (5.3%)
Lynn Westmoreland – 2 votes (3.5%)
Karen Handel (Write-In) – 1 vote (1.7%).

Rick Williams is the Republican candidate in the House District 145 election to succeed Rusty Kidd (I-Milledgeville), who qualified for reelection in March but later dropped out over health concerns. Mr. Williams spoke to the Union Recorder about his campaign.

“I feel bad for him; I respect Rusty,” Williams said. “He and his father are both legends. And I’m sorry he’s having these health problems. His knowledge of Atlanta and the people in politics in Atlanta is invaluable. I hope that he will continue to, even behind the scenes, help to make sure that Baldwin County gets some attention.”

Asked if Kidd’s withdrawal from the race has made any difference in his campaign strategy, Williams said it really hadn’t made any difference.

“It really hasn’t made any difference, because I was reaching out to everyone, Democrat and Republican, black, white, whoever,” Williams said. “I’m still me. This race is about the person more than the party, I think.”

“I’m going to be working for everyone to bring jobs and prosperity to middle Georgia,” Williams said. “We need some attention, and I feel like I can make it happen.”

Williams will officially launch his campaign kickoff for the state office on Sept. 8 at the Baldwin County Airport. It will be held at Hangar 4, but a time has not yet been announced.

“The governor told me he would be coming to Baldwin County to help support me,” Williams told The Union-Reorder in a recent interview. “And I told him how much I appreciated his support.”

Floyd Griffin, the Democrat running against Williams in HD 145 previously served in the State Senate and as Mayor of Milledgeville.

The keynote speaker at Griffin’s kickoff rally at Central Georgia Technical College in Milledgeville, will be Jason Carter, the former Democrat Party nominee for governor.

Griffin doesn’t believe having the race move from a three-man contest to a two-man contest changes much of anything.

“It really doesn’t change anything to a great degree,” Griffin told The Union-Recorder in a recent interview.

From a political standpoint, Griffin said he figured the race would come down to him and Williams.

“I felt that even if there was a runoff that it would come down to Rick and [me],” Griffin said.

Griffin, who once ran unsuccessfully for lieutendent governor of the state and who lost by a mere 36 votes in his bid to seek the office of mayor of Milledgeville again last year, said he actually thought about not seeking political office again.

“I was encouraged to run by lots of people, including many of my former colleagues under the Gold Dome,” Griffin said. “I’ve been a servant leader my entire life, and this is another opportunity for me to serve.”

Opportunity School District Amendment Controversial

In Pelham last week, Governor Nathan Deal took some time to stump for passage of the Opportunity School District Constitutional Amendment on the November ballot.

Governor Deal said the ultimate criminal justice reform is education reform. He said Georgia has many good schools but believes the constitutional amendment passed by the General Assembly will help more.

“It takes two-thirds of a house and the senate to even put something on the ballot as a constitutional amendment but we got that two-thirds and it deals with the right of the state to intervene in chronically failing schools,” Deal said. “By definition that is a school that for 3 or more consecutive years have never scored above an ‘F’ on our state rating system,” he added.

Deal said there are about 68,000 children in this state who are required by law because of their zip code to attend chronically failing schools.

“If they go through that school system they have a 23 percent lower chance of graduating from high school,” Deal said

He said kids not completing high school contributes to the pipeline of the state’s prison system.

“This constitutional amendment which is question 1 on the ballot in November. And I don’t mind being blatant about how important I think it is. It will be question 1. It will give us the right to intervene in these chronically failing schools,” Deal said. “Now you’re going to hear the opposition say that’s going to take away local control. Well you know if local control was working, they wouldn’t be chronically failing schools for 3 years. And many people in those communities know it’s not just three years, it is generational. I’ve concluded that if we want to deal with crime, if we want to deal with poverty the best place we can start is to educate our children,” he added.

The Georgia PTA has criticized the ballot wording for Consitutitional Amendment 1 on the November ballot, which will create the Opportunity School District.

The group that represents Georgia parents says Gov. Nathan Deal and state lawmakers are being “deceptive” and even “intentionally misleading” with the new wording they chose for November’s constitutional amendment affecting schools.

Amendment 1 on the Nov. 8 ballot would create a new statewide school district with a superintendent answering only to the governor. That superintendent would have the power to requisition local tax dollars and to take control of schools that consistently perform poorly on a measure derived from things like test results, attendance and graduation rates.

Critics slammed the ballot measure itself as misleading when the two dozen words were authorized by lawmakers and the governor last year. Now, critics of the proposed “Opportunity School District,” or OSD, are critical of 14 new words published this week. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp publicized what’s known as the “preamble” that will introduce voters to the ballot item. In some cases, it will be the first thing voters have read about the proposal and could influence how they vote. It was written by Deal and the leaders of the state House and Senate. It introduces the measure this way: “Provides greater flexibility and state accountability to fix failing schools through increasing community involvement.”

That, says the Georgia PTA, is simply untrue.

[T]he PTA called on Deal and the other state leaders on the Constitutional Amendments Publication Board — Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and House Speaker David Ralston —to re-write their preamble.

The Macon Telegraph Editorial Board criticized the wording of the Amendment’s Preamble.

This may be one of the more deceptive preambles of all time, with the exception of referendums in California that are famous for meaning the exact opposite of what is stated. Such is the case here. If voters approve the amendment, the state will form an Opportunity School District authorized by legislation passed in 2015. Local control is nowhere in the legislation. The Opportunity School District would, in fact, take away all local control.

The Georgia PTA is against the amendment as is the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, Georgia School Boards Association, the Georgia School Superintendents Association, the Georgia Association of Educators and many school boards across the state, including Bibb County, that passed a resolution opposing the amendment Aug. 16.

We could delude ourselves into thinking the lawmakers who constructed this language did so by accident. Rather, we think Sir Walter Scott had it right when he wrote, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave … when first we practice to deceive.”

The Fayette County Board of Education voted 5-0 to pass a resolution opposing the OSD ballot question.

The Fayette resolution, approved 5-0 by the Board of Education on Aug. 15, states that the OSD provisions “contradict our district’s strong belief in the constitutional authority of local board of education to control and manage their schools.”

The Bibb County Board of Education also passed a resolution opposing passage of the OSD. From WGXA-TV,

Bibb County Board of Education member Daryl Morton said the proposal sounds good on the surface, but the fine print proves it will not work.

Morton said when local control is taken away in schools, parents cannot hold leaders accountable, and there is no local perspective to help improve the school. He said children’s education is too valuable to experiment with policies implemented by a foreign body not affiliated with Bibb County.

Click here to see the text of the Bibb County resolution.

The Douglas County Board of Education will likely vote September 6th on a resolution against the OSD, according to the Douglas County Sentinel.

The Troup County Board of Education passed a resolution opposing the OSD ballot question.

The Troup County Board of Education on Thursday approved a resolution opposing a state referendum that would allow the state to take over failing schools.

Monday, Troup County School System Superintendent Cole Pugh outlined staff’s concerns over the ballot measure, which includes removing control of and “stripping funding” from public schools. He also expressed concern about a provision allowing schools in an OSD to be transferred to the State Charter School Commission.

Pugh said there is no evidence the OSD will be successful, and the state Department of Education already has powers to intervene to assist struggling schools, making the measure a “bureaucratic duplication.”

“So the question is, who is this an opportunity for?” Pugh said Monday. “It is probably an opportunity for for-profit charter schools, who might get to take over some of these schools. I’m not sure, after reading this information, that this is an opportunity for the students in schools in the state of Georgia.”

Also opposing the Opportunity School District are Augusta Young Democrats.

Jordan Johnson, President of the Young Democrats of Augusta says he doesn’t believe students are the ones that are failing.

“The resources and the funding that’s being cut for our local school systems from the governors office and the education department I believe that’s where the failure is coming from. ” Johnson says.

“We want the Governor to be straight up and direct with the citizens as to what his plans are for our failing schools and not just say that he’s going to give us all an opportunity to succeed, that’s political rhetoric.”

Georgia State Representative Gloria Frazier who voted against the plan says she feels that the Board of Education knows more about the condition of the children than the state.