USS Constitution earned the nickname “Old Ironsides” in battle against the British ship Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia on August 19, 1812. Launched in 1797, Constitution is today the oldest commissioned vessel in the United States Navy. Live oak from St. Simons Island were cut and milled for timber used in the constructions of Constitution. From a 1977 New York Times article:
The Constitution won her way into Americans’ hearts in 1812, when she defeated the British Guerriere off Nova Scotia in an exchange of broadsides. The spirit of the Constitution crew was noted by the Guerriere’s commander, James Dacres, who boarded the Constitution to present his sword in surrender.
”I will not take your sword, Sir,” the captain of the Constitution, Isaac Hull, replied. ”But I will trouble you for your hat.”
In the battle, a sailor — whether British or American is disputed by historians — is said to have cried out, ”Huzzah, her sides are made of iron!” as he watched an English cannonball bounce off the side of the Constitution. It was the birth of her nickname.
Part of the ship’s secret lay in the wood used in the design by Joshua Humphreys. He picked live oak, from St. Simons Island, Ga. The wood has proved so strong and resistant to rot that the original hull is intact, said Anne Grimes Rand, curator of the Constitution Museum in Charlestown, Mass.
The Georgia Department of Insurance was created on August 19, 1912 when Governor Joseph Brown signed legislation regulating companies selling policies in the states.
Governor Nathaniel Harris signed the first state law requiring school attendance for children 8-14 years of age on August 19, 1916; on the same day, Harris also signed legislation authorizing women to practice law in Georgia.
“Georgia” was designated the official state song on August 19, 1922 with Gov. Thomas Hardwick’s signature on a joint resolution passed by the General Assembly; in 1979, “Georgia On My Mind,” replaced it.
Adolf Hitler became President of Germany on August 19, 1934.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency supported a coup in Iran that restored the Shah of Iran on August 19, 1953.
On August 19, 1976, President Gerald R. Ford was nominated for President by the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri. Ford received 1,157 (52.6%) delegates to 1,087 for Ronald Reagan (47.4%). Georgia’s 48 delegates voted for Reagan on the first ballot.
On August 19, 1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. On the same day, Dr. Betty Siegel became the first female President of a state college or university in Georgia when she was named President of Kennesaw College on August 19, 1981; under her leadership, it became Kennesaw State University in 1996. Siegel served until 2006. Kennesaw State was recently named the 4th best college for food in the nation.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
The Georgia House and Senate Judiciary Committees confirmed Walt Davis’s appointment as the first Judge of the Statewide Business Court, according to a press release from Governor Brian Kemp’s office.
On July 1, 2019, Governor Brian P. Kemp nominated Davis to lead the new court, created through passage of a 2018 constitutional amendment and codified through legislation earlier this year.
“I commend the leadership of House Judiciary Chairman Barry Fleming, Senate Judiciary Chairman Jesse Stone, and committee members for their unanimous, bipartisan support of Walt Davis as the first Statewide Business Court Judge,” stated Governor Kemp. “Moving forward, Walt has significant – and challenging – work ahead to establish and lead this new court, but we all agree that he is the right man for the job.”
“I am deeply grateful to Governor Kemp for this opportunity, and I want to thank the House and Senate Judiciary Committees for their unanimous support,” stated Walt Davis. “It is an honor to make history as the first Statewide Business Court Judge, and I look forward to serving the citizens of our great state with integrity and humility.”
Governor Kemp‘s office also released news that state tax collections for July are up 3 percent over the same month last year, according to the Albany Herald.
The State of Georgia’s net tax collections in the first month of fiscal year 2020 totaled roughly $1.83 billion for an increase of $55.7 million, or 3.1%, compared to last year when net tax collections totaled almost $1.78 billion. July’s gross tax revenue receipts totaled $2.48 billion for an increase of $71.9 million, or 3%, over July 2018.
Gov. Kemp will meet with representatives of two company that may have emitted toxic materials, according to the AJC.
Gov. Brian Kemp weighed in late Friday on concerns over toxic emissions from two metro Atlanta industrial facilities, several hours after the Environmental Protection Division announced it would conduct air sampling near both.
“This situation is simply unacceptable,” Kemp said. The governor then echoed EPD Director Richard Dunn in praising voluntary measures one of the companies, Sterigenics, has said it plans to take to reduce emissions.
The governor said the state was in talks with another company, BD Bard in Covington, to do the same.
“Next week, we will meet with both companies to ensure that they take responsibility, embrace transparency, and work with their communities to build trust,” Kemp said.
A new federal lawsuit seeks to force use of hand-marked paper ballots in Georgia, according to the AJC.
Voters who want paper ballots filled out by hand asked a federal judge late Friday to prevent Georgia from using the $107 million voting system the state just bought.
The request comes a day after the judge ruled that voters must use some type of paper ballots next year, but her decision didn’t address the legality of the state’s new voting system.
The lawsuit, filed by voters and election integrity advocates, alleges the new voting machines will remain vulnerable to hacking, malware, bugs and misconfiguration.
But state election officials have said that paper ballots will ensure the accuracy of results during recounts and audits.
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg on Thursday ruled that Georgia election officials must sunset the state’s old voting machines after municipal and special elections scheduled for this November.
That was the state’s plan anyway, but Totenberg’s order said election officials can’t use the outdated voting equipment as a backup if the new system isn’t ready by March’s elections. She said the state must create a contingency plan that relies on hand-marked paper ballots.
Totenberg denied a motion from the plaintiffs to immediately require paper ballots bubbled in by pen during this year’s elections, saying it would be too disruptive.
Democrat Stacey Abrams launched a new voter protection racket initiative in Snellville yesterday, according to Fox5News.
Abrams launched her Fair Fight 2020 campaign Saturday in Snellville.
Since her loss in the Georgia governor’s race last year to Republican Brian Kemp, Abrams has focused on the development of Fair Fight Georgia, a political action committee geared toward the advocacy of voter rights and fair elections in the state. Abrams, along with others, filed a lawsuit alleging serious flaws within the overall election process in the state.
The new initiative will staff, fund, and train voter protection operations in 20 battleground states this year ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
Abrams noted that Gwinnett County, a populous metro Atlanta county that turned Democratic last year, has become one of the state’s most diverse.
“On that day Nov. 6, Gwinnett proved that you are the future. But that we are still mired in a past of voter suppression. And voter intimidation. And mistakes made,” she said with enthusiasm to a crowded gymnasium at Annistown Elementary School in Snellville. “But we are going to correct those mistakes in 2020.”
“What we’re going to do through Fair Fight 2020 is we’re going to fight back. But we’re fighting early. We’re doing this now. We’re not waiting until we have a nominee,” Abrams said. “Because no matter who the Democratic nominee is – they’re going to win Georgia.”
“I’m going to use my energies and my very, very loud voice to raise the money we need to train those across the country in our 20 battleground states to make sure Donald Trump and the Senate take a hike, and we put people in place who know what we need to have in the United States of America,” she said.
Former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said championing voters’ rights leading up to 2020 elections wouldn’t prohibit her from accepting an invitation for a higher office, if the situation presented itself to her.
“I would certainly welcome an invitation to stand with our democratic nominee (for president) for vice president of the United States,” Abrams said.
Abrams gave a speech in front of supporters at the school that also served as a symbolic site for the rally. Annistown did not open on time as a voting precinct on Election Day in 2018 because of malfunctioning voting machines and cards.
While five Gwinnett County precincts in the county experienced issues with poll machines, Annistown was the only one that did not open on time. Abrams said the machine malfunctions caused delays that discouraged voters from staying to cast their ballots.
“Gwinnett is a perfect example of what can be and what unfortunately still is,” Abrams said. “Annistown was the site — ground zero — of voter suppression for Gwinnett County. Broken machines, long lines and under resourcing of people asked to do this work.
“But we also know we have the most diverse county in the state and we had incredible turnout and that we transformed what the state looks like, beginning here in Gwinnett County. As with everything, there is good and bad. We’re looking to amplify the good and beat back the bad.”
“If you are eligible to vote in the state of Georgia, Fair Fight 2020 is going to make certain that you know your rights and your rights are protected by standing up the strongest voter protection teams in Georgia history,” Abrams said.
“For the primary, I am going to be doing everything I can to build voter protection plans that ensure that every vote is counted in Georgia,” Abrams said. “If the nominee for president decides to offer me a position, I would be honored to be offered, but my responsibility is how to guarantee a fair fight in Georgia in 2020 and beyond.”
“Gwinnett is emblematic of both the opportunity and the challenges that will be faced by voters in 2020,” Abrams said in an interview. “It’s a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-lingual community where we saw extraordinary levels of turnout — but we also saw extraordinary levels of suppression.”
Shortly after announcing the new initiative, Abrams told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution she would not join the race for president, the first time she had publicly ruled out a 2020 bid. She did not, however, shut down the possibility of being selected as a running mate.
“I’m making my stand here in Georgia. We’re making a stand here for justice,” Abrams told a few hundred people crowded into the school’s gym. “We know 2020 is about all the marbles.”
The program will give Abrams a platform in the nation’s swing states, mostly in the Midwest and South. It will also afford Abrams another opportunity to elevate her national brand as she prepares for a likely rematch against Kemp in 2022.
In Georgia, counties are responsible for interpreting and implementing state election law, and Republicans often say state officials shouldn’t be blamed for mishaps at local polling sites.
“If I was governor, I’d have done a whole lot of things different by now. The governor of Georgia should know that every voter matters,” she said, adding: “We’re going to make him work for that job because we’re going to make certain there’s a fair fight in 2020.”
On Wednesday, she told The New York Times that she was still open to being “considered by any nominee” for the vice-president slot—even though earlier in the year she had shot down the suggestion of playing second fiddle to former Vice President Joe Biden. As Democrats face the potential of another bout of voter suppression in 2020, having Abrams at the top of the ticket raises the possibility that voting rights will be elevated from something of an afterthought to a central issue on the campaign trail.
Abrams’s defeat in 2018 is a cautionary tale for Democrats: Voter suppression is a serious problem for the party, and it isn’t going away. In the election, Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state and Abrams’s opponent in the race, closed several polling stations in predominantly black areas and put 53,000 voter-registration applications on hold, moves that potentially stifled turnout among supporters of Abrams. “I think what her experience this past year revealed was, regardless of how dynamic of a candidate you are, how much mobilization that you implement—particularly to mobilize voters who may not vote regularly and could not or have not voted at all—the effort to suppress the vote was, in her case, insurmountable,” says Pearl Dowe, a professor of political science and African American studies at Emory University. “I think it would be a mistake for any presidential candidate not to think about it.”
“We expect 2020 to be a banner year for voter suppression, especially given what’s at stake in the elections,” says J. Gerald Hebert, the senior director of voting rights and redistricting at Georgetown University’s Campaign Legal Center. “When you think about the fact that we’ve not only had recent widespread measures of voter suppression, but we’ve had foreign election interference, I think protecting the right to vote is more important now than it has been in a long, long time.”
Abrams is playing a sort of long game—by abstaining from a 2020 presidential run and instead channeling her energy toward combatting voter suppression, she could play a key role in shaping the future of the Democratic Party that may endure beyond four years in the White House. “My first responsibility is to ensure that when the primary is done—when the nominee decides to choose their running mate—that they are choosing based on knowing that we are in a country where we have built the infrastructure in those battleground states,” Abrams told the Times. “And that I’ve done my part.”
Three Democratic candidates for President spoke in Atlanta on Friday, according to the AJC.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.; and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro spoke at the Young Leaders Conference. U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders will be interviewed onstage Saturday.
The event is organized by Black Church PAC, a group of church groups that aims to elect “progressive leaders committed in ridding us of mass incarceration, voter suppression and gun violence.” It endorsed Stacey Abrams in last year’s gubernatorial race.
And from the AJC on the appearances by two additional Democratic candidates for President:
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke to a crowd of young black Christian voters Saturday morning as part of the Black Church PAC Presidential Forum.
The Democratic presidential candidates discussed white nationalism, gun violence, student loan debt and other issues at the front of voters’ minds with Rev. Michael McBride and Rev. Leah Daughtry, the political group’s co-founders.
Both candidates discussed how their policies would benefit African-Americans and combat problems particularly affecting them, including unaffordable prescription drugs and a disproportionately high rate of black women dying during childbirth.
Qualifying begins today for Lowndes County local elections, according to the Valdosta Daily Times.
Qualifying begins Monday, Aug. 19, and ends Friday, Aug. 23, for candidates looking to throw their hat in the ring for the 2019 municipal elections.
Qualifying for candidacy is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday this week at the Lowndes County Board of Elections office, 2808 N. Oak St.
According to Deb Cox, the supervisor of elections, municipal seats open in Lowndes County are Valdosta mayor, city council districts 1, 3, 5 and at-large; Valdosta Board of Education districts 1, 2 and 3; Hahira City Council seats 2 and 3; Remerton mayor and two city council seats at-large; Dasher mayor and city council post 3, 4 and at-large.
Some candidates for Valdosta mayor and city council at-large have already announced their intention to run. Some candidates announced as early as last year.
If you’re running for office, be careful to double-check qualifying hours. Some jurisdictions end qualifying earlier on the last day.
Bulloch County municipalities are also qualifying candidates for local offices this week, according to the Statesboro Herald.
Statesboro, Bulloch, Portal and Register – and towns all over Georgia – will conduct candidate qualifying next week for nonpartisan city elections to be held Nov. 5.
Brooklet and Portal are the two towns in Bulloch County that have mayors up for election this year. Statesboro and Register do not, since their mayors are two years into a four-year term. All four towns have some council seats due to go before voters. But officials can cancel municipal elections, declaring an unopposed winner, when only one candidate qualifies for each seat.
All four of the cities in Bulloch County conduct their own candidate qualifying. But only in Brooklet do city officials conduct the elections, and paper ballots are used there. Register, Portal and Statesboro have the county Board of Elections staff conduct city elections, using the state-issued, paperless touchscreen voting machines, which are slated for replacement next year.
Indeed, a federal judge this week ordered that Georgia must stop using the old machines at the end of this year and either have its new system in place for the March 24 presidential primary or revert to using hand-marked paper ballots. The state’s plan calls for electronic machines that produce a paper printout.
Augusta area local candidates will qualify this week, according to the Augusta Chronicle.
Candidate qualifying starts Monday for elections in Grovetown, Harlem, Blythe and Hephzibah.
In Grovetown, Mayor Gary Jones is expected to defend the seat he’s held for one term. The at-large council seats now held by Allen Transou and Eric Blair also are coming open.
In Hephzibah, the two incumbents elected in 2015 – Sissi Dozier and Frank Williams – have each since resigned. The at-large seats held by their appointed replacements – David Usry and Clay Fulcher – are coming open.
Albany will learn who qualifies for Mayor this week, according to the Albany Herald.
The list of candidates wanting to unseat [current Mayor Dorothy] Hubbard — who acknowledges that she misses out on a lot of time with family members because she actually cares about the job and tries to meet all the requests she’s inundated with — started growing before the calendar even turned over on the new year. Former Albany City Commissioner Henry Mathis, who wanted to challenge Hubbard for her seat four years ago but found out from the state Board of Pardons and Parole that he was not eligible to do so due to the time element associated with his felony extortion conviction, made it clear that he would indeed challenge for the mayor’s seat, this time assuring all that his rights had been fully restored.
(A call this week to the state Board of Pardons and Parole yielded no information on Mathis’ current citizenship status, although some have suggested he is not legally eligible to hold the office. Mathis assures supporters that he is.)
Next in line to announce his intentions to seek the mayor’s seat was businessman Omar Salaam, who has served on the Albany-Dougherty Inner City Authority and is a regular at government meetings, followed by trucker Quincy Smith and, most recently, county Republican Party Chairman Tracy Taylor.
There are rumblings, though, that the list may grow longer yet. Two other potential candidates, Albany State University professor and doctoral student James Pratt Jr. and attorney/former Albany City Commissioner Bo Dorough, have earned a growing amount of street committee support as the week of qualifying approaches.
Gwinnett County municipalities will also qualify candidates this week, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.
Qualifying for municipal offices in Gwinnett’s cities will take place this week with some mayoral and city council positions up for election.
Most of the cities will host qualifying from Monday through Wednesday, although a few cities will continue until later in the week. Berkeley Lake will continue until Thursday while Auburn and Norcross will end qualifying on Friday.
Cities having mayoral races include Lawrenceville — where the seat will be up for grabs after Mayor Judy Jordan Johnson decided to not seek re-election — as well as Auburn, Berkeley Lake, Duluth, Grayson, Lilburn, Norcross, Peachtree Corners, Snellville and Suwanee.
Buford City Commission Chairman Phillip Beard’s Post 1 seat on the commission is also up for election this year.
Rome and Cave Spring open qualifying today for municipal elections, according to the Rome News Tribune.
Candidates start qualifying Monday to fill open seats in Rome and Cave Spring in the Nov. 5 general election.
Six of the nine Rome City Commission seats are on the ballot – three each in Wards 1 and 3.
City Clerk Joe Smith said candidates qualify with him at City Hall, 601 Broad St. Applications will be accepted from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Friday. The fee is $252, equal to 3% of a commissioner’s annual salary.
Cave Spring’s elections are for Post 1 and Post 2 on the City Council and the mayor’s seat, which is a separate post under the city charter.
The qualifying period is shorter, through Wednesday. City Clerk Judy Dickinson said candidates qualify with her at City Hall, 10 Georgia Ave., from 8:30 a.m. through 4:30 p.m. The fee is $45, which is 3% of the position’s annual salary.
United States Attorney and former State Representative BJay Pak spoke to the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.
“BJay’s skillful leadership and superb judgment will lead the office to even greater accomplishments,” Pak’s predecessor, John Horn, predicted of the man in 2017. “(He will) safeguard the tradition of honor and integrity firmly established by those who served in this office before us.”
Nominated by President Donald Trump for the position in July 2017 and confirmed by the Senate in October of that year, Pak is coming up on almost two years as U.S. Attorney.
While he said he’s tackled a number of issues in that time — he made no claims, however, that he’s found a fix-all solution for the “surging opioid crisis” or the recent upward trend in violent crime that he walked into when assuming the role — there’s much more to be done, he said.
“Because of some of the disagreements with the prior administration’s enforcement policies, the relationship with state and local (law enforcement) was a little bit strained; we had kind of restricted the cases we would accept for prosecution,” Pak said. “I opened that up and really focused on rebuilding the trust with our office. Eighty percent of law enforcement is state and local, and we can’t do this alone.”
You’ve done a great job BJay, and we’ve been pleased to work with you,” [Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch] Conway said. “I want everybody in this room to know BJay has done a really, really good job.”
“I came in with a surging opioid addiction crisis, and we’ve devoted a lot of resources — not just enforcement — on how to curb the opioid abuses,” [Pak] said. “We’ve actually taken a three-pronged approach to solve this. (The first) is, we’ve got to stop people from getting addicted in the first place. One of the drivers of that was, of course, the abundance of pain pills we have on the street, legitimately and illegitimately.”
“Preliminary data shows the things that we’re doing … taking down pill mills, prosecuting drug traffickers, (is working),” Pak said. “It looks like we’re seeing double-digit decrease deaths in overdose deaths this year; that means our efforts are contributing to that.”
Savannah will open its new Family Justice Center, according to the Savannah Morning News.
The home for a much anticipated one-stop haven for domestic violence victims is coming into the final stages of reality with a mid-December opening targeted of the Family Justice Center, 2005 Waters Ave., in the Waters Avenue Shopping Center, Kristin Fulford said last week.
Once up and running, it will bring together five local collaborative partners in one location to better address the issues associated with domestic violence and other related violence against woman and in some cases men.
“It’s a framework for people to access those services,” said Fulford, who is Chatham County District Attorney Meg Heap’s spokeswoman and grant writer. “The services are already there, (but) it is just hard for people to get there now.”
The prosecutor’s office is one of the partners in the effort.
But those efforts rely on a collaborative of the Savannah Police Department, the Coastal Children’s Advocacy Center, Savannah Area Family Emergency (SAFE) Center for Domestic Violence Services, and the Rape Crisis Center of the Coastal Empire.
Savannah City Council adopted its FY 2020 millage rate, according to the Savannah Morning News.
The Savannah City Council formally adopted a 12.856 millage rate for 2019 property taxes at their regular meeting on Thursday, Aug. 15.
The rate is a drop of 0.54 mills from the 2018 rate of 13.40.
The city’s highest millage rate since 1971 was a rate of 30.00 in 1972. The lowest rate in the same time frame was 8.50 mills in 1979, lasting for five years.
The Dalton Daily Citizen looks at the local drug court program.
Don and seven other graduates — Andrea, Jenny, Sanna, Shannon, Gerry, Rodney and Steed — read their letters not only to the judge but also to an enthusiastic audience full of supportive family, friends and other Drug Court participants during the 76th Drug Court graduation ceremony on June 27 at the Whitfield County Courthouse.
It was a day marked by reflection on how low their lives had once fallen and how high they have climbed since taking part in the rigorous program that Wilbanks has often called “the hardest thing” the participants will likely ever do.
“I told the staff this morning that these were some of the best letters I’ve seen,” Wilbanks said at the beginning of the ceremony. “What I mean by that is these individuals today have been really transparent in these letters, and you need to listen to what they’re going to have to say to you about where they came from because these are life-changing moments, not only for these people but their families and friends.”
The Gainesville–Hall Metropolitan Planning Organization will hold public meetings for public comments on transportation planning, according to the Gainesville Times.
In addition to project lists that resident can peruse, the MPO also plans to display “info tables and graphs regarding the expected funding we anticipate receiving from state and federal sources.”
[Transportation planning director Joseph Boyd] said “any public input we receive will definitely be documented and relayed back to (MPO committees) to be considered as a part of their decision-making process.”
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