Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for August 22, 2018

The sale of Coca-Cola Company from the Candlers was announced in the Atlanta Constitution on August 22, 1919.

N/S Savannah, the first nuclear-powered merchant ship, visited the Port of Savannah on August 22, 1962. Savannah was named after S.S. Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. N/S Savannah is moored at the Port of Baltimore and designated a national historic landmark.

More than 3000 demonstrators disrupted the Democratic National Convention on August 22, 1968.

In 1972, it was the Republicans’ turn, as demonstrators struck outside the Republican National Convention.

Nolan Ryan recorded his 5000th career strikeout against Rickey Henderson of the Oakland A’s on August 22, 1989.

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

U.S. Representative Karen Handel (R-Roswell) is out with a new TV ad in her reelection campaign.

Governor Nathan Deal yesterday appointed Sarah Hawkins Warren to the Georgia Supreme Court.

Warren will fill the vacancy created by the confirmation of the Honorable Britt Grant to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The appointment will take effect upon swearing in.

Warren currently serves as the solicitor general in the Office of the Georgia Attorney General. She previously worked as the deputy solicitor general and as special counsel for water litigation in the Georgia Attorney General’s Office. Warren was also a partner with Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Washington, D.C. She clerked for the Honorable Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and for Chief Judge J.L. Edmondson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Warren earned bachelor’s degrees, magna cum laude, in Public Policy and Spanish from Duke University and a law degree, magna cum laude, from the Duke University School of Law. She and her husband, Blaise, have two children and reside in Atlanta.

Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams spoke to the Georgia Chamber of Commerce luncheon yesterday in Macon, according to 11Alive.

This marks the first time that both candidates are appearing together in the same venue since this year’s primary and runoff elections.

During Tuesday’s hour-long session, Abrams and Kemp each spoke to the assembled members of the state’s chambers of commerce at their annual conference. After each candidate spoke for about 20 minutes, another 10 minutes was taken up in a Q&A session with Georgia Chamber president Chris Clark.

Both Abrams and Kemp concentrated on their core messages, as geared toward small businesses across the state, while the two candidates avoided the sort of personal attacks that have peppered recent television commercials.

From the AJC:

Abrams talked about her opposition to “religious liberty” measures, touted her plan to boost k-12 school funding to help more struggling schools and trumpeted her core campaign promise to expand the Medicaid program.

Kemp tried to woo the Georgia Chamber of Commerce crowd by promising to enact new tax cuts, set a state spending cap and keep an open mind to infrastructure projects.

And both aimed to win over mainstream voters who haven’t found a home yet after bruising nomination contests where each ran aggressively to their party’s flanks — Abrams as an “unapologetic progressive” and Kemp as a “politically incorrect conservative.”

Democratic candidate for Governor Stacey Abrams will campaign in Valdosta on Thursday, according to the Valdosta Daily Times.

According to a press release, Abrams will host a “Jobs for Georgia” town hall meeting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 23 — doors open at 6 p.m. — in Powell Hall at VSU. Abrams will outline her commitment to rural job creation and small business investment for the benefit of Georgians, the release states.

Abrams visited Valdosta earlier this year during her primary campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor.

The Georgia Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Bobby Rex Stribling Jr. for the murder of William Thomas Glenn, Jr., a former district attorney and municipal court judge, according to The Brunswick News.

The State House of Representatives Study Committee on School Safety met yesterday, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen.

Virginia mandated that its schools use the process, called a threat assessment, after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. Florida started requiring threat assessment teams in the wake of the Parkland shooting this year.

But Georgia lawmakers, who are generally reluctant to dish out mandates to schools, are not close to requiring the same for schools here, said Rep. Rick Jasperse, R-Jasper, who is chairing a study committee that is looking at ways to improve school safety.

“It looks like ‘Bam. Boy, that’s the cure right there,’” Jasperse said in an interview. “But see, it’s hard. The hard part is dealing with a parent whose child may be subjected to a threat assessment, because you’re protective of that child.”

Anything the committee recommends would build on existing minimum standards for school safety plans in Georgia. Jasperse said he wants those plans, which tend to be reactive now, to start focusing more on prevention. The plans are exempt from the state’s Open Records Act.

Capital One Public Funding has filed suit against the State and Henry County, alleging wrongdoing in the proposed spin-off of a new City of Eagles Landing, according to the AJC.

One of the nation’s biggest issuers of municipal bonds is suing the state of Georgia and Henry County to put the brakes on this fall’s vote for Eagle’s Landing cityhood.

Capital One Public Funding — the municipal bonding arm of banking giant Capital One — has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking an injunction to keep the creation of what could be Henry’s fifth city off the ballot in November.

The firm says the referendum is unconstitutional because it fails to pass on to Eagle’s Landing the financial obligations of Stockbridge, which would be de-annexed so that half of its territory could be used to form part of the new city. Stockbridge owes Capital One about $11.75 million from municipal bonds floated in 2005 and 2006.

“The de-annexation acts fail to attach to the land and property that will be de-annexed from Stockbridge and annexed into Eagle’s Landing any of the financial obligations secured by the lost Stockbridge tax base,” the bond issuer wrote in its lawsuit, which was filed Friday. “Thus, the new Eagle’s Landing municipality would be completely freed from any obligation to service Stockbridge’s valid and underlying financial commitments.”

The City of Stockbridge also filed suit, alleging the spinoff violates the Voting Rights Act, according to the AJC.

Cityhood for Eagle’s Landing would violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, the city of Stockbridge claims in a federal lawsuit to halt the November referendum.

Filed late Monday, the litigation says allowing the largely white residential neighborhoods of Eagle’s Landing — a country club community in Stockbridge’s south end — to form their own city would dilute and disenfranchise African-American voters.

Black residents currently make up 53 percent of the Henry County city’s electorate, attorneys for Stockbridge said at a news conference Tuesday. But if Eagle’s Landing becomes a town, they would see their electoral numbers reduced to about 43 percent — essentially equal to their white counterparts.

“That is not right,” attorney Christopher Anulewicz said. “It violates the equal protection clause to the United States Constitution. It violates the federal voting rights laws that were enacted in the 1960s. This type of behavior has been precluded since the inception of our republic.”

The Gwinnett County Health Department identified a West Nile virus case, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

The health department confirmed the diagnosis Monday although no information is available on the identity of the victim or where they may have contracted the illness, which is transmitted by mosquitoes. Health officials said they are investigating the case.

In the meantime, the health department is urging residents to take precautions so they won’t become sick.

“Preventing mosquito bites is the best way to avoid West Nile Virus,” said Alana Sulka, director of epidemiology for Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale County Health Departments, in a statement. “One of the most effective ways to limit the mosquito population around your home is to practice ‘Tip ‘n Toss,’ which eliminates mosquito breeding grounds.”

Gwinnett County will donate one of its first transit buses to the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty, head of the U.S. Army Cyber Command, spoke in Augusta, according to the Auguta Chronicle.

Fogarty is familiar with Augusta, having served as commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon in 2014. In about two years, Fogarty will return to Augusta when Army Cyber Command moves to Fort Gordon from Fort Belvoir, Va.

Fogarty addressed Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the role social media plays in cybersecurity.

“I’m also concerned about how fast social media can be co-opted by an adversary,” Fogarty said. “I’m agnostic about who wins the election. What I’m concerned about is you had an adversary who decided they’re going to break down trust in the democracy, in our processes, so that’s that information operations threat I think they employed pretty well.”

“We spent a lot of time in the last four years or so on cyber and electronic warfare, and we’re going to spend the next four years building on those gains and making the proper investment in information operations,” Fogarty said.

Buford City Schools Superintendent Geye Hamby is under fire for allegations in a lawsuit, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

Mary Ingram, a former paraprofessional educator at Buford Academy, is suing Buford City Schools Superintendent Geye Hamby, Buford Academy Principal Kaleen Pulley and the school district for race discrimination and retaliation after she was fired “without any justification,” the lawsuit says.

Ingram is seeking back and front pay, compensatory and punitive damages, attorney’s fees and trial by jury in the suit, which has a web link to two audio recordings attached.

In the recordings, which are presumably included to support Ingram’s charges against Hamby, a man said to be Hamby makes derogatory comments against black construction workers, referring to them by the n-word and saying that he would “kill these (expletive).”

The Dalton Board of Education approved a property tax millage rate for FY 2019, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen.

The members of the Dalton Board of Education made official Tuesday a .57 mill increase in the property tax rate that voters had basically approved last November with the passing of a measure to fund the construction of a new 6/7 grades school.

As part of the language of the bond referendum to allocate monies for the acquisition of land and the building of the Hammond Creek Middle School, voters approved a separate property tax to pay off the nearly $47 million in borrowing for the school’s construction. The referendum passed by 135 votes out of 2,843 votes cast, and school officials said previously they expected a second millage rate of at least .4 mills.

In a 3-0 vote by Chairman Rick Fromm and school board members Matt Evans and Palmer Griffin, the primary millage rate will remain 8.2 mills, with .57 mills added for the debt payments. The average tax increase on a $125,000 home will be just over $71 a year.

The Savannah-Chatham County Board of Education continues working on a compliance report for AdvanceED, the accreditation agency, according to the Savannah Morning News.

The Glynn County Commission and Brunswick Commission objected to a Superfund cleanup plan for Terry Creek, according to The Brunswick News.

Flat Rock Studio, a new film production studio, will open in Columbus on Friday, according to the Ledger-Enquirer.

Floyd County is hiring a new Elections Supervisor, according to the Rome News-Tribune.

Steve Miller, who chairs the county’s Board of Elections and Registration, said Tuesday that [Willie] Green tendered his resignation earlier this month and his last day is Friday. The three-member appointed board is advertising for a new chief clerk and has already received several applications.

Miller and board members Mardi Haynes-Jackson and Dr. Tom Rees conduct the elections, so he said the vacancy would not be an issue for the Nov. 6 midterms.

“We’re not going to be in a rush,” Miller said. “It’s a nice goal to have someone before the election, but our focus is getting the right person for the job.”

Minimum qualifications for the slot — paying $16.22 to $17.88 an hour — call for a high school diploma or GED and three years of clerical experience with at least one year of supervision. The candidate would have to obtain certification as a Georgia elections officer within six months.

The City of Lula will hold a special election on March 19, 2019 to fill a vacancy on City Council, according to the Gainesville Times.

The Eighth District Georgia Republican Party will host a Fish Fry on Saturday in Perry, Georgia. Click here for more information.

The Athens Republican Party opened its campaign headquarters, according to the Red and Black.

With just 78 days until the 2018 midterm elections, the Athens-Clarke County Republican Party kicked off campaign preparations on Aug. 20 with a Monday night cookout celebrating the opening of its 2018 election headquarters.

Housed at 135 Athens W. Parkway Suite A, supporters gathered under tents and a banner reading “Republican Party” to see the new headquarters and hear from party leadership about what’s to come.

Available inside were stickers, pamphlets and other handouts for local campaigns such as those of Houston Gaines in Georgia House District 117 and Marcus Wiedower in 119, as well as forms for potential volunteers.