Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for October 10, 2016

The United States Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Maryland on October 10, 1845.

Vice Presidnt Spiro Agnew resigned on October 10, 1973 and pled guilty to federal income tax evasion charges.

On October 10 1976, a poll by Time magazine showed Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter with a 2-1 electoral vote margin.

Carter led in 21 states and the District of Columbia, with 273 electoral votes (three more than necessary to win), while President Ford led in 17 states with 113 electoral votes.

The online Georgia archives at UGA has a collection of campaign materials, including a 1976 Carter for President brochure.

On October 10, 1980, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Site was established in Atlanta.

On October 10, 2015, Donald Trump made his first campaign stop in Georgia.

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

Tomorrow is the voter registration deadline for the Novembr 8th General Election. Check your voter registration status by signing in to the Secretary of State’s MVP webpage. As of the weekend, 33,150 mail-in ballots had been returned by voters.

First Lady Sandra Deal visited evacuees from Coastal Georgia where they were being housed in Augusta.

“Thank you so much for checking on us,” [Mary] Thomas told Deal. “It means so much to know you care.”

Deal spent around an hour in Augusta on Sunday morning, checking on evacuees from Hurricane Matthew.

While at Trinity on the Hill, she toured the site, comforted families and even took part in a Sunday school class with children.

“I’m so glad y’all are here,” Deal told a table of young adults in Wesley Hall. “Please don’t rush home – please stay as long as you need. The most important thing right now is your safety.”

“Remember that God’s in control,” Deal said. “Sometimes, unfortunate or difficult things happen, but always remember that God’s in control.”

Georgia Ports Authority is bringing its coastal ports back on line after Hurricane Matthew.

South Georgia farmers were also hit by Hurricane Matthew.

Joe Boddiford, owner of Sylvania Peanut Co. and vice chairman of the Georgia Peanut Commission, said the storm couldn’t have come at a worse time.

“The storm has everyone lit up,” he said. “They started early and stayed late.”

Some cotton farmers have already defoliated plants, leaving them without much protection from wind and rain.

When a cotton ball gets waterlogged and falls to the ground, it can’t be harvested.

[Bobby] Smith, chairman of Screven’s Economic Development Authority, said pecan trees also are threatened by the storm.

Trees are loaded but the nuts are not quite mature. He said farmers are worried that rain and high winds will break branches, topple trees and knock the nuts to the ground.

Richmond County Schools remain closed today and are expected to reopen Tuesday.

Bill Clinton, the last Democrat to carry Georgia’s electoral votes, made an under-the-radar trip to Atlanta on Saturday to pick up $50k checks from hosts at a fundraiser. Those wanting a photo with Bubba paid only $10k. If Georgia were a competitive state this year, we’d be more than a place to pass the hat.

Johnny Isakson has dropped a negative ad on Democrat Jim Barksdale.

“Look under Jim Barksdale’s hat and you’ll find it: Hypocrisy.  

Barksdale made a fortune from companies that outsourced Georgia jobs to China and Mexico. He’s now using that fortune to buy negative ads against Johnny Isakson.  

But Barksdale, who made millions from Wall Street, claims capitalism just doesn’t work. Well, it worked for him, and that’s hypocrisy.”  

More than 552k new voters have registered in advance of the November election, as of Friday, according to the AJC.

Hispanic voters compose nearly 118k of newly registered Georgia voters, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen.

The state’s official numbers, which some say significantly undershoot the actual number of Latino voters, show a jump of 28 percent since the 2012 presidential election.

“This is certainly a motivated community that’s engaging in ways that it has not engaged before,” said Jerry Gonzalez, director of the nonpartisan Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, which pushes voter registration.

The growing Latino community now represents nearly one-tenth of the state’s total population.

Hispanic voters, though, have not typically had a strong presence in the voting booth, said Charles S. Bullock III, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.

“Hispanics simply don’t vote their weight,” Bullock said, referring to their relatively low voter turnout.

“Will that change this year? My hunch is that Hispanics maybe do turn out at a somewhat higher rate but will still be underrepresented on Election Day compared to their presence on the voter list,” he added.

Secretary of State Brian Kemp pushed back against allegations of voter suppression.

According to an email response from Kemp’s spokesperson, Candice Broce, Hispanic and black voter turnout for November general elections increased by 140 percent and 42 percent, respectively, from 2004 to 2008 – the same year Georgia became one of the first states to implement a strict voter-ID law.

Blacks and Hispanics also had large increases in voter turnout in 2006 and 2010, Broce noted.

“Under Secretary Kemp’s leadership, registering and voting in Georgia has never been easier,” Broce wrote. “He implemented online voter registration; created a free smartphone app where people can register, check their status, find their polling place and review their sample ballot.”

The Savannah Morning News has endorsed passage of Constitutional Amendment #2, creating the Safe Harbor Fund.

Of the four constitutional amendments on this year’s Georgia ballot, No. 2 is by the easiest Yes. It would create a Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Fund to help children and teens caught in the sex trade begin new lives.

They need, and the fund would provide, such services as medical care, therapy and shelter.

Fittingly, the money would come from people convicted of certain sex crimes. There would be new fines for pimping, pandering, sex trafficking, soliciting for sex, running a brothel and sexually exploiting children. The new penalties would supplement any prison sentence imposed.

The proposed amendment represents a healthy bipartisan joining together of advocates who don’t often find themselves on the same side of an issue, such as feminists and religious conservatives. Voting for it is a no-brainer for anyone even vaguely aware of the horrors of child prostitution and the near-total absence of services available to help these young victims escape a life of exploitation. Give young sex crime victims a safe harbor by voting yes on Amendment 2 in November.

State Representative Allen Peake (R-Macon) also weighed in on Amendment 2, with a Letter to the Editor published in the Macon Telegraph.

A recent editorial in The Telegraph stated some misgivings about Constitutional Amendment No. 2 on the November ballot.

“Georgia is famous for creating additional fees and taxes dedicated to cleaning up tire dumps, landfills and hazardous waste sites but diverting the money collected, almost $200 million, to other uses. … We don’t think that’s being accountable at all, rather an attempt to bamboozle voters.”

With confidence in our political institutions at an all-time low, cynicism about entrusting more dollars to politicians is certainly understandable.

I agree that caring for Georgia’s children who have been exploited in the sex-trafficking industry is too important to leave to the winds of politics and the whims of politicians.

The reason we passed legislation authorizing Amendment 2, also called the Safe Harbor Amendment, was to prevent any other use of money collected from enhanced fines on certain criminal offenses and a new fee on the adult entertainment industry.

The children who have been victimized and who will receive therapeutic services from money in the Safe Harbor Fund don’t have lobbyists. At an average age of 14 and as young as 9 years old, these victims can’t even vote yet.

Constitutionally mandating that these funds be used to pay for care and rehabilitative and social services for children who have been sexually exploited ensures that no politicians can spend this money on anything other than helping our child victims.

If you agree that the future of our children, especially those who have been exploited, it is too important to leave up to “politics,” I hope you’ll join me in voting “Yes” on Constitutional Amendment No. 2.

Allen Peake
Georgia State Representative

Opponents of the Opportuntity School District amendment say that it will create an additional bureaucracy and diminish local accountability.

Under the current state constitution, voters have a voting say-so in how their local public schools are run, said Athens businessman Dan DeLameter, who like Lanoue thinks the Opportunity School District is ill-conceived, even dangerous.

Today, voters pick who serves on their city or county school system’s school board, and statewide, voters pick a state school superintendent every year, he said.

“What this would do is create a third bureaucracy accountable only to the governor,” he said.
And there’s no way to tell what current or future lawmakers would do with their new educational powers, said the two.

Under a plan outlined earlier this year by Gov. Nathan Deal, no more than 100 “failing” schools would be in the district at any one time, The governor also outlined how schools’ state report cards would determine which ones would be eligible for takeovers, and published a list of 140 schools that would be eligible — mainly urban schools with high-minority, high-poverty student bodies, including Clarke County’s Gaines Elementary School.

“But the legislature tomorrow can change that to half the schools,” Lanoue said.

The National Education Association has poured $2 million into the campaign against the OSD Amendment.

The National Education Association, in three checks written since Aug. 31, has chipped in $2 million to defeat the governor’s initiative.

In effect, the Washington-based NEA has decided to underwrite virtually the entire opposition campaign, putting the effort on a financial parity with the $1.2 million raised by Deal and his allies.

“It has been unfortunate to see out-of-state unions pouring millions of dollars into Georgia to defend the current failing status quo,” said Tom Willis of Opportunity for All Georgia Students, the group backing the governor’s play.

Former State Rep. Edward Lindsey, now a partner at the Dentons law and lobbying firm, writes that OSD opponents are using scare tactics.

Well funded television ads are running throughout Georgia trying to scare voters into voting against the proposed Opportunity School District constitutional amendment, an education reform proposal desperately needed in our state. These scare tactics by advocates of the status quo failed before in 2012 when Georgians overwhelmingly supported the state charter school amendment, and we need to reject them again this Nov. 8.  This proposed amendment adds additional needed accountability to insure a quality education for all Georgia children.

Then, as now, the opponents argued that the amendment would severely damage or destroy “local control” over K-12 public education.

Wrong.

First, it is difficult to see how assisting students trapped in the lowest performing public schools — capped at less than 6 percent of the total number of public schools in Georgia — “destroys” local control. This proposal merely creates a safety valve to assist the most vulnerable students in Georgia.

[T]his amendment will assist our state in delivering on its constitutional and moral responsibility to Georgia’s next generation. Georgians made a step in the right direction in 2012 and should do so again in this election year by voting “YES”on Question 1, the Opportunity School District Constitutional Amendment, on Nov. 8.

A nonpartisan panel at Georgia State University College of Law will discuss the OSD Amendment today.

The panel will be held at noon, Oct. 10, in Room 242 of the College of Law building, 85 Park Place N.E. in Atlanta. State Rep. Valencia Stovall of District 74 and Andrew Lewis, executive vice president of the Georgia Charter School Association and a proponent of the amendment, are among the panelists who will highlight the pros and cons of the proposal.

Amendment 1 would allow the state government to oversee schools deemed as chronically failing. If approved, the OSD and its appointed superintendent would take control of such schools, including their budgets, and have authority over the hiring and firing of teachers and principals.

Other participants in the panel, taking place during an education law course, will include Georgia Parent Teacher Association President Lisa-Marie Haygood, Executive Director of 50CAN in Georgia Michael O’Sullivan, Carl Jordan, a high school teacher, and Jasmine Shortt, an elementary school teacher.

A Committee chaired by Senator Judson Hill (R-Cobb) went to Dalton to hear about making Georgia’s economy more competitive.

The Georgia Senate Finance Subcommittee on Tax Reform held a public hearing in Dalton City Hall Friday morning.

Georgia Tech economist Christine Ries described the state income tax as “anti-growth.”

“When you tax something you get less of it,” she said. “When you tax income, you get less income. When you tax consumption, you get less consumption and more saving, more investment and more growth.”

While Ries was critical of targeted tax incentives to attract companies, [Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce President Rob] Bradham defended them, saying Dalton had lost one company it was trying to attract to Tennessee in part because that state offered more attractive incentives.

State Sen. Judson Hill, R-Marietta, chaired the hearing and said he found the presentations to be helpful.

“The information we received from the business community as well as individuals today in Dalton was tremendous,” he said. “For me, tax reform means lowering your income tax burden, so people have more money to save, invest and spend. We want to create a better tax system and do so in a fiscally sound way.”

Hill said he hopes the Legislature can enact tax reform in 2017.

He noted that the Senate passed two bills this year to cut the income tax but those bills did not pass the state House of Representatives.

“What we need is for people is this area to speak out and say ‘Please lower our taxes,'” he said.

“If the states we compete with ceased to offer tax incentives, I would be happy for us to do the same,” he said.

State Senator Bruce Thompson will host a second town hall meeting to discuss property tax exemptions for Bartow County seniors.

Local and state lawmakers and school officials have been invited to attend a town hall meeting on Oct. 11 to discuss proposals to ease the burden of rising property taxes on Bartow’s senior citizens.The meeting, coordinated  by Rep. Bruce Thompson, provides a second opportunity for seniors to make their voices heard. The first meeting was held Oct. 1, 2015.

“The seniors attending the last meeting weren’t in unanimous consent about the exemption,” Thompson said. “I am hoping that they have had some time to decide on some satisfactory options. I have heard they have gathered several hundred signatures on a petition and that is very encouraging.”

“Bartow seniors are getting hit hard in the pocketbook while surrounding counties have taken steps to alleviate the financial burden,” [Charlie Lowry] the former Emerson City Council member and one of the meeting organizers said. “It’s not unusual for Georgia counties to give older residents a break on school taxes.

“The surrounding counties, let’s take Cobb for an example. When you turn 62, you pay no school tax. That makes up about 65-70 percent of your total tax bill. In Cherokee County, when you reach $156,000 in appraised value — that’s 40 percent of market value — you no longer pay the school portion of the tax after you turn 65. In Paulding County seniors are exempt from one-half of the school tax portion of the bill, provided they earn less than $10,000 a year not including income from private retirement plans, disability, 401k or Social Security. After 70, the discount increases to the entire school tax portion.”

The town hall meeting will be at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 11 at the Clarence Brown Conference Center.

Prominent trial lawyer Bobby Lee Cook sent a scathing letter to Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Ralph Van Pelt Jr.

“I definitely intend to see that you are punished for such a deliberate and egregious act,” Cook said in a letter to the judge. “Your malice and statement cannot go unattended. It could result in a disbarment, and you can take it from me that I intend to employ separate counsel and proceed in a manner to get your attention.”

This back-and-forth is part of a fight that erupted Monday morning, when Van Pelt told Cook’s daughter, Kristina Cook Graham, that she would not be the circuit’s chief judge.

In a three-person election, Van Pelt and House then voted for Van Pelt to be the new chief judge, a position that allows him to make appointments to local boards and run the law libraries in Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade and Walker counties.

[Cook] also accused Van Pelt of sexism because he stopped his daughter from being the first female chief judge in the circuit.

But Cook said Van Pelt’s “most egregious and dishonest act” was his making public statements about a court case from 1994, when Van Pelt was the district attorney of the circuit. After a jury convicted one of Cook’s clients of theft by taking, Cook appealed, pointing out that the grand jury indicted her three times on the same charge before it went to trial.

The Georgia Court of Appeals overturned the conviction, pointing to a Georgia law that said a district attorney couldn’t indict someone more than twice for the same charge. The case needed to be indicted three times because a judge learned that elected officials sat on the first two grand juries, which is illegal in Georgia.

In Columbus, the Ledger-Enquirer writes that Donald Trump is causing some consternation among black Republicans.

Nate Sanderson, a black Republican, says he can no longer support his party.

“He’s alienated every social group, ethnic group — I mean, you name it,” Sanderson said. “He’s practically offended every group, except white males. You pick a group, and he’s said something about it, even white females.

“I believe he has taken the party down a path that, if not quickly corrected, is going to do irreparable damage to the party,” he said.

“I can no longer proudly say I’m a Republican,” he said. “I’m still a conservative, and I’m looking for a party that can represent my ideals and principles.”

Voters in Lula, Georgia will decide in November whether to allow liquor sales by the drink at local restaurants, while Hall County voters will be asked whether to study consolidating city and county governments.