Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for October 21, 2020

USS Constitution, named by President George Washington, was launched in Boston Harbor on October 21, 1791.

During the War of 1812, the Constitution won its enduring nickname “Old Ironsides” after defeating the British warship Guerriére in a furious engagement off the coast of Nova Scotia. Witnesses claimed that the British shots merely bounced off the Constitution‘s sides, as if the ship were made of iron rather than wood. The success of the Constitution against the supposedly invincible Royal Navy provided a tremendous morale boost for the young American republic.

Today, Constitution serves as a museum ship, and has sailed under her own power as recently as 2012. Southern live oak, harvested and milled on St. Simons Island, Georgia, is a primary construction material for Constitution.

On October 21, 1888, the Augusta Chronicle published a letter from General William Tecumseh Sherman.

Pleasant Stovall, editor of The Augusta Chronicle, wrote the famous old general, and what do you know? He answered, in perhaps the most famous letter to the editor ever printed in the newspaper.

It was published Oct. 21, 1888, and basically, the old warhorse said he didn’t attack Augusta because he didn’t have to. He wanted to get to Savan­nah where the Union Navy could bring him supplies.

However, he offered to correct the oversight if Augusta felt neglected, writing: “I can send a detachment of 100,000 or so of Sherman’s Bummers and their descendants who will finish up the job without charging Uncle Sam a cent.”

Dizzy Gillespie was born on this day in 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina.

President Warren G. Harding spoke in Alabama on October 21, 1921, and publicly condemned the practice of lynching.

Harding was a progressive Republican politician who advocated full civil rights for African Americans and suffrage for women. He supported the Dyer Anti-lynching Bill in 1920. As a presidential candidate that year, he gained support for his views on women’s suffrage, but faced intense opposition on civil rights for blacks. The 1920s was a period of intense racism in the American South, characterized by frequent lynchings. In fact, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) reported that, in 1920, lynching claimed, on average, the lives of two African Americans every week.

On October 21, 1976, Billy Carter spoke to an audience in Albany, Georgia, about his brother’s campaign for President.

On his brother Jimmy’s drinking habits, Billy said, “Jimmy used to drink liquor. Now he’s running for president he drinks Scotch, and I’ve never trusted a Scotch drinker.” Billy preferred the alcohol choice of his brother’s running mate, Walter Mondale – “I liked him the best of all the ones who came to Plains. He’s from a small town and he’s a beer drinker.”

Today, Billy Carter’s service station is preserved as a museum in Plains, Georgia.

The Atlanta Braves won the first game of the 1995 World Series on October 21, 1995, as Greg Maddux dominated the Cleveland Indians, allowing only two hits. Native American groups protested the names of both teams.

Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections

The Macon Telegraph has five takeaways from President Trump’s visit to Middle Georgia last week.

Trump supporters in Dalton held a parade to show their support. Because nothing says President Trump like glitter. From the Dalton Daily Citizen News:

From the lettering spelling “Trump” on the side of her vehicle to the pennants on the bumper, Dalton resident Roberta Curtin said she decorated her vehicle the old-fashioned way.

“Six hours last night with glue and glitter,” she said. “It’s like being back in high school and getting ready for a homecoming parade.”

The parade was scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. But by a little before 6, the Bry-Man’s Plaza South parking lot held several dozen trucks, motorcycles and cars festooned with American flags, Trump banners, “Thin Blue Line” flags — blue and white American flags flown to show support for law enforcement — and Confederate flags, and the vehicles began to line up for the parade.

Another Trump car parade, organized by businessman John Dashler, is scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 1, at 2:30 p.m. It will start near the Whitfield County Republican Party headquarters at 515 Benjamin Way.

Campaign contribution reports for state and local candidates are delayed, according to the AJC.

The Georgia ethics commission has moved the deadline to file campaign reports to the eve of the Nov. 3 election, meaning voters will go to the polls having little chance to see who funded the state campaigns they are voting on.

David Emadi, executive secretary of the commission, said an obscure section of Georgia’s campaign finance law forced the agency to move the deadline from the Friday before the election to election eve.

Since some campaigns and political action committees and others wait until the last minute, they could be filing at 11:59 p.m. the night before the election.

State candidates, PACs and so-called “independent” committees that back candidates last filed in early October, detailing who was funding their efforts through Sept. 30.

The final pre-election reports are technically due Oct. 25, but those groups are given a grace period of five working days, meaning they really until Oct. 30 to file reports.

Emadi noted that state law extends that grace period when the official deadline falls on a weekend. Oct. 25 is a Sunday. So instead of being due Oct. 30, they are now due by the end of Nov. 2.

Candidates would have to pay a $125 late fee if they wait to disclose contributors until after the election.

Emadi said he may include a change in state campaign finance filing law in the ethics package his agency is expected to propose to the 2021 General Assembly.

Political text messages have increased dramatically in the 2020 elections. From the AJC:

Candidates for state and local offices and related campaigns have spent about $311,000 so far in 2020 on texting services, state records show. That’s a fraction of the tens of millions spent on other forms of voter outreach.

But it’s growing fast — 2020 spending on text messaging has surpassed spending in all previous years combined, according to records from the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission. And the volume of political texts may only increase as Election Day nears.

Chip Lake, a Republican strategist, said campaigns increasingly are turning to text messaging because it’s an effective and relatively inexpensive way to reach voters.

“It’s something you have to do in this (election) cycle,” he said. “If you’re not doing it, your opponent is. You’re going to be at a disadvantage.”

“There’s so much data available out there that shows I’m a Republican voter, a likely Republican voter, conservative,” Lake said. “I’m more likely to get messages from Republicans.”

More than 11,000 Bibb County voters have cast ballots so far, according to the Macon Telegraph.

More people voted in the first week of early voting in Bibb County than they did for all of early voting for the runoff election in August and the primary election in June.

Macon-Bibb County had 9,369 votes cast in the first week of early voting for the November election while 9,359 votes were cast for early voting in the August election and 5,906 people voted early in the June election, according to the Macon-Bibb County Board of Elections.

After the polls closed on Monday, Bibb County had a total of 11,401 ballots cast. Board of Elections Chair Mike Kaplan said the total amount of early votes is around 20% greater than the total amount of early votes in the 2016 election, which was 9,440 votes.

The lines have remained relatively short over the past week with around a 40 minute wait at the Board of Elections and anywhere from no wait to a 20 minute wait at the other two locations, Kaplan said.

The Chatham County Board of Elections has begun processing mail-in absentee ballots, according to the Savannah Morning News.

Chatham County, along with the rest of the state, started the processing of absentee ballots on Monday, but the actual counting of the ballots won’t come until election day.

The early processing is made possible by a new rule passed by the state election board in August, following delayed results because of absentee ballots after the June 9 primary.

The new rule allows for the processing of absentee ballots 15 days prior to election day, and aims to make it easier for county election boards to count the ballots on Nov. 3.

BOR Chairman Colin McRae said 50,791 absentee ballots had been requested in Chatham County, and so far, 15,084 had been returned as of Monday.

He said the early processing could be a boon to the BOE, allowing them to get the election results sooner.

“It’ll help our friends across the hall get started on what could be upwards of 50,000 votes.”

As of the end of the day on Tuesday, there had been 18,046 early in-person votes cast in Chatham County. In just the first week of the three week early voting period, Chatham had reached half of the total early ballots cast in the 2016 election — 35,892.

AccessWDUN looks at soon-to-be reelected State Rep. Tommy Benton (R-Jefferson) and his erstwhile Democratic opponent.

The Athens Banner Herald profiles the race for House District 117, currently held by State Rep. Houston Gaines (R-Athens).

The Gwinnett Daily Post asked the candidates for County Commission District One about COVID recovery.

Republican Laurie McClain and Democrat Kirkland Carden weighed in on the big issues facing District 1, including the looming issue of dealing with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. That will dominate the county commission’s agenda in 2021 as the county, state and nation recover from the pandemic.

Both candidates said helping small businesses will be key to recovering from the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Gwinnett County is using some federal COVID relief funds to waive fees for online property tax payments, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

County Tax Commissioner Richard Steele announced the county will use funds from the COVID-19 relief bill to cover the online convenience fees for debit and credit card tax bill payments.

“We wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to pay their property taxes safely,” Steele said. “Obtaining this grant helps us do that, and I sincerely hope people take advantage of it during the pandemic to pay online from the safety of home.”

Republican State Rep. Chuck Efstration (Dacula) said he has prepared legislation to repeal the state citizen arrest statute, according to the AJC.

His proposal would only allow business and home owners to detain people whom they catch in the act of a crime — and then call law enforcement. Current law allows anyone who witnesses a crime or believes one has been committed to make an arrest and take that person to police.

Efstration also authored Georgia’s hate-crimes legislation that became law earlier this year, after the February killing of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick spurred his Republican colleagues in the Senate to action.

“I view repeal of citizen’s arrest as the next step after passage of the historic hate-crimes act this year,” he said. “Having the legal authority for a person who is not trained in law enforcement to arrest that person and take that person before a judge is untenable in our current world.”

Current state law allows any Georgian who believes he has witnessed a crime to arrest the suspected offender if the crime “is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge.” If the crime is a felony and the person suspected of committing it is trying to flee, Georgians are allowed to arrest that person “upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.”

Cobb County Board of Education member Dr. Jaha Howard took a knee during the pledge of allegiance at the Board’s meeting on October 15, 2020, according to the AJC.

The Georgia Department of Education published a plan for reducing standardized testing, according to the Capitol Beat News Service via the Athens Banner Herald.

Called “A Roadmap to Reimagining K-12 Education,” the eight-page plan outlines broad steps officials want to take to shrink the importance of standardized tests, give local school districts flexibility over evaluating student and teacher performance and free up money for technology and internet access.

Specifically, the plan proposes lobbying for changes to federal law that would allow schools to adopt “grade-band testing” in which students take year-end tests only in the third, fifth, and eighth grades, as well only once in high school. That would round out to less than a dozen tests overall, according to the plan.

The staggered testing schedule would create “off years” in which students would be graded based on separate metrics that are not the typical high-stakes tests. Teachers would have more time to focus on making sure students learn the material, rather than worry about preparing for tests.

“We cannot return to the status quo of over-testing and hyper-accountability,” state School Superintendent Richard Woods said. “We must reimagine what our education system can and must become.”

Clarke County public schools plans to reopen for in-person attendance in November, according to the Athens Banner Herald.

Sunday was the deadline for families to notify school officials whether their students would return to classes Nov. 9 or continue with virtual learning., but on Monday school officials extended the deadline.

Those choices will be in effect through the end of the school system’s first semester Jan. 15, when families will likely have to make the choice between in-person classes or virtual learning again.

School district administrators have not yet set hours of operation; those will be decided when they know what the numbers are for in-person and virtual learning, according to a reopening document the district released last week.

Hall County public schools will setup wifi access points to increase student access to online resources, according to the Gainesville Times.

During the Hall County Schools Board of Education meeting on Monday, Oct. 19, Aaron Turpin, assistant superintendent of technology, announced the district’s plans for setting up additional Wi-Fi access points not only at each school, but in Hall parks and other outdoor locations in all seven clusters.

Turpin said all the funding for the project came from the state who sent the equipment.

“One of the things we’re cognizant of is not all parents and students have access to high speed internet at home,” Turpin said before the board.

United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia BJ Pak spoke about domestic violence and firearms, according to the Valdosta Daily Times.

“Georgia is one of only a handful of states in which it is not unlawful, under state law, to possess a firearm after a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction,” said U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak. “Similarly, Georgia law does not prohibit firearm possession after the entry of a domestic violence protection order. Federal law, however, makes it a felony to possess a firearm under both circumstances. Federal prosecution of armed offenders with a track record of domestic violence provides an opportunity to prevent additional violence before it occurs.”

In addition to serving on the national working group and overseeing federal prosecutions in the Northern District of Georgia, Pak has endorsed a broad-based effort prioritizing training for local partners and promoting community awareness, which included a virtual community forum on firearms and domestic violence on Oct. 14.

Congressman Buddy Carter (R-Pooler) and Senator David Perdue (R-Glynn County) wrote to the Coast Guard about delays in the removal of MV Golden Ray from the St Simons Sound, according to The Brunswick News.

In a letter Monday to U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C, U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, R-1, and U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., demanded weekly updates and greater transparency regarding any further delays in the project. The letter was addressed to Admiral Karl L. Schultz, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.

“If these delays continue,” the letter concluded, “then we must consider additional Congressional action to ensure accountability for our constituents.”

The 656-foot-long Golden Ray has sat half submerged between St. Simons and Jekyll islands for more than a year, having capsized while heading out to sea Sept. 8, 2019, with a cargo of 4,200 vehicles. The ship’s owner and insurer switched salvagers in January, choosing Texas-based T&T Salvage over the originally-contracted Donjon-SMIT.

The Augusta Commission voted to suspend ambulance service for a year, according to the Augusta Chronicle.

On a motion from Commissioner Ben Hasan, the commission voted 7-3 to suspend ambulance service but allow time to determine the plan’s impact on any subsidy agreement with Gold Cross. Commissioners Bill Fennoy, Sammie Sias and Dennis Williams were opposed.

Hasan said mandatory overtime that has cost the city $1.5 million this year was largely attributed to staffing the ambulances, while firefighters are jeopardizing their pensions due to spending too many hours on ambulance calls.