The Wall Street Journal reports that Bill Clinton, the last presidential candidate to carry Georgia, will headline a Sept. 13 fundraiser for U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Nunn at the Atlanta home of Usher, the singer.
The announcement didn't surprise everyone. The state Republican Party points to Page 69 of the leaked Nunn campaign memo: "Michelle has national connections and relationships that most candidates could never convene, from Warren Buffet to General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt to Usher."
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Meanwhile, the campaign of U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Nunn says the Democrat has accepted five debate offers over the next 10 weeks, and urged David Perdue to do the same. To help encourage the Republican, the Nunn campaign offered this quick sound bite of an interview twixt Perdue and WSB Radio's Scott Slade, who asks Perdue if he's willing to debate the Democrat. Replied the candidate: "Absolutely. Anywhere. Anytime."
The proposed debates:
-- Oct. 7, sponsored by WMAZ of Macon;
-- Oct. 15, by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer;
-- Oct. 26, by the Atlanta Press Club/Georgia Public Broadcasting;
-- Oct. 27 by the League of Women Voters;
-- and Nov. 2 hosted by WSB-TV.
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When Congress returns next week, it will need to pass a spending bill to keep the federal government open beyond the close of next month's fiscal year. With a chance to control the U.S. Senate in the offing, and the first anniversary of the most recent government shutdown coming up, many Republicans want the debate kept as low key as possible.
But not all of them. Some say they'll attempt to rollback any shifts in immigration policy that President Barack Obama has decided to make by then. From the Wall Street Journal:
"It's in the best interest of the country to sit down and hammer things out," Mr. Kingston said, even if that stokes fears of a shutdown. "Our base is so motivated that I don't think it would keep them away" in the election, he said.
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The smoke is clearing from Ferguson, Mo., but the aftershocks continue. Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway has some harsh words for U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson's bill to curtail military surplus to local police departments. Via the Gwinnett Daily Post:
… Conway called the idea of his department carrying out its 40 or 50 annual SWAT calls without an armored vehicle "insane."
"I wish it was 30 years ago where we didn't have the violence that we have now, especially the firearm violence," Conway said. "But it's a different world."
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This weekend, the New York Times picked up on plans by Rep. John Lewis and others to boost black voter turnout this fall in part by invoking the Ferguson, Mo., unrest. In the same piece, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed threw the Trayvon Martin case in the mix:
But in an interview on Friday, Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta said whites — or, as he put it, "the majority community" — did not fully appreciate the fury among African-Americans and their desire to register their discontent.
Invoking the mother of Trayvon Martin, the black Florida teenager killed in 2012, and her plea for people to "use my broken heart," Mr. Reed said he was telling black voters something similar: "The most important tribute you can make to individuals who you believe were treated unfairly is to exercise your franchise."
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Gov. Nathan Deal's run-in with immigration activists at the University of Georgia last week has earned national attention.
Gawker picked up on it last week, and Democrat Jason Carter's campaign wrote up a Buzzfeed post about the "scandal." NBC's "Today" touched on the topic in the above segment over the weekend, but you'll note that the reference to the Georgia governor was a blind one.
Meanwhile, Jon Richards over at Peach Pundit offered his own take in a recent post. He was also at the UGA meeting when Lizbeth Miranda and three others students sparked the confrontation that led Deal to "presume" one of them was an undocumented immigrant.
What can we learn from what happened at the meeting?
First, it was wrong for Governor Deal to assume that the students speaking up about access to college by undocumented students were illegal immigrants. However, it was also wrong for Miranda to imply that Deal's statement was because of her race.
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It's cocaine monkey, the sequel. The National Republican Congressional Committee is re-upping its stimulus-related attack on Augusta Democratic U.S. Rep. John Barrow with the above ad.
(As Politifact noted two years ago about a similar spot, the study on how monkeys react to cocaine -- part of research on drug addiction -- was not in the stimulus bill itself, but it was what the National Institutes of Health used some of its stimulus grant money on.)
Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's attack ads on Augusta Republican challenger Rick Allen got the Factcheck.org treatment late last week. And it wasn't pretty:
- The DCCC doesn't provide evidence of "insider deals." Instead, it assumes corruption because Allen's company once received a contract when it wasn't the lowest bidder. It also speculates that Allen benefited from his brother's position as a county commissioner even though the brother recused himself from votes involving Allen's company.
- The ad also says that "Allen's projects went over budget." Five projects went over budget by a total of almost $935,000. That's less than 1 percent of the total amount of government contracts the company received over an 18-year period.
- And when the ad says "our sales taxes were raised to pay for 16 of Allen's contracts," it ignores the fact that county residents voted to increase their own taxes.
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