State Sen. Jason Carter, D-Atlanta, was on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes" last night, outlining his views on issues likely to liner through November.
An email from the Carter campaign highlighted only the state senator's remarks on education. But you can catch the entire clip here. A bit of what Carter said on Medicaid:
"If you want to fight Obamacare, you can go to Washington. But in Georgia, we have an obligation to do right by our citizens."
And on a bill by state Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, that would curtail early voting in municipal elections:
"We have seen across the country efforts to restrict folks' access to the ballot. I think all of us know the intent behind that is to reduce turnout. In my view, I will always want to be on the side that benefits from having more people participate."
Carter was most careful on the topic of last week’s snowstorm that paralyzed metro Atlanta:
"Now, the governor has apologized profusely. I'm not in a position to play the blame game now. We're going to investigate what happened, but it's clear to me that next time, we have a system in place that allows us to respond to disasters.
"But it requires the governor to take charge from the beginning, organize and institute the disaster management plan, and coordinate the communication. That didn't happen, and it hopefully will next time."
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On Tuesday, Gov. Nathan Deal announced the formation of a severe weather task force to examine the state's handling of meteorological warnings.
When you read this list of panel members, you'll notice a lack of names from outside metro Atlanta. That, the governor said, was by design:
"It is a metro Atlanta task force. We think the circumstances that relate to the metro area with all the interstates is somewhat unique. That is intentional."
But already, we have two doses of criticism of Deal’s weather panel. From William Perry of Common Cause:
"Further, the group, which has some independent participants, is also made up of people who are essentially investigating their own failures."
A more insiderish comment comes from Eric Seidel, the longtime Atlanta radio hand who ran WGST when it was a formidable news outlet. Seidel looked askance at the proliferation of TV weather figures (all three major local stations in Atlanta) on the panel:
"And, he's a good one. In fact, he nailed the storm and the difficulty any forecaster had of predicting where it would finally land. He clearly said, over and over again, that its path could change."
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After becoming the unfortunate face of government during the first hours of last week's snowstorm, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has managed to stay out of further public discussions of emergency management.
But in the New Yorker magazine, Jelani Cobb has an insightful article on Reed that concludes thusly:
If there is a lesson for the mayor, it may be that politics doesn't reward accuracy or nuance when the public perceives their deployment to be nothing more than self-interest. When a crisis hits, you can take the blame, or you can leap so acrobatically into what looks like an attempt to resolve it that voters forget that they were looking for a scapegoat to begin with. In either case, he would not be the first politician whose fortunes depended upon the adroit use of a shovel.
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What'd we tell you about those crying babies? David Perdue, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, is up with the first TV ad of his campaign:
Click here for the background we posted on Tuesday. A note from his campaign says the buy behind the Fred Davis spot is "substantial." Others with an eye on TV time purchases put the dollar force behind the ad at a modest $150,000.
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U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey has joined his House colleague Paul Broun in condemning the newest House GOP leadership version of immigration reform.
Unlike the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate last year, the draft backed by House Speaker John Boehner does not provide a pathway to citizenship adult illegal immigrants living in the U.S. – but it would give them legal status to remain. Those brought to the country as children would be allowed to pursue citizenship.
Gingrey condemned the initiative as yet another form of amnesty. From the press release by Gingrey’s senatorial campaign:
"I'm not sure who's "principles" those are," said Gingrey. "But they are not mine, and they certainly are not the principals conservatives want us advocating. Illegal immigration is one of the toughest issues facing our nation, but amnesty is not a sensible solution, and we simply cannot afford to tack tens of millions on to our unemployment lines in our current economic condition. Regardless of what Leadership says, securing the border remains my top priority when it comes to immigration."
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Ground is shifting in the Republican race to oust U.S. Rep. John Barrow, D-Augusta.
We received a phone call on Tuesday afternoon from John Stone, the former congressional staffer, touting his $43,365 in cash on hand. (In his recent fourth quarter report, GOP rival Rick Allen reports $100, 927 in the bank.)
Stone mentioned that he’d had a conversation with state Rep. Delvis Dutton, R-Glennville, who had expressed interest in the race, but no conclusion had been reached. That changes this morning, with this press release:
Glennville, GA - Following an outpouring of support for Delvis Dutton's candidacy in Georgia's 12th District, Dutton today announced he has filed the necessary paperwork to run for Congress.
By the way, we mentioned earlier this week that there was talk going around that Eugene Yu of Augusta would drop out of the Republican race for the U.S. Senate and into the race for the 12th.
Tim Bryant reports that, in an WGAU interview with himself and Martha Zoller, Yu quashed that talk with a single word: “No.”
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