We told you last week of Billy Davis, the Republican challenger to U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk who has had some unwanted background exposed – including a year of prison time stemming from charges that he lied on a federally guaranteed loan application.
Davis began his political career in Arizona as a state senator. He has a florid biography on Wikipedia, updated just last month, which includes this image of the local GOP ticket:
Yes, in the middle, that's the Jan Brewer who would go on to become governor of Arizona. Davis doesn't say so, but he turned out to be a speedbump on her path to success. From a retrospective on the former governor at tucson.com:
Four years later she moved to the Senate, capitalizing on the financial problems of state Sen. Bill Davis and including a rebuke from the Senate Ethics Committee to beat him in the Republican primary.
Then in 1996 she got voters to oust Maricopa County Supervisor Ed King after he voted for a sales tax to fund the stadium where the Diamondbacks play.
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Why can't Donald Trump be stopped? It has something to do with testosterone. Roll Call newspaper has this piece on a study that showed women were much more likely to be moved by anti-Trump TV spots than men.
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Clarkston's push to decriminalize marijuana has given way to another controversial proposal, at least temporarily.
Mayor Ted Terry said the vote to make possession of less than an ounce of the drug a ticket-only offense has been delayed at least two weeks after the chair of the public safety committee had a sudden death in the family.
In the meantime, the DeKalb city is pushing what Terry calls "the toughest indoor smoking and tobacco ban in the state" through the regulation of vaping and e-cigarette products. "Cities are laboratories of democracy - we should be encouraging them to try different policy approaches on ubiquitous challenges we face as a nation," he said.
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The focus Tuesday may be on "campus carry" legislation, but our AJC colleague Mark Davis reminds us that the battle over "religious liberty" legislation is heating up. From his Sunday opus:
The legislation may underscore Donald Trump's presidential aspirations, too. The Republican front-runner has won wide support from religious conservatives worried about a nation loosed from its moral moorings.
In Georgia, lawmakers recently passed a "religious liberty" bill, spite of critics who argued that the measure was discriminatory. Supporters seethed as Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed it. They did not go away quietly: on a rainy Friday, hundreds gathered outside the Capitol to sing hymns and cheer for their Christian beliefs.
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The stellar students at The Red & Black, the University of Georgia's independent student newspaper, have a killer scoop this morning about the mysterious departure of a high-ranking UGA administrator. Catch it here.
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Yesterday we highlighted a Washington Post story that prominently featured DeKalb County in its illustration of how race and housing prices are linked as communities seek to recover from the worst of the housing crisis.
Now U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta, says he plans to push for a hearing on this issue:
"This month I was previously scheduled to meet with Treasury's Inspector General on this issue. But I am going to be communicating with the committees of Congress that have jurisdiction over this matter to see whether a hearing can be called on this topic before the end of this session."
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