In a post-election interview aired on WABE (90.1FM), Gov. Nathan Deal said Thursday that, at most, only "a mighty thin line" connects his office to an ethics lawsuit that resulted in an April verdict that has forced the state to shell out more than $1.1 million.
A Fulton County jury sided with top staffer Stacey Kalberman's whistleblower charge that she was forced out for too aggressively investigating the inner workings of Deal's 2010 campaign for governor.
To WABE's Denis O'Hayer, Deal repeated his argument that his office had nothing to do with the ethics agency, which is designed to be independent. That's when O'Hayer pointed out that Deal's executive counsel, Ryan Teague, helped recruit her replacement, Holly LaBerge.
O'Hayer: "So you're saying you did not initiate that?"
Deal: "No, not at all. I didn't know about it until well after the fact. We get those kind of calls, from department heads and agencies, all the time. 'Do you know of somebody in state government who might want to make a change, or might be looking to go to another type of agency?' If that's the involvement, that's a very thin line to be able to place any responsibility on.
"He did understand that Holly LaBerge might be interested in moving from where she was with the public defender's office. He relayed that information to the ethics commission, they made the judgment call … If that's all that they can hang their hat on, that's a very thin line."
The line isn't as slender as the governor might like. What Deal didn’t say was that Ryan Teague, the governor's executive counsel, didn't just pass LaBerge's name along, but called her himself. LaBerge testified in Kalberman’s case that she was contacted by someone in the governor’s office, but said she didn’t remember who it was.
Deal’s office, however, told the AJC it was Teague.
Teague and the governor’s chief of staff, Chris Riley, also met with LaBerge, according to records.
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The two Republican survivors of the U.S. Senate race appear to be dealing with the next eight weeks of campaigning in a cautious fashion. During the primary, the state GOP sponsored a series of sometimes awkward, seven-person debates around the state to showcase the candidates.
You’d think that, with the field winnowed to David Perdue and Jack Kingston, a series of debates would be much more compelling.
But no. Ryan Mahoney, spokesman for the state Republican party, says no debates are in the works for the second stage of the Senate campaign. Candidates will be able to hone their messages without the inconvenience of a live audience.
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The U.S. House passed legislation Thursday to curb the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records, despite critics who said the measure had been diluted to the point that they could no longer support it.
Among the latter was U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, one of two surviving Republicans in the race for U.S. Senate. How Kingston explained his “no” vote:
"The American people deserve real assurances from their elected leaders that the government is not spying on them, and that is done by implementing true reforms and proper oversight, not half-measures that gloss over legitimate privacy concerns. I will continue to fight for transparency and accountability from our intelligence community on behalf of all Americans."
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Common Core fever may be about to break in Cobb County. From the Marietta Daily Journal:
The topic of math textbooks has been a controversial one for the school board.
In April 2013, the board voted 4-3 to reject spending $7.5 million on math textbooks aligned with the Common Core national standards.
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A state senator who had already decided not to run for re-election is leaving office a little bit early. Next week, in fact, according to our AJC colleague Aaron Gould Sheinin:
University System officials say he will be paid $165,000 a year in his new post.
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Some serious weirdness is going on in Mississippi. From the Jackson Clarion-Ledger:
Mark Mayfield of Ridgeland, an attorney and state and local tea party leader, was arrested Thursday along with Richard Sager, a Laurel elementary school P.E. teacher and high school soccer coach.
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Ride this train of thought with us. In Georgia Trend magazine, Millard Grimes has this retrospective on the life and recent death of Howard "Bo" Callaway, who almost became Georgia's first Republican governor back in 1964:
Callaway contested the law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the 1804 law by a 4-3 vote, with Justice Hugo Black of Alabama casting the deciding vote.
Lester Maddox, the Democratic candidate, was elected governor by the heavily Democratic General Assembly. Callaway accepted the verdict, and 36 years passed before another Republican got as many votes for governor.
But Grimes gave no mention one of Callaway’s legacies. John White was Callaway’s press secretary during that campaign. His story begins with this AJC photograph taken during John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign swing through Georgia in 1960:
Take a look inside the red circle and the young man behind the fellow with the camera. That's White. He was a 16-year-old reporter for the Pine Mountain Review – the newspaper for the town that only three years earlier was known as Chipley. (Pine Mountain was considered more fitting for a community that was marketing itself as a resort town on the edge of Callaway Gardens.)
The event was on the steps of the Little White House in Warm Springs.
“After the speech I talked to Kennedy, until they realized I was wearing press credentials and was asking him news questions,” White said. “They thought I was just a kid. They hustled him off.”
The story he wrote earned him a stringer’s position with WDAK radio in Columbus, which led to a news directorship, then to the Callaway campaign. Eventually, Coke would lure him into its public relations machine.
White, a longtime GOP activist who now lives in Decatur, turns 70 today. Wish him a happy birthday.
