For all the media attention former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has gotten in recent months as a potential running mate for Republican presidential presumptive Donald Trump, the hype may have been just that -- all hype.
The former Georgia lawmaker said Sunday he has not yet been contacted by the Trump campaign about joining the ticket. "Nobody's called me. Nobody has said, 'Would you like to be?' Nobody has said, 'Would you be willing to be considered?' Nobody has said anything,"
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"(Trump's) probably going to start thinking about it about two days before Cleveland," Gingrich said. "I think that Donald Trump does not want to make a decision until the convention."
When the time comes for Trump to decide, Gingrich said the vetting process in his case would be simple because of how long he has been in the public eye.
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Another surprise on the Sunday morning news circuit: Longtime conservative columnist and commentator George Will explains that he didn't leave the Republican party -- the Republican party left him:
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European markets continued their plunge today in response to last week's vote by Britain to leave the European Union. And Democratic presidential presumptive Hillary Clinton began her attempt to emphasize GOP rival Donald Trump's golf course reaction:
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There have been whispers over the last few weeks that Attorney General Sam Olens was interested in the Kennesaw State University job. Those whispers might have even had legs at one point or another, we're told. But let this development be taken as a signal that Olens isn't going anywhere. From the press release sent out by his office:
"I am honored to be elected Vice President of NAAG during the coming year," said Olens. "I want to congratulate our newly elected President, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen. I look forward to working with him and my counterparts on ways to better our individual states."
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While we're addressing scuttlebutt, top Donald Trump surrogate Bruce LeVell is the subject of much talk about his political future. One theory has him running to replace embattled Georgia GOP chair John Padgett next year, a race that could include Michael McNeely and Alex Johnson.
LeVell, a Dunwoody jeweler and head of Trump's National Diversity Coalition, hinted to us he's got bigger things in mind. "The Trump train has more appeal to it," he said. His daughter, meanwhile, is getting on board as well. From NBC News:
The 21-year-old rising college senior will be based in Washington, D.C. and will work closely with the RNC's Director of African American Initiatives and Urban Media, Telly Lovelace.…
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You know a political campaign has penetrated when it roils a church whose membership includes many of that community's top leaders. On Sunday morning, our eagle-eyed AJC colleague Jennifer Brett caught site of this vehicle parked on real estate belonging to the First United Methodist Church of Marietta:
Tim Lee, the incumbent chairman of the Cobb County Commission, is a member here, as are many of Cobb's political leaders. But Lee is also locked in a Republican primary runoff with retired Marine colonel Mike Boyce, and some members of the church apparently didn't appreciate the campaign's intrusion. Brett reports that the vehicle and its signage (whose presence wasn't sanctioned by the church) were gone by the time morning services were over.
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Granted, her last name gave her an alphabetical advantage, but state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams of Atlanta topped a list of up-and-coming Democrats drawn up by Frank Bruni of the New York Times:
She's collected a bevy of citations from an array of organizations and publications as a state lawmaker of extraordinary distinction, and she has a reputation — irksome to some Democrats, inspiring to others — for reaching across party lines….
The question is how broad a path to higher office the state of Georgia affords Democrats, and how many other Democrats, including Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta, are crowding it.
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You think Europe has gotten strange lately? You don't know the half of it. Josh Rogin of the Washington Post reports that U.S. ambassadors to several countries in Europe, and Russia, too, are complaining that Russian security forces have targeted them in a campaign of harassment:
In Moscow, where the harassment is most pervasive, diplomats reported slashed tires and regular harassment by traffic police. Former ambassador Michael McFaul was hounded by government-paid protesters, and intelligence personnel followed his children to school. The harassment is not new; in the first term of the Obama administration, Russian intelligence personnel broke into the house of the U.S. defense attache in Moscow and killed his dog, according to multiple former officials who read the intelligence reports.
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