On Wednesday, state Sen. Brandon Beach and his wife went to Emory University Hospital to have 12 vials of blood drawn.
The couple will make the same trip three more times over the next month, as part of a clinical study of antibodies harbored by those who have survived or been exposed to the novel coronavirus.
“I want to give back. I want to help somebody,” said the Alpharetta lawmaker, who acknowledges that he has amends to make.
But Beach also wants something else known – that he wasn’t the one who introduced the pandemic to the state Capitol last month. The virus likely came courtesy of two Bartow County lawmakers, Beach alleges, one of them a fellow state senator.
So far, the coronavirus pandemic has figured most prominently in two Georgia political campaigns. One is U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s bid to fill out the term of Johnny Isakson, which won’t come to a first vote until Nov. 3. The other is the GOP primary for state Senate District 21, in which Beach faces a challenge from state Rep. Michael Caldwell of Woodstock. The June 9 vote will occur largely by mail.
The virus’ entry into the latter contest is a complicated tale, but it involves no stock transactions.
On Monday, March 16, state and local governments in Georgia were already shutting down in the face of the pandemic. Lawmakers at the state Capitol, having already suspended their regular winter session, met in special session to give emergency powers to Gov. Brian Kemp.
The assembly was to last five minutes or so. Instead it stretched on several hours as nervous legislators eyed the exits. Among those in attendance was Beach, who had submitted to a COVID-19 test the previous Saturday.
Two days after lawmakers left Atlanta, Beach received his test results. They were positive. Beach reported back to his colleagues, and quite a bit of hell broke loose. Gov. Brian Kemp rebuked the senator. House Speaker David Ralston called him reckless — for thinking his symptoms were severe enough to seek a test that was in exceedingly high demand, yet still being willing to plunge into a gathering of lawmakers.
"I'm not a bad person – I would never ever do this on purpose. I was surprised as anybody. I thought it was my regular sinus bronchitis stuff I get every year," Beach said in his own defense.
And then he went to bed, where he stayed from Saturday to Saturday. He lost 18 pounds, along with his sense of smell and taste.
Last Monday, Beach was feeling well enough to participate in a weekly public affairs podcast produced by his friend, Ben Burnett, the Alpharetta city councilman. Beach expressed contrition.
“I shouldn’t have went down on Monday. I know it,” he said. “I haven’t tried to shy away from it. I made a mistake. I own it. I’ve apologized for it.”
But Beach said more. “Looking back on the timeline and the contact tracing, it was very obvious that Bruce Thompson was the one who first had it. he was up at that church in Cartersville,” he said.
A March 1 service at the Church at Liberty Square, marking the retirement of the church's music minister, has been identified as one of several hotspots for the pandemic in Georgia. At least four who attended the event — or were close to someone who did – have died.
State Sen. Bruce Thompson, R-White, was a keynote speaker at the event. The church closed its doors on March 8. Thompson continued reporting to the state Capitol through Crossover Day, March 12. And then went into the hospital. He would later be diagnosed with COVID-19, as would state Rep. Matthew Gambill, R-Cartersville, who was also at the March 1 church service.
“[Thompson] had it before I did. I tested positive before he did,” Beach said. Three other senators in the chamber would also be diagnosed with COVID-19, as well as at least one staff member.
I called Beach a few days later, and he was even more emphatic.
“In my mind, there’s no doubt that this was the place where these two individuals contracted it, and they brought it back to the Capitol. I was the first one to test positive, but Bruce Thompson was ground zero,” the Alpharetta senator said.
“I’m not blaming him, I’m not mad at him. But I’m saying, take some responsibility here. Don’t act like you don’t have any responsibility in this,” Beach said.
We reached out to Gambill but did not hear back before deadline.
Thompson doesn’t believe he contracted the virus at the Church at Liberty Square. Most of the infections, he said, occurred in the far-away choir section. He also questioned Beach’s credibility.
“He’s making statements that are not true. His dates are wrong,” Thompson told me, noting that Beach has accused him of making three visits to the church in early March, when he only made one.
There is a backstory here that helps explain the sound and fury over who infected the state Capitol.
Thompson and Beach are Republican colleagues, but they are not friends.
Beach is chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee – an influential post in traffic-heavy north Fulton County. Early last year, Beach announced he would challenge U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Marietta, who had just ousted Karen Handel of Roswell from her seat in Congress. Michael Caldwell, backed by Thompson, announced for Beach’s seat in the state Senate.
But Republicans in Washington decided to consolidate their support behind Handel, and in mid-November, Beach ended his congressional campaign and announced he would seek re-election to his state Senate seat.
Caldwell declined to withdraw. And four days after Beach made his decision, Thompson and his wife wrote checks to Caldwell totaling $2,800. “I keep being pulled into his race by Brandon. It’s not a race against me. It’s a race against Michael and his district – which is primarily Cherokee County,” Thompson said.
Geography is a large part of this virus-plagued contest. North Fulton, where Beach lives, makes up a surprisingly small part of the district. Beach last had primary opposition in 2016, winning with 58% of the vote. But 83% of his votes came from the Cherokee side of the county line.
Republicans in District 21 are fractured. Thompson and Caldwell belong to what might be called a stridently libertarian faction. Beach aims his appeals at Cherokee County’s business community.
Beach’s actual opponent has mostly stayed away from the viral issue, but not entirely.
“Brandon isn’t being criticized for being sick. The governor and the speaker called him reckless because he disobeyed CDC guidelines and the governor’s recommendations,” Caldwell told me. “He knowingly gambled with his colleagues’ health.”
One might think that such a breach of coronavirus etiquette is fatal, but Beach’s opponents have given him maneuvering room with viral missteps of their own.
Nine days after his COVID-19 diagnosis, Thompson’s family piled themselves and 14-days’ worth of supplies into three vehicles and caravanned to the family’s island vacation home in St. George, Fla.
Florida’s governor had just issued an executive order intended to discourage out-of-staters, making 14-day quarantines mandatory. Thompson told me that accompanying him to Florida on March 31 were letters from two physicians, recommending that he remove himself from pollen-filled Georgia. It would be better for his breathing, they said.
Nonetheless, the local sheriff was ticked, to the point of stationing a deputy outside the Thompson vacation habitat.
“I’m not playing around,” the sheriff told the AJC. “I appreciate his position in Georgia, being a senator, but it’s irresponsible for him to be here, I think, and to put our community in danger.”
It was a Florida fracas, but now you know why the sound carried 40 miles beyond Atlanta. And is likely to continue until June 9.
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