One of the most influential voices in evangelical politics is calling it quits. From Religious News Service:
Mark DeMoss, 56, announced in a letter to friends Tuesday (Jan. 15) he is closing his eponymous, Atlanta-based firm — which describes itself as the nation's largest PR agency serving faith-based organizations and causes — at the end of March.
In a way, this is yet another example of how Donald Trump has roiled the world of religious conservatives. DeMoss was chief of staff to Jerry Falwell Sr., whose Moral Majority became a driving force of Republican politics in the 1980s. DeMoss was a longtime adviser to the late Billy Graham.
In 2012, from his Buckhead office, DeMoss also served as liaison between GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon, and traditional evangelicals suspicious of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Three years ago, DeMoss stepped down from the board of trustees at Liberty University, where he once was a student, after university president Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed Donald Trump for president. DeMoss called Trump’s behavior inconsistent with the values of the school.
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To the victor goes the spoils: The new Brian Kemp administration has brought a host of personnel changes to statehouse jobs. We're told that many former staffers to Gov. Nathan Deal were informed this week that they were out of a job. So were a handful of agency heads. Kemp's office hasn't released a list of department heads yet, but several were introduced during a Capitol meeting on Thursday. A few others are retiring, including Steve Stancil, who has announced a Feb. 1 departure as state property officer.
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Something we overlooked: The Athens Banner-Herald reported earlier this week that state Rep. Tom McCall, R-Elberton, took the oath of office on Monday at an Athens hospital, where he is recovering from open-heart surgery. McCall, a 24-year veteran of the Capitol, is chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.
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It's never too early to get a jump on 2020. Majority Forward, a liberal political action committee, is bankrolling cable TV ads beginning today that target U.S. Sen. David Perdue for sticking with President Donald Trump in the shutdown fight. "Instead of being independent, he sides with his party leaders, who refuse to even allow a vote to reopen the government," the ad's narrator states. Watch it here.
The group made a six-figure ad TV buy in the Atlanta media market for cable news stations and early morning news broadcasts. It’s also targeting a handful of other GOP senators up for reelection in 2020.
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Speaking of David Perdue, he was named the chairman of two Senate subcommittees this week. He'll have oversight over federal housing, transportation and community development programs on the Senate Banking Committee, as well as a gavel on the Senate Armed Services' subcommittee on sea power, which gives him jurisdiction over the Navy and Marine Corps programs.
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Give a shout-out to Eric Tanenblatt, who was just appointed to the board of the nonprofit Points of Light foundation. Tanenblatt is global chair of public policy and regulation at Dentons and served in President George H.W. Bush's administration. The late president started the Points of Light foundation and once appointed another Georgian - Michelle Nunn - its executive director.
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You know that Republicans in Washington have finally cracked down on U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, removing him from his committee assignments for publicly wondering what's wrong with white supremacy.
But House GOP leaders didn’t act until U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, an African-American Republican from South Carolina, called out King in a Washington Post op-ed.
In an subsequent article published in The State, a newspaper headquartered in Columbia, S.C., Scott said he was growing weary with serving as the conscience for his Republican colleagues:
"One of the things I always think about is, whenever I do what it is that I do, that the next time something occurs, I'm going to be in the same position ... And I don't want to consistently be the guy who has to point out all the challenges or inadequacies or things that are just inconsistent with reality, from my perspective, for the party or for the country," he said.
