Poll after poll has shown that President Donald Trump's hold on core Republican voters isn't something to be doubted. Yet to see the consequences jump up in front of one's nose is another matter.
As we told you earlier this morning, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, one of two candidates in the GOP runoff for governor, has returned "Jake" to the TV screen in a 30-second spot. This time, the side-by-side, double-barreled shotgun is broken open and lays over Kemp's shoulder – as is proper.
The script calls for Kemp to wonder aloud why his rival, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, is coming down on him so hard. Says Jake:
"Because you're a proud, hardcore Trump conservative on spending, immigration and guns. Because Cagle's in a major corruption scandal and dropping like a rock in the polls."
We’ve highlighted Jake’s first sentence above to make a point: In the midst of blistering blowback over the Trump administration’s decision to separate parents and children illegally crossing the southern U.S. border, a public reaction so fierce that Trump has since retreated, the Kemp campaign didn’t hesitate to associate itself with that policy.
In GOP primary runoff held in the depths of July, “tender age” shelters aren’t something to worry about.
One day earlier, the Cagle campaign had accused Kemp of associating with the man who has become one of Trump’s harshest critics and thus the Judas Iscariot of a Trump-oriented GOP: Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.
The evidence? A 2015 Tweet from one of your Insiders during Kasich’s first swing through Georgia in the run-up to the 2016 presidential contest. Kemp attended an event for Kasich in Sandy Springs, along with Karen Handel and Ralph Reed. (Note to Cagle campaign: It was rally, not a fundraiser.)
What's more, the Cagle campaign alleges that Kemp once expressed a modicum of doubt about Trump. They've put a focus on this quote that appeared on Aug. 9, 2016 in the Athens Banner-Herald:
"We went through a really long process" - the Iowa caucuses kicked off the presidential nomination process in February - "and we got the candidate we got," Kemp, a Republican, told the Athens GOP at its regular monthly meeting.
"And he won fair and square," Kemp, an Athens native who served in the state Senate before being elected secretary of state, added to punctuate his Monday remarks.
"I get where people are with Trump and some of the other candidates, but I'm a firm believer in the process," Kemp said.
To be fair, in that Thursday press release, Cagle confessed that he originally supported Jeb Bush in the 2016, but jumped onto the Trump bandwagon that spring. Kemp never did, the Cagle campaign alleges.
All that aside, here’s an embarrassing fact for both candidates: As president, Trump has made two visits to Atlanta. He made several trips to Georgia during the 2016 campaign. Yet neither Cagle nor Trump has produced a photo of himself with the man.
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Our AJC colleague Bill Torpy interviewed Clay Tippins, the former GOP candidate for governor who secretly recorded Casey Cagle in a meeting two days after the May 22 primary. These may be the most telling paragraphs:
[Clay] recalled entering hand-to-hand combat training as part of becoming a Navy Seal. Tippins, a product of the suburbs, told a veteran Seal he had never been in a real fight. What should he do?
"He told me, 'You have to decide, are you going to fight? Or are you going to kick ass?'" Tippins recalled. "If you're a commando, your goal is to confront bad wherever you can and win the battle. There's an expression: Never fight fair."
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Atlanta is no longer in the hunt for the 2020 Democratic National Convention. We had been one of eight finalists, but the DNC said this week it had narrowed its 2020 convention locations to four: Houston, Miami Beach, Milwaukee and Denver. The convention is in July 2020 – much earlier than usual, because of the Summer Olympics.
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Our AJC colleague Maya Prabhu has this and more in today's print edition:
Lieutenant governor candidate Geoff Duncan is challenging his GOP runoff opponent, state Sen. David Shafer, to release his taxes and further specify how he became a multimillionaire.
Not only is Duncan calling on Shafer to release tax returns from the 16 years he has served in the state Senate, but the Cumming Republican also is encouraging anyone with information about how the senator earns a living to submit an anonymous tip on a newly launched website.
Duncan, a former state representative, on Wednesday released his tax returns from the years he served in the state House.
The Shafer campaign described Duncan’s demand as an act of desperation.
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On Thursday, the U.S. House gave narrow approval to a farm bill. Twenty Republicans voted against it, as did every Democrat. The measure passed by only two votes.
Think about that margin in the context of the Trump administration’s proposed reorganization of the federal government. Most eyes have gone to the merger of the U.S. departments of education and labor – an effort backed by those who think the federal government’s primary interest in education should be workforce development.
But consider the proposal to shift the nation’s food stamp program out from under the Department of Agriculture and into the Department of Health and Human Services. Democrats fear it would make entitlement spending – DHHS oversees Medicare and Medicaid spending – a very large target.
Yet think of this, too: It would wreck the urban/rural alliance that has been essential to the passage of nearly every previous farm bill for the last five decades. Though Democrats boycotted the bill on Thursday, ticked off at new work requirements for food stamps that they describe as punitive, passage of farm bills past have amounted to a trade: Food stamps for crop subsidies.
Erase food stamps from the farm bill, and you also remove Democratic votes for subsidies.
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The public cost for Georgia's seemingly never-ending legal battle with its neighbors over water is rising again. Gov. Nathan Deal signed an executive order this week shifting $1 million from his emergency fund to pay the latest tab for the legal feud. That's on top of at least another $29.5 million Deal set aside over the last two years for the case's legal fees. The U.S. Supreme Court could decide the latest phase of the case as early as Friday. The order also includes $6 million to cover costs related to Hurricane Irma and roughly $2 million for the newly-created ATL Authority.
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State House Minority Leader Bob Trammell of Luthersville is calling on his former classmate, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, to step down over her defense of President Donald Trump's now-reversed policy of separating migrant children from their families. The Democrat joined other graduates of the University of Virginia's law school who criticized Nielsen for backing the "cruel practice." From the letter:
"Continuing to use children as leverage for broader reform in spite of this recognition is an extraordinarily cruel and cynical act that is unworthy of a public servant."
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Speaking of immigration, the U.S. House on Thursday had plans to vote on two Republican bills aimed at addressing not only the family separation issue but border security, visas for migrants' relatives and the Dreamers.
The first failed, and leaders delayed a vote on a second, more moderate plan until next week, due to lack of support.
Whether or not that vote occurs was placed in doubt this morning, when President Donald Trump advised, via Twitter, that House Republicans avoid any further votes on immigration: "Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November."
That first House measure offered Dreamers legal status but not a special pathway to citizenship. It would also have funded President Donald Trump’s border wall and ended the diversity visa lottery.
Nine Georgia Republicans backed it. The state’s only dissenting GOP vote came from U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson of West Point. The freshman’s office sent over a statement saying he was looking for a plan that provided “border security and an end to illegal immigration” but that the bill did “ “did not answer those concerns.”
Others expressed frustration that it fell short of passage. "Simply put, I believe our nation's immigration system is broken, and the failure of today's vote to fund the wall, end chain migration, support merit-based immigration and reform our agricultural worker visa program is beyond disappointing," said U.S. Rep. Rick Allen of Evans.
The more moderate plan, should it come to a vote next week, could split Georgia's GOP delegation. U.S. Rep. Jody Hice of Monroe on Wednesday framed that proposal as "amnesty" because it could eventually include a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers. Other Georgia Republicans indicated they'd be willing to support the plan.
