On the last weekend before Tuesday's GOP primary vote for governor, Chris Riley, top aide to Gov. Nathan Deal, weighed in with this Twitter message in praise of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, the frontrunner in the contest:
Over the last 7 1/2 years @CaseyCagle and Spkr Ralston have been tremendous partners with @GovernorDeal to move GA to #1! Conservative budgets, over $2.5 billion in reserves, AAA rating, unprecedented job growth, and the largest tax cut in GA's history, while fully funding QBE!
We’re told that the above doesn’t constitute an endorsement. But Riley’s move does raise a distinct possibility: Should this contest go to overtime, will we see Governor Deal himself pick a side?
***
Gubernatorial debates like the one held by the AJC/Channel 2 on Sunday can serve as a testing ground for future lines of argument. On the Republican side, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle has made heavy use of the income tax cut approved by the Legislature this session. How do you counter that?
If you’re a Cagle rival, you argue that Donald Trump made him do it. From Hunter Hill, the former state senator:
"The only reason that you were able to lower the income tax rates in Georgia is because Donald Trump, through the U.S. Congress, passed a bill that would punish Georgia if we didn't lower our taxes. In other words, we would not have lowered taxes here in Georgia had Donald Trump not acted first."
The line was quickly picked up by other GOP candidates who were not Casey Cagle.
***
Over at 11Alive, Doug Richards astutely points out that, no matter how the Democratic race for governor turns out on Tuesday, we won't done with the "two Staceys" meme. The quote from Casey Cagle: "Lowell is my first name, Stacy is my middle name, and Casey is actually a nickname that came on me when I was about five years old."
We’ll just have to adjust the spelling.
***
Credit: Branden Camp
Credit: Branden Camp
One of the most tantalizing exchanges in the Democratic debate for governor involved Stacey Abrams' role as an executive with NOWaccount, which received state contracts while she was the state House's top Democrat.
Abrams said she made certain she was “not involved in any conversations” with the state of Georgia and that it had “absolutely no relationship with the state that I was a part of.” Then she added:
"However, as every small business owner who works at the state Capitol knows you still have to make a living. And as a member of my company, i went before the Fulton County board to talk about a tax policy and to talk about a bond deal. That bond deal was absolutely part of my responsibility that didn't violate any state or federal laws."
Her opponent, former state Rep. Stacey Evans, treated that as an admission of that, as a government official, she had lobbied a government. Said Evans:
"That is wrong. Yes, we all need to make a living. But not through our government service. I've never taken a dime from the government, other than my legislative salary and my expenses," she said, adding that "you had a private business that's livelihood is dependent on Republican approval and you hid it from the Democratic caucus."
The Evans campaign Tweeted out this link as documentation.
***
Stacey Evans had said something similar in an interview weeks ago, but in Sunday's gubernatorial debate with Democratic rival Stacey Abrams, Evans very clearly stated that her support for Gov. Nathan Deal's "opportunity school district" push, which allows the state takeover of failing schools, was a mistake. Said Evans:
"I have said on this campaign that I do regret that vote, because I misunderstood the deep distrust between state government and the education community. I voted for that legislation to be responsive to my home district. I represent part of Cobb where schools have a high population of those who are economically challenged. Those parents wanted a way to get their local school board to pay attention to their school."
***
In last-minute campaigning news:
-- House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, has GOP primary opposition on Tuesday, but seems to be taking it in stride. This morning, we received notice that he's at the White House, for a briefing on policy initiatives.
-- Former state senator Hunter Hill has rolled out a robo-call from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz over the weekend to boost his GOP bid for governor.
-- The ACLU of Georgia has sued the secretary of state's office over its decision to disqualify Democrat Maria Palacios from the race for House District 29, now held by state Rep. Matt Dubnik, R-Gainesville. Citizenship issues were cited – Palacios has lived in Georgia since 2009, but became a citizen last year. The district is 60 percent non-white. Palacios is the only Democrat running, so her elimination would give Dubnik a win in November.
-- Several of the Democratic challengers running in Georgia's Sixth and Seventh congressional districts are vowing to hold multiple town hall events per year should they win their races. Kevin Abel, Lucy McBath and Bobby Kaple signed onto the pledge circulated by the group the Town Hall Project in the Sixth District. In the Seventh, Ethan Pham and David Kim also promised to hold a minimum of four town halls every year of their term should they be victorious in November.
***
Members of the House Freedom Caucus helped sink the GOP's farm bill on Friday, but the conservative group's only Georgia member ended up voting "aye."
U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Monroe, had initially indicated he would back his Freedom Caucus brethren pushing for a vote on an unrelated immigration proposal. But Politico reports that fellow Georgian Tom Graves and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy convinced him to change his vote to 'yes' on the floor at the last minute.
It still wasn’t enough to save the legislation, which was defeated 213-198 in the face of united Democratic opposition. The Georgia delegation voted on party lines.
One person who wasn't a happy camper? Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. He was one of the bill's top salesmen, backing the GOP's effort to bolster work requirements for food stamp recipients. The statement his office released after the measure went down was pretty darn terse: "Our farmers feed the people of this nation and the world, and they deserve the certainty of a Farm Bill."
***
Georgia U.S. Sen. David Perdue is signaling he's open to the federal prison reform bill that the House is expected to pass as soon as this week. The Republican's office sent along this statement about the FIRST STEP Act, which is designed to tackle recidivism rates in federal prisons:
"Georgia continues to lead, along with North Carolina and Texas, to improve anti-recidivism, drug rehabilitation, and job training programs. If the objective now is to isolate these three things and improve upon them in the federal prison system, I'll take a real hard look at that, but what I wasn't on board with before was reducing sentences arbitrarily."
Perdue, you may remember, helped kill a broader criminal justice overhaul in the Senate in 2016 after some conservatives worried it wasn't tough enough on crime.
This bill is far narrower, focusing on rehabilitating prisoners as they exit the system so they don't reoffend, rather than sentencing. It's backed by President Trump, U.S. Rep. Doug Collins and a group of House Democrats. But a bipartisan group of senators is pushing for a broader overhaul not dissimilar from the bill Perdue rejected two years ago. U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta, also stepped up his opposition recently.
***
Georgia Supreme Court Justice Britt Grant will have her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing this week. She's scheduled to appear before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning. President Donald Trump tapped her to fill a vacancy on the federal appeals court in Atlanta earlier this spring.
