Because the GOP runoff for state school superintendent has boiled down to a pro-con debate over Common Core, top figures in the Republican camp have been hesitant to take sides.
That may be changing. Mike Buck, the frontrunner in the May 20 primary and chief of staff to exiting Superintendent John Barge, on Tuesday released a list of endorsements.
Topping it was Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, chairman of the powerful Senate Rules Committee and a key ally of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle.
No other state lawmakers or office-holders were listed. Buck, a resident of Rome, is backing the continued implementation of Common Core, the new voluntary national standards for public k-12 education.
Richard Woods, also an educator, considers the Common Core approach a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Click here for some background on both candidates.
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The Macon/Bibb County Commission isn't overly fond of the state's new concealed-carry law, which goes into effect on July 1. From the Macon Telegraph:
A resolution opposing Georgia's new gun law as it is written passed unanimously. It's to be sent to state officials along with a letter asking for some changes to House Bill 60, dubbed the Safe Carry Protection Act. [Al] Tillman, the measure's sponsor, said the law, which goes into effect July 1, would greatly increase security expenses in government buildings and cost business to public venues from performers who don't want guns at their shows.
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Early this morning, we told you that David Perdue, one of two Republicans in the U.S. Senate runoff, is back up on TV with an attack on rival Jack Kingston. But The Hill newspaper tells us that Kingston is on the verge of his own return to television:
Kingston's first ad ties Perdue to companies whose boards he served on that took stimulus money and for his membership with the National Retail Federation, which backed immigration reform that Kingston's campaign paints as "amnesty."
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Jason Carter's campaign pounced on Gov. Nathan Deal's comments to us this week on his openness to changing the definition of a whistleblower.
In the interview, the governor said lawmakers "certainly" need to review a court's ruling that automatically granted whistleblower status to government employees charged with investigating state agencies and employees. He was elaborating on an earlier suggestion that he wanted to more narrowly define who can file a whistleblower lawsuit
Shortly after the comments were published, the Carter campaign sent out a fundraising dispatch with this:
Well, Gov. Deal, we have a message for you: Whistleblowers aren't the problem. Your cover-up is.
It should be noted that Deal didn't say he wanted to "silence whistleblowers," but rather that he didn't want a class of employees -- specifically those government workers charged with investigating state agencies and employees -- to be "virtually immune" to being fired because they're classified as having whistleblower protection.
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If you want to know how the tenor of politics has changed over the last half-century, consider this 1964 letter from U.S. Sen. Richard Russell, D-Ga., to Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, tweeted out on Tuesday by historian Michael Beschloss:
The message followed Russell’s unsuccessful but hotly debated attempt to block the pioneering Civil Rights Act that was passed 50 years ago this week.
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The National Republican Campaign Committee is coming to Rick Allen's aid on the airwaves this fall in his attempt to unseat U.S. Rep. John Barrow, D-Augusta. The 12th District of Georgia is on a list of 26 districts where the NRCC has reserved $30 million of airtime, according to the Washington Post. Barrow, as we told you yesterday, is getting D.C. air cover of his own.
About $6 million of outside money flowed into the 12th in 2012. Looks like it will be a nationalized contest once again.
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U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Lawrenceville, wants to get rid of the Congressional franking privilege -- but taxpayers still will pick up the tab for lawmakers' mail. Woodall introduced a bill Tuesday with Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., that would require members of Congress to buy postage like everyone else out of their office budgets.
Woodall gave a lengthy explanation of his proposal on the House floor last month. He said it would help assuage the concerns of town hall agitators who complain about "free mail." Mailings come out of members' taxpayer-funded office budgets now, just after the fact once the Postal Service sends them a bill (or they self-report small expenses) for the franked mail -- which comes with the lawmakers' signature rather than a stamp.
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Former New York Times data-man Nate Silver, now hanging his own shingle at ABC-affiliated FiveThirtyEight, finds fault with that Times story the other day attributing Eric Cantor's loss and Thad Cochran's likely one to new migrants who are nationalizing the races. Writes Silver:
If anything, Cantor did better in counties with more transplants. This is especially so if you exclude the city of Richmond (Virginia has a number of cities that are not incorporated into any county), where Cantor was born, and where he maintains his home and his local campaign office. (I've also excluded Henrico County, which is where Cantor's opponent David Brat makes his home.) If you do that, the relationship between Cantor's vote share and the percentage of transplants is highly statistically significant and positive — running in exactly the opposite direction of what the Times's theory would imply:
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We told you this weekend that a fight for the No. 3 position of majority whip has become a regional test for Republicans in the U.S. House. The candidates are Reps. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Peter Roskam of Illinois and Marlin Stutzman of Indiana. From the Associated Press:
"We've proven you can pass conservative policy that unites our conference," Scalise said Tuesday evening after meeting with Pennsylvania Republicans to make his pitch. "Because I think there was some feeling for a while that there was a conflict between the two, that it was either one or the other. And we've shown that there's a different way you can do this."
Roskam, 52, now serves as McCarthy's chief deputy and can make the case that he already knows the job and can count votes. To counter the regional argument, he's promised to appoint a red-state lawmaker as his own chief deputy.
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An interesting tidbit about voter ID laws, from the Washington Post:
The restrictions have a disproportionate impact on the black population, according to a review of census data. While the 22 states are home to 46 percent of the overall population, they represent 57 percent of the nation's black population.
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