Get ready for a wave of outside spending to hit Georgia to fight -- that's right -- the proliferation of outside spending.
A political action committee called
, backed by tech entrepreneurs, launched a campaign urging Senate candidates Michelle Nunn and David Perdue to agree to reject any so-called "dark" money coming from secretive groups.
CounterPAC rolled out a full-page ad in the AJC's pages as part of a campaign calling on full disclosure of campaign spending. The same group also ran ads targeting competitive Senate races in Alaska and West Virginia as part of their campaign.
Jim Greer, the group's co-founder and a former CEO of the online gaming site Kongregate, said the pledge is "about restoring accountability for voters and agreeing to elections that aren't manipulated by a flood of secret money."
CounterPAC plans to act as both the "arbiter and enforcer" of the pledge, which would require candidates to give 50 percent of any funds spent on their campaigns by a group with undisclosed donors to charity.
The CounterPAC folks aren't on new ground in Georgia. Nunn already came out with a "Peach Pledge" modeled on a similar premise. Perdue's camp dismissed it as "empty rhetoric."
***
Among the pre-recess spasm of votes for the U.S. Senate was a cloture motion on the judicial nomination of Jill Pryor to serve in Atlanta on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor cleared the bar, 58-33.
She didn't need 60 votes because Majority Leader Harry Reid changed the rules on judicial nominations this year, and there were 33 Republican no votes because Harry Reid changed the rules on judicial nominations this year. (Georgia's Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, who negotiated Pryor's nomination among others, voted yes.)
Pryor will be officially confirmed when the Senate returns Sept. 8, joining Judge Julie Carnes on the appeals bench. We're still waiting on the district court nominees from the "Peach Pact" among the White House and the Georgia senators, and there has been no word on the fate of controversial Michael Boggs.
***
Georgia's newly minted Republican ticket is already hitting the road together. Gov. Nathan Deal and Senate nominee David Perdue are doing a joint rally Saturday at noon in Alpharetta, at the GOP's "North Fulton Victory Office."
Perdue then has stops in Lawrenceville and McDonough. He's billing it as the "grassroots kickoff tour."
***
Democrat Michelle Nunn ticked off a list of people she gets advice from to make the point that the 144-page series of memos was far from her only source of counsel.
She mentioned her two children were among the most prolific advisers, so we asked what they offered. Said Nunn:
"The two most salient pieces of advice - one law to make sure the day after Halloween is always a holiday. And my daughter's good advice is I should be smiling as much as possible because Georgians want a happy senator."
About the Author
