In December 2016, the obituary for 25-year-old Charles Daniel "Charley" Joyner, grandson of U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, listed the young man's love for wrestling and his 3.95 GPA in math at Georgia Southern, where he had been about to receive his diploma.
What wasn’t mentioned was the cause of death.
In Washington, The Hill newspaper is attempting to show the ubiquitous nature of the opioid crisis through its impact on members of Congress and their families. This morning, it was Isakson's turn:
The Georgia Republican learned the news when he woke to the sound of his phone ringing at 3 a.m. It was his son, John, on the line with an urgent message: Police had found John's 25-year-old stepson dead from an opioid overdose right before he was set to graduate college with honors.
For nearly four years, Charley Joyner had been in recovery from a drug addiction.
"That one slip up, that one night before graduation, cost him his life," Isakson said in an interview.
Other than an impromptu mention during a Senate hearing last year, Isakson had not publicly mentioned the circumstances of his grandson’s death. The newspaper said Isakson and his wife have established a scholarship in Charley Joyner’s name at Georgia Southern.
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This is our favorite Barbara Bush story of the morning. From the Washington Post:
When Wellesley College invited Barbara Bush to speak at its 1990 graduation, protests broke out on campus. A hundred and fifty students spelled out their objections in a petition to the school's president at the time, Nannerl Keohane: "Wellesley teaches that we will be rewarded on the basis of our own merit, not on that of a spouse. To honor Barbara Bush as a commencement speaker is to honor a woman who has gained recognition through the achievements of her husband, which contravenes what we have been taught over the last four years at Wellesley."
They received sympathy from an unlikely source: the then-first lady herself, who with her typical bluntness said she found their complaints "very reasonable."
She ended up giving the speech anyway.
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It is the word "breeding" that is more than troublesome. Every Southerner, black or white, is familiar with the meaning behind it. From the inner sanctum of the White House this morning:
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Republican Jim Beck is dipping into his $1.1 million campaign warchest in a major way. The candidate for insurance commissioner posted two separate ads on his Facebook page and is letting voters decide which one to air on TV.
Beck is a longtime insurance agency staffer and Georgia Christian Coalition leader in a crowded race to succeed Ralph Hudgens. He's pumped $750,000 of his own money into the campaign. In one ad, Beck promises to toughen penalties for insurers who commit fraud. The second, dubbed "A Face for Radio," is a humorous play on a popular insurance commercial.
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An income tax slash is about to become a juicier topic on the campaign trail. Former state Rep. Geoff Duncan, a GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, created a six-member advisory council to hash out a plan to cut the rate, which lawmakers dropped to 5.75 percent this session.
“I believe my economic advisors – who are out there in the real economy – will say that dropping Georgia’s income tax several percentage points will make our state an economic powerhouse,” Duncan said.
He’s touching on a GOP nerve. Former state Sen. Hunter Hill, a candidate for governor, is campaigning on a pledge to eliminate the income tax altogether and ultimately cap the state sales tax at 7 percent. Gov. Nathan Deal long resisted such cuts.
Other GOP contenders for Deal’s office, including businessman Clay Tippins, say wiping the state income tax out completely is a pipe dream.
