Alcohol bill down, not out

Opponents, including Christian Right lobbyists and legislative opponents, are convinced the fight isn’t over, too, and they are keeping pressure on lawmakers to stop it.

With so many financial and political interests at stake, statehouse regulars say the proposal isn’t dead, just heavily sedated.

“The fat lady hasn’t sung on this,” said Wayne Garner, a former state Senate leader and now a lobbyist who is not involved in the fight. “There is still a lot of time. It is too early to call anything dead.”

Jerry Luquire, president of the Georgia Christian Coalition and the face of the opposition to Sunday sales, knows his adversaries won’t give up.

“There is no cap on the amount of money they are willing to spend to get this bill passed,” he said.

While the bill likely would pass the House with little difficulty, Senate Republican opponents like Sen. David Shafer, R-Duluth, who is friends with liquor store owners who don’t want to open on Sunday, have kept it bottled up. Majority Leader Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, a co-sponsor, said the Senate would not vote on the measure unless a majority of Republicans supported it. And, he said, a closed-door, GOP-caucus vote showed a majority oppose it.

So it was pronounced all but dead.

But not so fast.

Supporters have been working House members, hoping to get that chamber to vote on the issue.

House Regulated Industries Chairman Roger Williams, R-Dalton, sponsor of the Sunday sales bill in the House, said approval there would put pressure on the Senate to act.

“We intend to move if we can,” Williams said. “It is still alive.”

It also could be resurrected as an attachment to another bill, a common late-session maneuver. Lawmakers commonly paste stalled bills onto legislation that the chamber doing the stalling wants passed. And then the horse-trading begins, sometimes up to the final minutes of the session.

The big supporters of Sunday sales, like grocery and convenience store industries, have hired lobbying star power, a group built for long-haul efforts like Sunday sales.

The grocery lobby hired the Troutman Sanders team, which includes former Senate leader Pete Robinson. Robinson was part of Deal’s gubernatorial transition team and regularly dined with Ralston last year during his first full year as House speaker.

Publix has GeorgiaLink, a veteran group that includes John “Trip” Martin and former Senate Republican leader Skin Edge. Martin is another frequent dining guest of Ralston, and the speaker’s son is currently interning with the lobbying firm.

Anheuser-Busch is represented in the fight by Chuck McMullen, a former Senate Republican aide. Much of the communications work for the pro-Sunday fight is coordinated by Derrick Dickey, a former press aide to former Gov. Sonny Perdue and a Republican campaign strategist. The supermarket lobby also has hired Tharon Johnson, who ran Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s campaign.

The convenience store lobbyist, Jim Tudor, is a statehouse fixture who feeds lawmakers in the anteroom of the House while lawmakers are in session. The grocery lobby does the same in the Senate. The groups are big contributors to campaigns. Combined, the interests backing Sunday sales contributed more than $150,000 to candidates and the two major political parties in Georgia last year, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of campaign records.

The state Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business also are backing the measure.

On the nonpaid front, more than 50,000 have signed petitions supporting the legislation, and Facebook pages have touted the proposals.

Businesses pushing Sunday sales have a big financial stake in the bill’s outcome. But opponents have the political clout that comes from being able to draw on religious conservatives who make up a sizable part of the Republican primary vote in some districts, particularly in rural Georgia. In addition, religious opponents are joined by local liquor store owners who don’t want the expense of being open on Sundays.

Opponents went into the session thinking they’d have a tough time holding back the bill because Deal has promised to sign it.

But after a bumpy start, the Christian Right swung into action, working the Senate Republicans hard to oppose the bill. Lawmakers have heard from preachers, and veteran Christian Right lobbyists, South Georgians Kay Godwin and Pat Tippett, have worked the halls button-holing lawmakers.

While Luquire said opponents don’t have a lot of money to spend, he noted he has an e-mail list of more than 30,000 Christian Coalition supporters ready to contact lawmakers.

Luquire said opponents will work to keep the measure bottled up in the Senate during the second half of the session.

“I don’t think there is any question the House would pass it,” Luquire said. “We feel safe the cork will stay in the bottle in the Senate.”

But Sen. Greg Goggans, R-Douglas, a strong opponent of Sunday sales, isn’t declaring victory yet.

“In this process, I don’t think you can assume it’s over because of one’s ability to attach it onto something else,” he said. “There is a possibility of the House voting for it and we may have to then make a decision on it.”

Matt Towery, who runs the media and polling firm InsiderAdvantage, said some senators are afraid of having to face Christian Right Republican primary opposition if they vote for Sunday sales.

“The thing about this bill that’s a problem is that it puts certain members at risk not of being defeated, but having difficult campaigns,” Towery said. “That is where the hang-up is.”

The political calculus for opponents is that, for some Republican lawmakers, it is more dangerous to make religious conservatives mad than vote against the business community. Lawmakers will approve several pro-business bills during the session, and some Republican opponents figure that would cancel out killing Sunday sales.

However, Sunday sales supporters say Republican senators stalling the bill may wind up with opposition next year from Georgians angered by their stance. That’s particularly true for lawmakers in metro Atlanta, where polls show overwhelming support for Sunday sales.

Many supporters were furious that the Senate Republican caucus made its decision to stall the measure behind closed doors, where the public could not see who was for or against the bill.

Some speakers at a sparsely attended rally last week in favor of the bill used the language of the tea party movement, which helped the GOP make major electoral gains nationally last fall.

“We are tired of business as usual. We are tired of business being done behind closed doors,” said Brett Bittner, executive director of the state’s Libertarian Party.

Putting off the issue for another session may actually kill it for two years. Statehouse veterans say it’s less likely such a controversial measure would pass in an election year; in 2012, every lawmaker is up for re-election.

But Tudor, the convenience store lobbyist, said it’s not an issue that will go away.

“This bill has been pronounced dead many times in its history,” he said. “But this issue is not going to go away, whether it’s this week, this year, this century.”