Sandra Deal, wife of the governor, has asked them to play nice. Don’t “destroy” each other, she has begged. But her plea for sandbox rules is unlikely to have any effect.
Next year, four or five prominent Republicans will conduct scorched-earth campaigns for the nomination to replace Saxby Chambliss in the U.S. Senate. Millions of dollars will be spent on a slew of incendiary TV ads – first in a summer GOP primary, then in an all-but-certain runoff.
It doesn’t have to be that way. The 700,000 or so people likely to cast a GOP ballot next year could leave the decision to a small herd of Georgia Republican activists – sparing the rest of us all that noise and the candidates all that money.
That idea was one of a handful of policy proposals about to be placed before 1,700 delegates at last weekend’s state GOP convention when the meeting was suddenly dissolved. Because 900 weary delegates had left the room.
The proposal is now in the hands of a state Republican party under new management – John Padgett of Athens was elected chairman before Republicans left town – and so we’re unlikely to see any big changes before next year’s Senate race. But 2016, when U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson is up for re-election, could be another matter.
Regardless, now that it’s been raised, the concept of a nominating convention is unlikely to disappear any time soon. In part, because it reflects a belief among many Republican activists – especially the most conservative – that they have been cut out of Georgia’s electoral and governing process.
Think of last year’s gap between grassroots Republicans and a GOP-controlled Legislature over the issue of ethics. Or the disagreement with Gov. Nathan Deal – skirted this weekend – over Common Core standards for education.
Now consider the opening lines of last week’s resolution on nominating conventions:
“[D]uring the past few years, it has become all too clear that the grassroots have been discriminated against in the current Republican nominating process in Georgia; and…the power of Big Money and Big Media has made it increasingly difficult for the people’s voice to be heard.”
The author of the resolution was Brant Frost V, the 22-year-old chairman of the Coweta County GOP. Do not let his age fool you. He’s well-spoken, well-connected, and his father – under the Roman numeral “IV” – headed up Pat Robertson’s 1988 presidential campaign in Georgia. The proposal requested a formal study of shifting the way Republicans pick their candidates, and was endorsed by the convention’s 16-member resolution committee.
“The party is getting far too expensive. The cost of running for office has exceeded inflation, and it has exceeded common sense,” said the younger Frost. “If you can’t raise $2 million to compete for governor in Georgia, you’re immediately pushed out of consideration.
“We think the audition should be, not a money primary, but perhaps a grassroots primary,” he said.
Georgia Republicans could start with small steps, Frost said. For instance, a convention might simply endorse one of several candidates on a primary ballot, then authorize the state party operation to support that candidate financially.
But even the smallest changes are likely to require a rewrite of the state’s election code and approval by the U.S. Justice Department, according to Jared Thomas, spokesman for Secretary of State Brian Kemp.
Overall, the idea of nominating conventions isn’t going down well with the Republican governing class. “Can you imagine going to young moms and dads, who have to go to soccer games and PTA meetings, and tell them that unless they can attend a political meeting, their vote doesn’t count?” asked House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
Frost says concerns about representation are misplaced. Delegates to state conventions would be sent by conventions in Georgia’s 159 counties. “You can’t just count the delegates at the convention. You have to count the people they represent back home,” he said.
But objections extend far beyond worries over whether soccer moms have time to sit through convention meetings or whether the requirements of the Voting Rights Act can be met.
Many Georgia proponents are eyeing what they call the Virginia Plan. In that state, the Republican party hierarchy can decide whether candidates are to be nominated by primaries or conventions. This year, GOP leaders chose a convention.
Delegates in Virginia last weekend nominated Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli for governor – considered far more conservative than his GOP rival, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling. For lieutenant governor, Virginia Republicans picked E.W. Jackson, an African-American pastor with a history of incendiary rhetoric, including his contention that “Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was.”
In short, delegates rejected a “big tent” strategy. “It appears now the Virginia Republican Party has abandoned that and they’re advocating a pup-tent philosophy, which I find appalling,” former state lawmaker Vincent F. Callahan told the Associated Press this week.
In Athens, Deal also invoked the need for big-tent thinking as a point of long-term GOP survival in Georgia, noting that 56 percent of students in public schools are nonwhite. But many in the governor’s audience were concerned more about quality than quantity. They dream of a system uncorrupted by money or influence.
“As the Republican party has achieved almost monopoly status in Georgia, and as redistricting has ensured our majority — at least in the Legislature — for another 10 years, I think it has made us very jaded,” Frost said.
“If we can’t self-regenerate from the inside, the people of Georgia are going to turn to a [U.S. Rep.]John Barrow or [state Sen.] Jason Carter who comes along and talks like a Republican, but says, ‘I’m not crooked like they are.’”
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