Recent Georgia GOP conventions have featured some memorable moments. Here are a few:
2007: A few members in the crowd boo U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss when he discusses his role in writing an immigration reform bill. The bill later dies in the Senate, with Chambliss voting against it.
2009: Gubernatorial hopeful Karen Handel makes a splash with a video depicting foe John Oxendine as a lumbering beast.
2011: In a rare rebuke to a sitting governor, delegates spurn Gov. Nathan Deal’s choice for state party chairman, Tricia Pridemore, to re-elect Sue Everhart.
2013: Gov. Nathan Deal narrowly avoids getting panned for the state’s participation in Common Core educational standards because of a lack of quorum.
Georgia Republicans should be riding high after last year’s election sweep. Yet deep divisions over the party’s strategy seem ready to explode at the party’s gathering this weekend.
As hundreds of activists convene in Athens on Friday and Saturday for the Georgia GOP convention, they will hear competing messages from three presidential contenders, two candidates to lead the state party, and those pushing resolutions that could rebuke their elected leaders.
The tension ratcheted up after an unusual legislative session that saw lawmakers openly bucking the base on some issues. Republican leaders championed a tax hike for transportation improvements, pushed to allow the state takeover of failing schools and supported an unfunded mandate for autism insurance coverage. A "religious liberty" bill widely adored by activists, meanwhile, failed to reach a vote.
Some of the most fervent partisans are demanding a course correction from their elected leaders, and that fight could spill over into the 2016 election when as many as a dozen GOP legislators could be vulnerable to primary challenges from the party’s right flank.
“Quite frankly, I’m worried about the future of the Republican Party,” said Conrad Quagliaroli, a Cherokee Tea Party Patriots organizer. “We are upset and disappointed that the Washington model has seem to come to Georgia. And they’re going to hear that message loud and clear this weekend.”
Demands from unhappy activists will pose a challenge to party leaders who must also keep an eye on regrouping Democrats who hope to put Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in their column in the 2016 presidential election and compete for a host of open statewide seats two years later.
Todd Rehm, a GOP consultant, hopes his party will keep in mind an important lesson from last year’s Republican U.S. Senate runoff. In that contest, political newcomer David Perdue bested U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, who enjoyed support from the activists who flock to these conventions.
“The grassroots activists don’t necessarily represent the choice of all GOP voters,” he said.
Leadership fight
At center stage is the race for a two-year term as state GOP chairman. Incumbent John Padgett, an Athens businessman, faces Alex Johnson, a 30-year-old Atlanta attorney with a libertarian streak. It’s a rematch of the 2013 race, when Johnson won a surprising 40 percent of the vote in the final ballot.
Padgett, 70, helped direct the party's 2014 campaign, in which the GOP held every statewide office and maintained enormous advantages in the state Legislature. Yet he also faces criticism about his fundraising ability and questions about two lawsuits that accuse him and the organization of racial discrimination. His attorneys have rejected both claims.
Padgett’s camp casts Johnson as an inexperienced activist who represents little more than a protest vote. Johnson, who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate in 2010, counters that Padgett presides over a party veering toward complacency and warns that leaders could be vulnerable to the “socialist ideas” of Democrats.
There’s always a vim-and-vinegar feel to the Georgia GOP’s gatherings, but this one stands as the latest test of the strength of Georgia’s tea party movement and the anti-incumbency push that has sputtered here.
It’s also complicated by a third movement, led by libertarian-leaning activist Jason Pye and several others, urging delegates to pick the “none of the above” option in silent protest of both candidates.
“People are frustrated. A lot of people, especially the grassroots, they want Republicans who govern the way they campaign,” said Pye. “They get elected as limited government platforms, and then they govern like Democrats. There’s a fundamental disconnect between the Republican leadership and the grassroots.”
‘A loud and clear message’
The party’s grassroots activists also seem poised to demand the revival of red-meat legislation that stalled in the past session. Delegates are likely to debate resolutions urging lawmakers to ban the state from issuing drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants and support a proposed constitutional amendment to make English the official state language.
The most high-profile debate, however, is expected involve the "religious liberty" proposal that's caused uproars in Arkansas and Indiana before getting scuttled in Georgia by GOP leaders and business heavyweights who feared it could cost Georgia jobs and prestige.
Supporters describe it as an extra layer of protection to safeguard the rights of people of any religion against government interference, while opponents depicted it as an end-run around the First Amendment that could lead to discrimination against gays and inspire frivolous lawsuits.
Republican organizers in 11 of the state’s 14 districts in April adopted resolutions embracing the stalled legislation, which state Sen. Josh McKoon, the measure’s sponsor, said was a “loud and clear message” that the base wants action on the controversial legislation. An endorsement by the state party would only reinforce that notion, he said.
Gov. Nathan Deal didn't protest when the debate fizzled out in the dying days of the legislative session, but he said in a recent interview he'd sign the legislation if it sticks to the language of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and includes an anti-discrimination clause.
“There’s been so much hyperbole,” said Deal. “It’s hard to identify what can you say without saying too much, what can you say without saying too little, and what will people read into either version.”
That desire for a bill is so strong that some fiscal conservatives are willing to forgive the GOP’s approval of a gas tax hike if they unite in support of a “religious liberty” proposal. Gail Engelhardt, the Bartow County Tea Party director, wrote Deal that she could stomach such a trade “despite the fact that you all campaigned on not raising taxes.”
It’s unclear, though, how widespread that sentiment is. The version of the legislation that was embraced by the local districts didn’t include the anti-discrimination language that Deal and other party leaders demand.
A religious liberty resolution could make for another in a long line of convention rebukes, from the boo-birds that greeted then-U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss in 2007 to the rejection of Deal’s choice of party leader in 2011.
"We're at a crossroads, I believe, in the Republican Party. Which way will we go?" state Rep. Buzz Brockway told a recent grassroots gathering near his Lawrenceville district. "You're the Republican base. You've got to decide whether those things are what we need to be doing or not."
They are about to find out.
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