Greene made her position clear in 2017, saying on Youtube, “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it.”

That kind of thinking quickly drew condemnation from U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois.

“Qanon is a fabrication,” Kinzinger wrote in a tweet. “This ‘insider’ has predicted so much incorrectly (but people don’t remember PAST predictions) so now has switched to vague generalities. Could be Russian propaganda or a basement dweller. Regardless, no place in Congress for these conspiracies.”

Republican analyst Amanda Carpenter took that to heart. A day after the runoff, Carpenter declared, “If (Greene) wins the general, Republicans should not seat her in Congress.”

Greene engaged with one GOP critic of QAnon, former Arizona U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, who tweeted: “If the GOP wants to be a relevant political force in the future, it cannot endorse those who embrace QAnon and other conspiracy theories.”

Greene shot back: “You literally lost your mind and your senate seat because of the russiagate conspiracy theory. I don’t think the GOP needs to take any lessons from you, Snowflake.”

Even before the runoff, some Republican members of the U.S. House from Georgia expressed concerns about Greene, especially after a number of comments she made surfaced during the campaign. Among them: She suggested that the 2017 Las Vegas massacre was orchestrated as an attack on the Second Amendment; she warned of an “Islamic invasion” after two Muslims won congressional races; she described Black people as “slaves” to Democrats, and she defended a lie that George Soros turned over Jews to the Nazis.

They called the remarks “disgusting,” “offensive” and “bigoted,” and several backed her opponent in the runoff, Rome neurosurgeon John Cowan.

Of course, after the results of the runoff — which almost guarantees Greene a win in November in the strongly conservative district — fans came out, too. She added 20,000 followers on Twitter in a matter of days.

Greene also gained endorsements from U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler and U.S. Rep. Doug Collins — Republican rivals in November’s special election for the U.S. Senate who had stayed on the sidelines during the race.

Blue Ridger’s request gets a ‘blue state’ snub

Georgia House Speaker David Ralston is a Republican from Blue Ridge, but to U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, an idea he expressed in a recent letter sounded like it came from a “blue state.”

In his missive to Loeffler and Georgia’s other U.S. senator, David Perdue, Ralston made a plea that a coronavirus relief package under negotiation include $500 billion for states, red Republican ones and blue Democratic ones.

But no such money appeared in the executive orders President Donald Trump issued after talks collapsed between the White House and congressional Democrats. Trump’s directives did call for an extension of a special unemployment benefit — at $400 per week, down from the $600 per week Congress approved in the spring — but initially that added to the burden on states that have watched their tax collections plunge during the pandemic. To qualify for the benefit, Georgia would have to pick up a quarter of the cost — $100 of the total $400 — after earlier this year cutting $2.2 billion in spending in response to the pandemic recession.

A day after issuing the orders, Trump told reporters that he’d let states apply to have the federal government provide all of the payments, but that tended to cloud the matter. Gov. Brian Kemp’s office still hasn’t said how it could come up with its share of the cost or even whether it will try.

What’s certain to states is they’re taking a beating.

In his letter to the senators, Ralston said the revenue picture is “mirroring” the trajectory of the Great Recession, when the state quickly ran through a $1.5 billion reserve, furloughed thousands of state employees and cut k-12 school funding.

Loeffler, in a tweet she posted of an interview on Fox News after Trump issued his orders, said Republicans were “looking at a package that’s very focused at jobs, kids and health care.”

And the states? Loeffler said Trump’s intent was “to make sure we don’t have blue state bailouts,” echoing a GOP talking point about not wanting to hand out cash directly to state and local governments, making a case that Democratic-run states are in financial distress because of their own spending policies.

Welfare down but food stamp use is climbing

While the coronavirus pandemic caused Georgia’s unemployment numbers to spike this year like a fever, the number of state residents on welfare has continued to decline, conforming with a decades-long trend.

In July 2019, benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, commonly known as welfare, were granted to 9,165 Georgia households, according to data the state Division of Family and Children’s Services provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. By this past June, that number was down to 8,346.

DFCS Director Tom Rawlings has an explanation.

“A lot of folks who might be potential TANF applicants are receiving either expanded unemployment or unemployment benefits,” Rawlings said. “You have to exhaust your unemployment benefits before you can qualify for TANF.”

While Georgians are shunning welfare, many are seeking help through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka food stamps.

Almost 250,000 additional Georgia households are now receiving those benefits than a year ago.

It’s a matter of qualifying.

To be eligible for welfare in Georgia, a family of three must have a gross income below $784 a month. That same family could have a monthly gross income of up to $2,311 and still qualify for food stamps.

Kemp’s mask policies for schools and cities cover both sides of the street

Should Georgia’s public school system impose mask mandates on students and teachers to combat the spread of the coronavirus? Gov. Brian Kemp says that’s not his call.

“We’ve given the responsibility to the schools, to the local superintendents,” Kemp said. “Like most things in education, I’m a firm believer that the local governments know their schools better than the state government does.”

The governor offers a different message on whether local governments can put in place restrictions on their own.

While he says he supports the use of face coverings, Kemp has not made the use of masks mandatory in his executive orders — and he opposed efforts by cities and counties to implement restrictions stronger or weaker than his own. Kemp, however, announced this past week that he was withdrawing a lawsuit challenging the city of Atlanta’s coronavirus restrictions, including a requirement of face coverings. He said his new coronavirus order would block local governments from requiring masks at private businesses.

The conflicting approaches have created an odd dynamic in Athens. On the south side of the city’s Broad Street, the campus of the University of Georgia requires masks. On the north side, the city’s mask mandate ordinance has effectively been rendered irrelevant under Kemp’s order.

Democrats call on Lieberman to quit Senate race over book

Matt Lieberman, a Democratic candidate in the state’s special election for the U.S. Senate but not the one backed by most of the high-profile Georgians in the party, is facing pressure to drop out of the contest over “racist and discriminatory tropes” that appear in a book he wrote.

“Let me be clear: Racist and discriminatory tropes have no place in our politics and no place in the Democratic Party,” said state Sen. Nikema Williams, the chairwoman of the state party and now a congressional candidate.

Lieberman, the son of former Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman, dismissed the criticism and pointed to a Kirkus review that praised the “artistic and philosophic depth” of the self-published novel, “Lucius.”

The book features an elderly white man named Benno who regularly uses racist epithets and has delusions that he owns a slave named Lucius. Benno believes Black people have mystical connections to animals and plants.

In a statement, Lieberman said he wrote the novel in response to the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and framed it as a “clear-eyed and honest look at racism in America.”

James Woodall, the president of the state NAACP chapter, said he knows Lieberman had “good intentions in writing this book, but it doesn’t undo the real damage these kinds of narratives create.”

Lieberman is one of 21 candidates in the November special election for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Kelly Loeffler. Despite little funding or institutional support, his numbers in recent polls show him in a tight contest with the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who is backed by Stacey Abrams and the political arm of the Senate Democrats.

In a recent survey, both were trailing Loeffler and Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins in the race that will likely go to a runoff between the top two vote-getters.

Credit: Chip Somodevilla

Credit: Chip Somodevilla

Some Georgians will bask in the convention spotlight

Several Georgians will have roles in the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

Former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates will address the virtual delegation Tuesday, warming up the crowd for former President Bill Clinton.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ turn will come Thursday, just a few slots before Joe Biden accepts the party’s presidential nomination.

Natasha Taylor, who drives a MARTA bus and is a member of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 732, will be among several members of the rank and file to speak on behalf of Biden.

Candidates, endorsements, etc.

— Emily’s List, a political action committee that supports Democratic women running for office, endorsed state Sen. Nikema Williams’ bid in November’s race in the 5th Congressional District. Support for abortion rights is a key factor in how the PAC decides who gets its backing.