Republican activists in Murray and Whitfield counties voted to censure the governor for not helping Donald Trump overturn the results of Georgia’s vote in the presidential election.

“Governor Kemp’s inaction angered Republican voters, many of whom refused to vote in the January 5th runoff and Kemp helped cost the Republicans two Senate seats,” the Whitfield County resolution states.

While they were at it, they also voted to censure Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan for refusing to preside over the state Senate during its vote on the election law, and they called on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign.

“Raffensperger and his subordinates frequently gave media interviews that criticized and undermined the efforts of President Trump and the Georgia Republican Party fighting election fraud,” the Whitfield resolution states.

While numerous cases in Georgia and across the country alleged voter fraud, none of them produced any evidence of irregularities on a scale large enough to affect the election’s outcome. Georgia’s election results were also confirmed through three separate audits and recounts, done both by hand and machine.

Similar resolutions could be coming from other corners of the party — Kemp’s critics have been passing around sample language to local GOP officials across the state.

Will they have any effect? Recent history says no.

Then-Gov. Nathan Deal, after he vetoed a “religious liberty” bill that was popular with the state GOP’s base, faced a censure movement in 2016. But that effort never gained enough momentum to reach a full floor debate.

Credit: AJC

Credit: AJC

Regents freeze tuition, fees for second year

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread economic hardship on many, the Georgia Board of Regents voted for the second year in a row to freeze tuition and fees for the University System of Georgia’s 26 public colleges and universities.

“It is more important than ever for the Board of Regents to remove barriers that may stand in the way of students’ success,” the board’s chairman, Sachin Shailendra, said in a statement.

About 44% of students in the University System borrowed money to help pay for college last school year. The average debt was $6,177, nearly $1,000 more than a decade ago. University System officials said, though, that after adjusting for inflation, the difference is about $400.

University System officials said state and federal leaders helped make the tuition freeze possible by providing schools with additional money in recent months. Georgia will be receiving about $1 billion for higher education after the federal government earlier this year approved about $40 billion in stimulus funds to the nation’s colleges. The state’s colleges received more than $300 million through a previous federal allotment.

Last year, Georgia lawmakers ordered all state agencies to cut their budgets by about 10% because of the pandemic. University System officials said the cuts they made had no impact on classroom instruction. State lawmakers restored most of that funding this year and increased the University System’s general funds budget by $157 million, or 6%, for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Credit: AJC FILE

Credit: AJC FILE

Lobbyists cut back spending on legislators

One way to measure how Georgia’s 2021 legislative session differed from most others is through the reports lobbyists filed with the state ethics commission.

Spending was down in a big way, and you can blame COVID-19.

Lobbyists shelled out more than $335,000 during the session, slightly more than half of what they spent in 2019, before the coronavirus hit.

Much of the money was portioned out on the typical wining and dining of legislators. The biggest line item, however, was payments for newspaper ads at $42,000, and that money didn’t come from a traditionally big spender. It was the Black Voters Matter Fund, and the ads targeted the many voting bills that Republicans pushed during the session in response to Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.

Trip Martin, who’s logged 38 years as a lobbyist at the Capitol, said COVID-19 forced people in his trade to do things differently.

“I am a face-to-face, eye-to-eye kind of guy,” Martin said. “I like to see people’s expressions.”

That isn’t so easy when the wearing of masks and social distancing are the popular choice.

Still, Martin’s firm managed to spend $10,000 so legislators could tie on the feedbag.

Legislators were apparently never hungrier than on the last day of the session, when dozens of lobbyists forked out about $16,000 for food and drinks.

Shifts in political landscape force some hopefuls to wait

Harold Earls, a West Point graduate, is weighing a run as a Republican in the 6th or 7th congressional district, depending on which turns out to be more GOP-friendly.

That’s something that won’t be settled for months because the General Assembly will meet in a special session this fall to use 2020 census data to redraw the boundaries of the state’s congressional and legislative districts.

The choice would be much simpler if it were only based on the Cook Political Report’s new analysis of the nation’s 435 U.S. House districts comparing votes in the 2016 and 2020 presidential races. Cook’s Partisan Voter Index found that the 6th Congressional District, represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath of Marietta, made the biggest swing leftward of any district in the nation.

The neighboring 7th Congressional District, even though it flipped to Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux of Suwanee and also backed Joe Biden in 2020, would appear to be the easier path for a Republican to take. Cook gave it an index score of +2 for the GOP, meaning the district performed two points more Republican than the nation as a whole.

Cook also made these observations about other congressional districts in Georgia:

A true sign of a race underway: false claims

False claims are already flying in Georgia’s 2022 race for the U.S. Senate.

Politifact examined a recent allegation the National Republican Senatorial Committee made in an ad opposing Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock. The ad suggested that Warnock supported boycotts of Georgia as a way to protest against the state’s new voting law, and it used a clip from a recent appearance the senator made on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Through some tight editing, the ad uses only the beginning of Warnock’s response: “I think we all have to use our voices.”

It left out the part where Warnock said it was his hope that “businesses, athletes and entertainers can protest this law not by leaving Georgia but by coming here and fighting voter suppression head on.”

Politifact rated the ad false.

But Warnock also got dinged for signing an email that the left-leaning advocacy group 3.14 sent out that wrongly claimed that Georgia’s new election law, Senate Bill 202, ended no-excuse absentee voting and restricted weekend voting.

The email, reported by The Washington Post, was sent on March 30 — five days after Gov. Brian Kemp signed SB 202 into law.

Warnock’s team said it was a matter of timing. The senator’s spokesman said Warnock had signed off on the statement before the bill won passage, when those more restrictive provisions were still under consideration.

Clyde heading to court over metal detector fines

The U.S. House Ethics Committee denied U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde’s request to drop the fines he faces for refusing to pass through metal detectors outside the House chamber.

It didn’t seem to bother him much.

Immediately following the denial of his appeal, the Athens Republican said he will take his case to the federal courts.

“This now provides the legal standing which I needed to challenge this unconstitutional resolution,” he said in a statement.

Clyde has been cited twice for violating Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s policy requiring members to be scanned. He owes $15,000 in fines.

The congressman is no stranger to the court system. In March 2020, he sued Athens-Clarke County after its shelter-in-place order shut down his gun store. In 2019, Clyde successfully fought a law that allowed the Internal Revenue Service to seize assets without evidence of wrongdoing.

Stephens stepping down from Georgia House

State Rep. Mickey Stephens, D-Savannah, has formally announced his retirement from the state House of Representatives, The Savannah Morning News reports.

Serious illness has mostly kept Stephens away from the General Assembly over the past two years.

He made a final visit to the Capitol during the legislative session that ended last month. At that time, his wife, Gloria Stephens, spoke to the General Assembly, thanking his colleagues and especially Speaker David Ralston and the legislator’s House staff for their support over the years.

A special election will be scheduled to fill Stephens’ seat.

Candidates, endorsements, etc.:

— Kelvin King, the owner of a metro Atlanta construction company and an Air Force veteran, will seek the GOP nomination to run against Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock. King was one of then-President Donald Trump’s most prominent Black supporters in Georgia during the 2020 campaign. He and his wife, Janelle King, a conservative pundit and operative, founded a political outreach group called Speak Georgia.

— Latham Sadler is also running as a Republican against Warnock. The Synovus executive is a former Navy SEAL who worked in the Trump administration. In his last active-duty assignment in the military, he served as director of intelligence programs, helping to develop special operations for the National Security Council.

— State Sen. Jen Jordan, D-Sandy Springs, launched her bid for Georgia attorney general. She becomes the second Democrat to announce plans to compete for the post held by Republican Chris Carr. Charlie Bailey, a former anti-gang prosecutor, announced in January that he would make a second run for attorney general after drawing 48.7% of the vote in his 2018 loss to Carr.

— State Insurance Commissioner John King announced that he will seek a full term in the job. King became the state’s top insurance regulator when Gov. Brian Kemp appointed him to fill the void left by Insurance Commissioner Jim Beck. Kemp suspended Beck following his indictment in May 2019 on charges alleging he had swindled a former employer out of $2 million.

— Tim Echols said on social media that he’s planning to run for another term on the state Public Service Commission, forgoing a run in the GOP primary to succeed Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.