Gov. Brian Kemp has taken the road less traveled by his fellow Republicans across the country. He has leaned into some of the most conservative choices any state leader has made, including opening the state up first during COVID and signing one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion measures.
But he also went up against President Donald Trump in 2020- drawing Trump’s most vicious attacks in the aftermath of November’s elections and standing firm.
Now the governor heads into an election cycle with multiple Trump-aligned Republicans eying him for a primary, but also looking toward a general election in a fast-changing state against likely foe and national Democratic heroine Stacey Abrams.
In short, Kemp has either picked a gigantic fight with Trump that he can’t ultimately win – or he’s setting himself up as the model for a modern, successful Republican party post-Trump.
His moves this legislative session will set the course for everything that comes next, starting this morning with his State of the State address. Already posted from one of your Insiders:
“Firmly on President Donald Trump’s bad side, the Republican could seek to woo the GOP base by pushing to fulfill campaign promises such as a broad gun rights expansion, contentious changes to the voting system or new restrictions on illegal immigration.
Or he could promote a broader-based message focused on boosting education funding, fighting the coronavirus pandemic and promoting criminal justice overhauls to reach beyond the traditional core of Republican voters.”
We’ll get our answer to those questions and more at 11 am, when the governor speaks.
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Wednesday marked a historic and ignominious milestone for President Donald Trump when the House voted 232 to 197 to make him the first American president ever impeached twice.
Ten House Republicans joined all House Democrats in the rebuke, but the Georgia delegation did what it so often does-- voted along party lines.
Newly elected U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde said on the floor that without a formal trial, the impeachment vote “sets an extremely dangerous precedence (sic.) for the future.”
Fellow freshman, U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, talked in her statement about the Confederate flag that rioters marched through the halls of the U.S. Capitol. “As a Black woman from the Deep South, I know exactly what the domestic terrorists were trying to convey. For this reason, I voted with my colleagues to impeach President Trump for incitement of an insurrection.”
The impeachment now heads to the Senate for a trial, certain to be delayed at least until after Sens.-elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff take office.
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“Tomorrow is Thursday. What do we do on Thursday?” - That was the admonition from Speaker David Ralston Wednesday - telling his members in no uncertain terms to show up for mandatory COVID testing after half of the chamber failed to do so earlier in the week.
Of all of the items unknown this year, the greatest of all is whether the legislature can remain COVID-free long enough to remain in session for the full 40 days they’ll need to finish the session without a lengthy interruption.
Since the number of votes required to pass a bill does not change with attendance, fewer members in the chamber could make passing some pieces of legislation all but impossible - to say nothing of the health consequences the members could face.
The Speaker has been clear in his expectations. So if you’re looking for a representative this morning - you might start in the COVID testing area.
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The fallout continues for the Republican Attorneys General Association, the D.C.- based association chaired by Georgia AG Chris Carr.
After news broke that RAGA’s policy arm paid for robocalls calling on Trump supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol to “stop the steal,” which ended in deadly riots, the fundraising group announced that its executive director had voluntarily resigned.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Facebook, Doordash and Lyft have stopped their contributions to the group after the events.
More importantly, U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, who was trapped on the House floor during the siege, has sent Carr a letter calling on him to resign. (Johnson also supports Charlie Bailey, who has announced he’ll challenge Carr in 2022.) A bit of the letter:
“You chair an organization that encouraged an attack on an institution that had not been breached by enemies of the state in over 200 years and baselessly worked to undermine confidence in the electoral college, and the security of Georgia’s elections. Republican leadership in the state, including Governor Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger, certified the results of the election, yet Attorney General Carr, you worked to incite vitriol, based on lies, to attack democratically elected officials in our nation’s Capitol building and overturn a general election.
“These actions and their devastating results are an indelible stain on our nation’s history, and demonstrate, unequivocally, that you are not fit for office. I immediately request your resignation.”
Carr’s spokeswoman told the AJC last week that he had no knowledge or involvement in the robocalls. And on Wednesday, he joined all 50 state AGs in a letter to the U.S. Justice Department condemning the violence in Washington and declaring that “such actions will not be allowed to go unchecked.”
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Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by the NewsMax announcement from Georgia’s attention-seeking QAnon conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that she’s seeking to impeach Joe Biden before he even takes office.
What is more surprising, but shouldn’t be at this point, is the silence from Georgia Republican leaders as Greene continues to embarrass the state.
One GOP elder suggested a method behind the quiet strategy -- to give her enough rope to hang herself, so to speak, and then isolate and ostracize her. Certainly, she’s already proven capable of going down that path.
But the danger in that involves allowing her demagoguery to grow in a vacuum, unchecked, until that moment comes - and the risk that she’s too powerful to force out of office if it even does.
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Charlie Hayslett over at Trouble in God’s Country has a few key observations about last week’s runoffs, which he’s calling “a political earthquake” that will reshape Georgia’s politics for generations and could also spell an end to rural dominance at the State Capitol.
“In the 2020 General Election – with Trump at the top of the ticket – Republicans actually grew their turnout advantage. The Republican counties turned out 68.8 percent of their voters to 65.3 percent for the Democratic counties – a plump, 3.5-point advantage – and Perdue built a daunting 100,000-vote lead to take into the runoff. Even though Loeffler trailed Warnock in the 20-candidate “jungle primary" for the other Senate seat, she was presumed to have a similar advantage going into the runoff.
“But without Trump on the ballot – and with his regular assaults on Kemp, Raffensperger and the reliability of Georgia's elections system – the GOP turnout advantage fell to about 1.2 percentage points. At the same time, based on data available from the Secretary of State's office, the Democratic-voting counties fattened their already big lead in the total number of registered voters by more than 150,000, and the political algebra simply became overwhelming."
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Along those lines, Nick Wootan at the Macon Telegraph compares the Middle Georgia counties each candidate won to the turnout they drove. A terrific visual makes it clear-- the Democrats got their job done.
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Samantha Power, the pride of Lakeside High, is one of the few Georgians nabbing high-profile spots in the Biden-Harris administration so far. On Wednesday Biden tapped Power, a 1988 graduate of Dekalb County’s Lakeside High School, to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Power posted a Twitter tribute to the late-Congressman John Lewis over the summer, whom she said inspired her in high school to work on social justice issues from an early age.
And in a possible tip-off to her future achievements, Power was once an intern for none other than WXIA’s Jeff Hullinger, way back when he was WAGA’s lead sports anchor. He’s got the receipts:
My Atlanta sports intern from the summer of 1989 flourishes, while not reading NBA scores with me on local tv in her hometown, Ms. Power, the pride of Lakeside High School has done very well. https://t.co/jzKEXoitzy pic.twitter.com/qoMU1adE5y
— Jeff Hullinger (@11hullinger) January 13, 2021
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A Fulton County firefighter will recite the pledge of allegiance at Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to Axios. Andrea Hall is president of International Association of Firefighters Local 3920 and was the first Black woman to be promoted to captain in that department.
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In case you missed it: President Donald Trump has signed the bill that will upgrade the status of locales in Plains tied to former President Jimmy Carter. What was formerly called the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site is now the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park.
