If there’s a question your Insiders get all the time, it’s whether the Jan. 6 committee hearings will influence voters in the November election.
We have no crystal ball, but we can tell you that many Democrats have been riveted and horrified by the hearings, while many Republicans have flat-out ignored them.
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock waded into the debate at a campaign stop Wednesday in Dalton as he spoke to an audience of hundreds of supporters who had piled into a gym to see him.
Warnock talked about the violence that unfolded just hours after he and Jon Ossoff swept the Senate runoffs on Jan. 5., becoming the first Black senator from Georgia and the first Jewish senator from Georgia. Supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol even as results were still being confirmed.
“We don’t want to pretend like Jan. 6 didn’t happen. It did happen,” he said. “Those weren’t tourists making their way through the Capitol. I’ve seen tourists. Those weren’t tourists.”
Then came a plea to reckon with what happened:
“People are dealing with the ugly side of our complicated history. I say this with nothing but love because I’m a pastor. I know that families have complicated histories. Yours, too.”
Finally, a request for acceptance:
“January 6th is part of who we are. We don’t get to pretend like it’s not. It is part of who we are. But Jan. 5 is also who we are.”
Contrast Warnock’s remarks about the ongoing hearings with the response from Republican nominee Herschel Walker’s campaign about the hearings.
“Think of where we’d be if Raphael Warnock and his colleagues spent this much time trying to lower gas prices or fight inflation,” said Mallory Blount, Walker’s spokeswoman.
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ROE ROW. We told you recently that the Georgia GOP’s headliner for yesterday’s Foundation Breakfast was U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, giving Greene a place of honor at one of the party’s biggest events and signaling the party’s further lurch to the right.
Word quickly reached state Sen. Jen Jordan that Greene had focused a portion of her remarks on her, calling the Democratic nominee for state Attorney General “more extreme than Stacey Abrams.”
The congresswoman’s office confirmed the remark for us and sent this from Greene to expand on her comments:
“Georgia needs an AG that prosecutes crime especially in Atlanta, not another Soros funded progressive that will push their agenda. Chris Carr is trying to get the heartbeat bill out of court to protect the innocent lives of the unborn now that Roe has been overturned and the right belongs to the states. Jen Jordan is fighting the will of the majority of Georgians who want the heartbeat bill to become law.’
Jordan, who is known in the state Senate for her lancing floor speeches, responded in kind.
“Chris Carr has refused to acknowledge the catastrophic impact the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs will have on the health of women and girls in this state, instead choosing to send out his surrogate Marjorie Taylor Greene to attack me and any other woman who is willing to fight for the rights of Georgia women.
All I have to say is that he can’t hide behind Greene’s skirts forever. November is coming.”
For more on how the abortion debate is shaping Georgia’s attorney general race, read the latest from our colleague Maya T. Prabhu.
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ATLANTA UNITED. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens promised to smooth over strained city-state relations with Gov. Brian Kemp when he took office. The governor promised to find common ground with the new mayor.
We might be seeing the fruits of that labor. The two leaders joined each other on Wednesday to celebrate the opening of a new police mini-precinct in Buckhead Village.
“Public safety has no political boundaries,” Kemp told the audience.
The event was also a reminder of the failed Buckhead secession movement, which tried to split the city in two until it was blocked by a bipartisan coalition that included top Republican leaders.
The future of the Buckhead revolt looks bleak. Stacey Abrams opposes it. And Kemp, who never embraced the idea, certainly won’t forget that the secession leaders backed the wrong horse in the GOP race for governor by cozying up to David Perdue.
The audience for the event was bipartisan, too, with state Sen. Sonia Halpern and state Rep. Betsy Holland - Democrats who represent Buckhead - along with GOP bigwigs (and Buckhead Coalition president) Eric Tanenblatt, Kelly Loeffler and Ed Lindsey. Other VIPs included Katie Kirkpatrick, CEO of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, and Atlanta History Center chief Sheffiled Hale.
Standing in the back with homemade signs: proponent of the Buckhead City cityhood initiative.
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PEACH POLL. A Quinnipiac Poll of registered Georgia voters that showed U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock with a 10-point lead over Herschel Walker and a neck-and-neck race for governor triggered a buzz in political circles.
Our advice? Don’t read too much into it. The campaigns and candidates certainly aren’t taking much stock in the results.
In fact, we haven’t talked to a single strategist involved in the 2022 races who say the poll reflects their own internal surveys or tracking metrics, which show a much more definitive tilt toward the GOP.
Most public and private polls show Gov. Brian Kemp with a single-digit lead over Democrat Stacey Abrams. And many show Walker within striking distance or deadlocked with Warnock.
Walker’s campaign even felt compelled to leak an internal poll that showed the race at 47-47 despite being outspent by the Democrat. (Several Democratic advisers begrudgingly agreed it was likely on target.)
Warnock campaign manager Quentin Fulks downplayed the Quinnipiac survey, saying the “race will be close, which is why we can’t take anything for granted.”
So, are there any takeaways beyond the horse-race numbers?
About 41% of voters say the most urgent issue facing Georgia is inflation, followed by gun violence at 15% and abortion at 10%. That reflects the advantage for Republicans hoping to make the race a referendum on the economy.
One other interesting finding: About 43% of voters see Walker as dishonest, perhaps a sign that Democratic efforts to highlight his lies, exaggerations and blunders are taking root.
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FOOD FIGHT. A few weeks ago, the pro-Herschel Walker 34N22 PAC caused a stir by handing out $4,000 worth of gas vouchers to motorists in Atlanta to highlight high energy prices.
The group reentered the fray this week by distributing $10,000 in food vouchers at a grocery store in the southwest Georgia town of Camilla, this time to draw attention to rising food costs.
Once again, Democrats and voting rights groups criticized the publicity stunt and questioned whether they broke the law. But the campaign has maintained the programs are lawful because the vouchers were given without any condition, such as a requirement to vote for Walker.
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NOT ENOUGH? A day after Republican Senate hopeful Herschel Walker appeared to praise the new bipartisan gun law, he went on Martha Zoller’s WDUN radio show to say the gun safety measure should have gone further.
“I don’t think it went far enough, because it really didn’t address one of the real, real problems with the mental health,” he said.
Within moments, his spokeswoman Mallory Blount said in a statement that Walker would not have voted for the measure because “the mental health aspects of the bill didn’t go far enough.”
The new law includes major increases in funding for mental health courts, mental health telehealth services, and expanded mental health programs, along with new gun safety rules.
Walker also lamented the lack of a GOP “unity rally,” which he hoped would settle lingering unease within the party.
“It can’t be about egos; it’s got to be about what’s great for this country and what’s great for the state.”
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SILENT TREATMENT. The Fulton County special purpose grand jury investigating Donald Trump has heard from Democratic lawmakers, and GOP leaders including state Attorney General Chris Carr, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and, soon, Gov. Brian Kemp.
But a group of GOP lawmakers, along with Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, are challenging subpoenas calling them to testify in the probe, claiming “legislative debate” is shielded by the state constitution.
State Sen. William Ligon, a Republican who was at the center of several “Stop the Steal” efforts at the state Capitol and in Washington, is also among the group.
More from the AJC’s team on the story:
“Among protected activities, the attorneys argue, are: debates on the House and Senate floor and in committee meetings; conversations with staff and other members of the General Assembly about legislative matters; and “all other activities that are part of the legislative responsibility of the legislator and staff.”
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MONKEYPOX SHOTS. The state has ordered a small amount of monkeypox vaccines that can be obtained by people who are at high-risk for exposure as new cases are reported in Georgia.
The AJC’s Helena Oliviero reports that the federal government has distributed several thousand doses to the states from the Strategic National Stockpile, and Georgia will have enough for “fewer than 10 people” but more is coming.
Georgia logged its seventh case of monkeypox this week, and all are men. Most cases involved either international travel or a recent conference in Chicago, but the two most recent did not.
While the risk to most Americans of being exposed is still low, governments are working to expand testing in hopes of containing the outbreak.
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CONSPIRACIST CONVENTION. A conference center on Georgia Tech’s campus will host a meeting this weekend featuring activists who still are spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election, misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and other conspiracies tied to Q-Anon, the AJC’s Chris Joyner reports.
Nations in Action “Solutions and Strategy Summit” is scheduled to be held in the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center, a midtown hotel run by the Georgia Tech Foundation, the university’s non-profit fundraising arm.
Georgia Tech responded to Joyner with a written statement from a university spokesman that attempted to distance itself from the conference without condemning its content.
“As long as guests are following established rules and guidelines, they may conduct their business in the manner they prefer,” the spokesman said.
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AS ALWAYS, Jolt readers are some of our favorite tipsters. Send your best scoop, gossip and insider info to patricia.murphy@ajc.com, tia.mitchell@ajc.com and greg.bluestein@ajc.com.
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