Georgia Tipsheet

The next chairman of the Georgia Republican Party is unlikely to support the freedom to marry for gays and lesbians or likewise encourage LGBT persons to seek public office, according to a survey of the candidates by the Georgia Christian Coalition.

In a lengthy written questionnaire circulated to GOP activists ahead of the Saturday vote for state chairman, candidates BJ Van Gundy and Seth Harp said they would oppose legislation that would extend the franchise of marriage to persons of the same gender.

A third, Seth Johnson, declined to state his position on the grounds it was “secondary to the grassroots,” while the fourth, John Padgett, did not participate in the survey.

Georgia popularly adopted a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in 2004, but voter demographics and issue sentiment have shifted in the nine years since.

A national survey by the Pew Research Center in March revealed that nearly 28 percent of voters had changed their minds on gay marriage, also finding many of those voters who came of age in the years since the referendum was greenlighted are fundamentally opposed to a ban.

According to the poll, support for the freedom to marry among Millennials, those young adults born during the years 1981 and 2000, registers at 70 percent.

Of the three men who did complete the questionnaire, all said they would not “encourage candidates who are openly GLBT to run as a Republican.” (Whereas Van Gundy and Harp provided only one-word answers to the question, Johnson qualified his negative response, saying he would “not encourage anyone to run as a Republican based on their sexual orientation, but based on their policies and platform.”)

The survey also measured the candidates’ positions on affirmative action, a recently-approved lobbyist gift cap for legislators, and taxes.

Karen Handel, the former secretary of state who later became a top executive at breast cancer nonprofit Susan G. Komen for the Cure, said she would run for Georgia’s open U.S. Senate seat.

“States, especially those with Republican governors, are doing a good job — they are balancing budgets with targeted spending cuts, creating jobs, and tackling tax reform,” she announced in a statement Friday only hours before GOP activists were set to huddle in north Georgia to elect a new state party chairman. “The biggest problems we face today are in Washington, and that’s where we so desperately need fresh thinking, bold solutions, and real leadership.”

She is the fourth Republican to launch a bid to replace retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss, joining a field uniformly populated by men.

Handel’s announced rivals are all sitting U.S. congressmen who (mostly) have deep campaign pockets, but it is a fourth, possible opponent that may pose the greatest threat with fundraising and institutional support.

Earlier this week, businessman David Purdue launched an exploratory effort to test the waters for a possible Senate bid. He is the former chairman of discount retailer Dollar General, but more importantly the cousin of ex-Gov. Sonny Perdue, for whom Handel once served as deputy chief of staff.

Well-placed Republicans say Handel, in her early examination of the contest, originally believed she could jointly lean on the political and donor networks of the former governor and Rep. Tom Price, an ally who recently forswore a campaign of his own.

But that blueprint has already begun fraying even before its ink dried: on Tuesday, the governor forcefully endorsed his kin’s as-yet-unannounced campaign, and it is said much of his own political network has followed suit. (“I believe he is exactly what our state and nation needs,” he said.)

Even without Perdue’s reinforcements, Handel allies insist she maintains an appreciable advantage over her rivals: she’s won statewide.

Her opponents, while subject to the whims of redistricting, have represented only slivers of the state, whereas Handel served statewide for three years as secretary of state.

She resigned her post in 2010 to focus exclusively on a bid for the governor’s mansion, which she narrowly lost in a primary runoff with the current occupant, Nathan Deal.

Deal, then a House lawmaker from north Georgia, was the consensus choice among the Republican establishment–the state’s entire GOP congressional delegation, save only for Price, ultimately endorsed him–but won the run-off by less than a half-percent.

In her announcement Friday, Handel said she’s prepared once more to take on the “status quo.”

“Georgians want a conservative senator with the courage to take on the status quo,” she said in a statement,” and to fight for them and our constitutional ideals, to be accountable to them — and not to Washington.”

- James Richardson

A national taxpayer watchdog has accused a local health department in Georgia of abusing federal grants to lobby for broader tobacco restrictions.

Cause of Action, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that investigates regulatory overreach, says it uncovered evidence that the Dekalb County Board of Health misappropriated funds made available through the Communities Putting Prevent to Work, a $373 million federal grant program, to underwrite overt political activities.

Grantees of the 2011 initiative, which is managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was designed as vehicle to educate the public about the dangers of obesity and tobacco, are not allowed under federal law to use the funds for lobbying activities.

But DeKalb’s public health department, along with six others across the country, violated that law when it advocated on behalf of a clean air indoor ordinance (CIAO) and a steeper excise tax on cigarettes, according to the new watchdog report.

The 19-months-long investigation revealed DeKalb officials had “partnered with the Georgia Alliance for Tobacco Prevention … to train coalition partners and finance a media campaign in support of state cigarette tax increase.”

The report also found evidence the department had conducted a focus group with local exotic dancers to determine support for an expanded indoor smoking ban.

The county’s grant proposal said it would it would use the funds to support smoke-free ordinances throughout the state.

That DeKalb’s application was approved despite federal regulations barring the use of congressionally-appropriated funds to influence government officials or the legislative process, the report said, “blatantly show systemic corruption” at the CDC.

A spokesperson for the DeKalb County Board of Health did not immediately respond to an inquiry Thursday by Tipsheet.

- James Richardson

A former adviser to Rep. Jack Kingston will pursue the Republican nomination for Georgia’s first congressional district, one of three GOP-held seats whose current representatives are campaigning for U.S. Senate.

At a waterside news conference Wednesday in Savannah, David Schwarz, a lobbyist and one-time legislative aide to Kingston, praised his former boss but said the district needed new blood.

“Jack Kingston has been a tremendous representative for our area, and I am proud to call him my friend and to have worked by his side for our community,” Schwarz said. “Now, it is time for the next generation of conservative leadership.”

Schwarz, 37, will square off in the primary with Senate Majority Deputy Whip Buddy Carter, a conservative Republican who represents a sliver of the first district in the state senate, and Darwin Carter, a ex-political appointee in the Reagan administration who ran unsuccessfully for commissioner of agriculture in 2010.

The coastal district is one of several seats being vacated this cycle by Georgia House Republicans who are vying for a promotion to the upper chamber, though it remains unclear if Kingston will play kingmaker for his old staffer.

The political costs are clear–the potential for blowback in the Senate race from a national conservative group who disagreed with the House endorsement, chief among them–but the benefits are less obvious when a primary field includes a popular state lawmaker.

A Kingston aide did not immediately respond to an inquiry by Tipsheet asking if the congressman would make known his preference in the race to replace him.

- James Richardson

Two tea party groups headquartered in Georgia say they were among those conservative lobbies whose applications for tax-exempt status were inappropriately scrutinized by the Internal Revenue Service.

A report released Tuesday by the agency’s inspector general had revealed that some conservative groups, including a number whose names included the words “patriot” or “tea party,” were singled out for invasive questions about membership and funding.

Now, officials from the Woodstock-based Tea Party Patriots, a prominent national consortium of some 3,000 local outfits, and the Marietta-based Georgia Tea Party have told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that they were asked to provide information about donors and political ties.

“This is tyranny at its best,” Debbie Dooley, a Peach State conservative activist and national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, said. “And groups on the left need to understand that if the IRS gets away with this, its’ a matter of time before a Republican administration comes after them.”

Dooley said the financial cost of her group’s dispute with the IRS over its petitioned designation as a tax-exempt social welfare group had cruised into 6-figure territory.

The Georgia Tea Party, meanwhile, says it felt a lesser financial squeeze but was no less burdened by the tax probe. Their application was eventually greenlighted, chairman J.D. Van Brink said, but not before they were forced to submit a lengthy questionnaire that required a “thousand printed pages” and cost $250 in postage.

“It’s corruption, is what it is,” Van Brink told the paper, “and it’s an abuse of power.”

- James Richardson

A top Georgia Republican Party official has proposed abandoning primaries in favor of a caucus system in which federal, state and local GOP candidates would be nominated at party conclaves before competing in a general election.

Dale Jackson, who was elected last month as third district chairman of the Ga. GOP under a platform of reorganizing the primary system, says the current primary regime is easily influenced by outside money and will move to reform the process at the upcoming state convention.

“As I traveled the 3rd district, campaigning for district chair, everyone wanted to know what I would do to grow the party and involve the grassroots in that process,” Jackson wrote an in opinion editorial Wednesday at a conservative blog. “The answer … a nominating convention!”

Jackson said the “only negative” of his proposal, which would radically upend the state’s tradition of primary elections, is a “simple” perception problem: disenfranchisement.

“This will appear to the average voter as exclusive, rather than inclusive,” he wrote. “yes, that is a fair assessment, but that is simple PR, and if we can’t overcome that, then the leadership of the Republican Party needs to just pack it up and go home for good.”

Today, only ten states rely solely on a caucus system, according to the Federal Election Commission, though at least a pair of states have begun considering primary initiatives amid diminished participation and reporting headaches.

Republican activists will converge this weekend in Athens to elect a new state chairman. GAPundit, the site at which Jackson’s editorial was published, reported Jackson and his allies were preparing a caucus resolution for consideration at the same meeting.

- James Richardson

Democrat Michelle Nunn would make the general election contest to replace retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss a highly competitive one, registering in contention with four possible Republican rivals in a new survey released Monday by a local progressive advocacy group.

Better Georgia, the upstart activist organization that has busied itself with foiling Gov. Nathan Deal’s legislative agenda but shown new interest in the Senate race with the possibly that the progressive-favored Nunn would run, says the results of a recently-fielded robopoll places the Democrat neck-and-neck with the full slate of possible GOP contenders.

Nunn, the poll finds, would lead Karen Handel, the former secretary of state who is openly considering a bid, by 8 points in a hypothetical match-up and would tie with Rep. Phil Gingrey.

She fared slightly worse against Reps. Paul Broun and Jack Kingston, trailing the former by 3 points, slightly outside the 2.4 percent margin of error, and the latter by 6.

Another Democratic poll–Better Georgia bills itself as nonpartisan, though the group’s partisan leanings are no secret–released last week by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee showed Nunn trailing Kingston by a slim one-point margin. (Republicans criticized the timing of the survey’s release, which came amid Democratic concerns the party had squandered a rare southern pickup opportunity by failing to coalesce behind blue dog Rep. John Barrow, and for not disclosing Nunn’s numbers relative to the other possible GOP nominees.)

- James Richardson

Former Dollar General CEO David Perdue formally launched an exploratory effort aimed at testing the waters on a run for the retiring Saxby Chambliss’s Senate seat.

Perdue, who is also the cousin of former Governor Sonny Perdue, has been speculated upon as a likely candidate for over a month now, with onlookers calling his entry likely after he resigned his position on the Georgia Port Authority early last month. The announcement came via the launch of both a Twitter account and website. The announcement tweet can be viewed below:

Excited to announce the official launch of my US Senate exploratory committee. RT & stay tuned for updates! #gagop twitter.com/Perduesenate/s…

— David Perdue (@Perduesenate) May 14, 2013

-Brandon Howell

Trice Pridemore, who served until recently as a top economic development aide to Gov. Nathan Deal, will announce next week a bid for Georgia’s eleventh congressional district, the seat being vacated by Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey as he pursues a promotion to the Senate.

A well-regarded conservative activist who ran unsuccessfully for the state GOP chairmanship in 2011, Pridemore will launch her campaign Monday evening at a popular Marietta BBQ restaurant, according to an operative with knowledge of her plans. (Details of her announcement are available here.)

She will join an already crowded field featuring two prominent state lawmakers, House Majority Whip Ed Lindsey and state Sen. Barry Loudermilk, and Bob Barr, the on-again-off-again Republican who once represented a nearby-district a decade earlier.

CQ-Roll Call rated the suburban Atlanta district, which Gingrey has represented since 2003, as “safe Republican” in the last election.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

House Republicans wasted no time in reassuring Georgia Rep. John Barrow that he remains a top-ten turnover target, warning the conservative Democrat Thursday that his decision not to run for Senate means they will devote considerable party resources to finally bouncing him from office.

Until Tuesday, when Barrow made the surprise announcement he would seek reelection to the House, it appeared increasingly likely the blue dog would finally do for Republicans what they’ve proven unable despite millions in outside spending and successive redistricting efforts: eliminate the lone white House Democrat from the Deep South.

But the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House GOPers, showed new resolve in its efforts to defeat Barrow on Thursday with the launch of its Red Zone program.

The new initiative will focus exclusively on defeating 7 vulnerable Democrats, Barrow included, in the coming election.

“It’s not a secret that we’ve gone after these guys, and they keep finding ways to elude us even if they’re in conservative districts,” Annie Kelly, a top shelf GOP operative steering the program, told Politico. “We’re starting early and putting these guys on notice that just because they’ve gotten away doesn’t mean we’re giving up.”

In a statement, a NRCC spokeswoman said Kelly will “have a dedicated staff” whose sole focus will be forcing a turnover in Georgia’s twelfth congressional district.

Other Red Zone targets include: Ann Kirkpatrick and Ron Barber of Arizona, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, Nick Rahall of West Virginia, and Collin Peterson of Minnesota.

- James Richardson

An Atlanta attorney with extensive ties to Michelle Nunn has for years been sitting on a cache of domain names pertinent to a possible U.S. Senate bid by the Democrat.

Mark Bernstein, whose boutique imprint published Nunn’s 2006 ode to volunteerism, “Be the Change,” has purchased more than a half-dozen web properties over the last decade that would be central to a Nunn candidacy.

Asked Wednesday whether he made the purchases as an agent of the would-be candidate, Bernstein said he acted “personally” in the hopes of encouraging a campaign.

“Those purchases were made by me personally over the years in the hopes of encouraging Michelle to run for Senate,” he said in an email to Tipsheet. “I was acting for myself in hopes of turning them over to Michelle some day.”

Some of the domains were acquired as early as 2008, according to a public registry, while others still were purchased only last month, when well-placed Democrats say it became clear to party leadership in Washington that Nunn was serious about running.

Nunn, the daughter of former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, openly flirted with a Senate campaign in 2004–she decided against the race in part because of the demands of her then-eleven-month-old son–but did not publicly weigh a second bid when the opportunity rolled around four years later.

Asked if the years-old domains was an indication that she also considered running in 2008, Bernstein said Nunn “was encouraged by many including me” to run that cycle but declined to say if he believed she was “truly considering it.”

“I’ve known and worked with Michelle for more than 20 years and think she is just the kind of common sense, non-ideological leader that Georgia and the country need to help steer the country in a more positive direction…,” he said. “I hope she runs.”

To her critics, though, the revelation that a long-time associate had undertaken a digital land grab as far back as 2003 was evidence that Democrats had foolishly hitched their wagon to an unreliable “flake” who bows under political pressure.

“How many times is Michelle Nunn going to test the waters only to find it’s too damn chilly?” asked one Democratic operative who was supporting Rep. John Barrow, the conservative blue dog who announced Tuesday he would not pursue the race. “If this is now her third time weighing a bid, that has to give serious pause to donors about her wearability in a general election. They ought to be concerned that she’ll flake out again.”

The domains, in order of registration dates:

2003
www.nunnforgeorgia.us / .com

2008
www.michellenunn.com
www.nunnforsenate.com / .org / .us

2013
www.michellenunnforsenate.com

- James Richardson

Democrat Michelle Nunn would fare better against Republican Rep. Jack Kingston in a general election match-up than blue dog Rep. John Barrow, according to an internal Democratic survey.

The Wednesday release of the 800-person survey, fielded in March by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, comes amid concerns that Democrats had lost a rare southern pickup opportunity in Georgia’s U.S. Senate race with the news that Barrow would seek reelection to the House over a possible promotion to the upper chamber.

The poll, obtained first by Politico, found Nunn trailing Kingston by a slim one-point margin, 33 percent to 32 percent, while Barrow would enter the November contest down four.

But the data, released in the hopes of pacifying misgivings among donors that Nunn is a weaker candidate than Barrow, also makes clear whom Democrats consider the most likely Republican nominee and greatest threat: Kingston.

The GOP field currently stands at three, all congressman with national profiles, and could swell to as many as five in the coming weeks, but the poll assumed that Kingston would clinch the nod.

- James Richardson

An Atlanta city lawmaker was arrested late Tuesday on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol after she was spotted driving on the wrong side of the road.

Councilwoman Cleta Winslow, a 20-year fixture of city hall whose committee assignments include public safety, was charged by Atlanta police with suspicion of DUI and a handful of serious moving violations.

The arresting officer, through an Atlanta police spokeswoman, said Winslow exhibited “signs of impairment” but refused a field sobriety test.

She was booked into the Atlanta Pretrial Detention Center and was released hours later on a $2,400 bond.

- James Richardson

Ominous. That’s how Georgia Republicans described Mark Sanford’s surprise victory Tuesday over Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in the special election to fill South Carolina’s vacant first congressional district.

The nine-point win by Sanford, the disgraced former governor whose personal baggage was thought by many to be too great a liability to overcome as he campaigned for his old House seat, has both everything and yet nothing to do with Peach State politics.

Most Georgians only became familiar with Sanford as the unseemly details of his extramarital affair unfolded on cable news programs, but it was the inability of his rival, a political newcomer whose cachet was primarily grounded in her success in the business and not-for-profit sectors, to connect with voters that Republicans say signals bad news for Democratic chances in Georgia’s U.S. Senate race next year.

Left to cope without the party’s top possible recruit, conservative Democratic Rep. John Barrow, who announced he would seek reelection to the House over a Senate bid, Georgia Democrats are now poised to nominate their own Colbert Busch: Michelle Nunn, a prominent nonprofit strategist who boasts a gilded surname in these parts.

Nunn’s father, Sam, once held the Senate seat up for grabs in next year’s race, but she claims no personal experience in the political arena and, like the Colbert Busch experiment, would likely pitch voters a technocratic vision of public service.

But Republicans say that formula has already been tested by voters whose conservative orientation closely mirrors the public sentiment found in Georgia.

“Michelle Nunn’s campaign is a nonstarter,” one Republican commented to Tipsheet. “Georgia voters are savvy enough to recognize that she’s a cardboard retread of Elizabeth Colbert Busch, only our sad version doesn’t pack the same late night comedy punch. After tonight, Democrats would have to be dumber than a sack of hammers to be excited about a Nunn candidacy.”

- James Richardson

The campaign arm of Senate Democrats said Tuesday it remained “confident” the ultimate nominee in Georgia’s open Senate contest would offer voters a compelling alternative to the Republican candidate, even as it declined to say if it would invest in the race.

The shock decision Tuesday by U.S. Rep. John Barrow not to run for Senate left national Democrats without their top choice for the race, but the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee nonetheless struck an upbeat chord.

“The divisive Republican primary is certain to produce a nominee that is too extreme for mainstream Georgians,” DSCC spokesman Justin Barasky told Tipsheet. “We are confident that we will have a strong candidate that will excite Democrats and provide independents and moderate Republicans with a strong, reasonable alternative to the extremism from Republicans.”

The DSCC had previously signaled an apparent readiness to invest in the race, but demurred when asked Tuesday if it was still willing to direct precious party resources to Georgia. (President Barack Obama will visit the state later this month and will raise funds for the committee.)

Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who had been readying its assault on Barrow, said the Peach State episode represented their Democratic counterpart’s “biggest recruiting failure” of the cycle.

“Barrow’s decision is the biggest recruiting failure of the 2014 cycle and ensures Republicans remain on offense across the map,” NRSC communications director Brad Dayspring said in an email. “Democrats in Washington threw everything at Barrow, who realized the sweat was unwinnable and left the [DSCC] standing at the alter.”

UPDATE: After Senate Republicans began highlighting on Twitter the DSCC’s initial refusal to comment on the committee’s resource allocation plans for Georgia, a spokesman reiterated that it still believes the state is fertile ground for a pick-up and would invest appropriately.

“We will be absolutely investing in the Georgia Senate race,” Barasky said, “it remains one of our top pickup opportunities.”

- James Richardson