Georgia Tipsheet

A recent executive order by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal that broadened the eligibility guidelines of permissible timber in government construction projects has triggered parallel measures by a trio of other Deep South states.

Deal signed in August an order stipulating that any new or expanded state building must “recogniz[e] all forest certifications equally.” The move drew little local focus outside of industry lobbyists and conservative academics, yet roused lawmakers in neighboring states to adjust their own regulations.

The practical application of the governor’s mandate banned Georgia government agencies from adopting the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a popular green building program, because it’s singular preference for a forestry certification standard that remains unpopular with the state’s foresters.

Two-thirds of Georgia’s 37 million acres of land area is timberland available for commercial use, according to a 2011 report by the U.S. Forest Service, but much of that timber is necessarily excluded from resource pools by those states and federal agencies that apply LEED standards to construction and renovation.

LEED, which enforces green building practices on more than 34 state governments and 14 federal agencies, solely recognizes timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Nationwide, FSC-approved forests represent less than one quarter of all certified US timber. In Georgia, less than one percent of certified forests have been approved by the program. The state’s remaining forests, virtually all, are excluded from resource pools in LEED-orchestrated government projects.

Deal, through a spokesman, said his order evens the playing field for Georgia timber and would protect local jobs.

“This executive order puts Georgia timber on equal footing with products produced in other states or nations,” he said. “It encourages the use of Georgia timber, and it’s a way for the state to support and maybe create Georgia jobs.”

The months the followed the adoption of the Georgia order saw similar action in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama. Forestry experts expect North Carolina to join the list soon.

In late March, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed legislation that explicitly forbid the application of any green building rating system that excludes certification credits for timber certified by alternative forestry programs, including the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and the American Tree Farm System.

The Florida state House approved similar legislation, which now awaits Senate adoption, just as the governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, signed an executive order that mirrored the Deal order. North Carolina is expected to join the list soon.

Forestry experts say it was Georgia’s Deal who set those dominoes in motion.

“I doubt Gov. Deal expected to so heavily impact the South by picking sides in the fight between the forestry sector and environmentalists, but his leadership has done more to protect one of the region’s most successful industries than any Dixie governor in a decade,” Jay Morgan, a Georgia lobbyist who has closely monitored the certification debate, told Tipsheet by email.

- Dome Confidential

Georgia’s unemployment rate fell last month, down to 8.4 percent from February’s 8.6 percent figure.

According to the Georgia Department of Labor, over 23,000 new jobs were created, with the number of long-term unemployed workers falling for the 11th month in a row.

The figure remains above the national average but is a 0.7 percent drop from March of last year, when state unemployment sat at 9.1 percent. Layoffs, “represented by new claims for unemployment benefits,” dipped by 1,713.

-Brandon Howell

Blue Dog Democratic Rep. John Barrow has been coy about a possible Senate campaign, but his latest fundraising numbers show that he’s not taking the thought of seeking a promotion, or a grueling effort at re-election in his GOP-bent district, lightly.

Barrow filled his coffers with some $417,000, bringing his total to $440,000 following a multi-million dollar effort in last year’s election. That total more than doubles what he raised in the first quarter of 2011, when he was readying for a nonstop onslaught from both Republican challengers and pro-GOP outside groups.

Just over two weeks ago he huddled with donors and supporters in Atlanta to discuss the possibility of mounting a Senate campaign, marking the most public display of consideration the Blue Dog has made since Saxby Chambliss announced he wouldn’t seek a third-term. The meetings also discussed re-election prospects, should he opt against seeking statewide office.

Last November he defeated Lee Anderson handily in what was expected to be one of the closest races in the nation.

According to The Hill, “sources say he’s still undecided on a Senate bid but that he’s more likely than not to run.”

-Brandon Howell

Speculation that Rep. Tom Price would pursue Georgia’s Republican Senate nomination has faded, a grand possibility whose luster wore quickly among party financiers in part for the same reason it once glimmered: his restrained profile that comforted activists and yet didn’t spook the establishment.

Price has said he would make no final determination on the contest until May–news that left many top GOP operatives and donors confident he would remain in the House, where he’s carved a comfortable niche as a top budget lieutenant to Rep. Paul Ryan–but the congressman signaled Monday he isn’t ready to be counted out, at least where the counting of campaign cash is concerned.

More than $2.1 million in cash reserves sat in Price’s House account, the entirety of which could be applied to a Senate race, by the end of the first quarter, an aide said Monday.

A statement under Price’s campaign letterhead said it was the congressman’s “highest non-election year” fundraising period ever recorded. Price also reiterated his intentions to delay a decision on the primary.

“Public service is a sacred trust and I take seriously my responsibility to serve the people of the Sixth District…,” he said in a press release. “For the time being, my focus remains on my duties in the House as Betty and I continue to weigh any future potential candidacy as Georgia’s conservative voice.

Whether those numbers will slow the operative and donor egress to rival camps is unknown, but that cash reserves teased was nearly 20 percent greater than what another top possible GOP recruit, Rep. Jack Kingston, reported last week. Neither of the announced candidates, Reps. Phil Gingrey or Paul Broun, have yet disclosed their fundraising activities.

A Price spokeswoman did not immediately provide additional details about the congressman’s fundraising report and his disclosure has not yet been published by the FEC.

- James Richardson

Another Republican is reportedly likely to enter the contest to fill Rep. Paul Broun’s congressional seat in Georgia’s 10^th district, with the AJC saying “chances are good” that conservative activist Jody Hice will join the fray.

Hice previously ran for the 7^th congressional district in 2010, losing a runoff battle to now-Rep. Rob Woodall after seeking to replace the retiring John Linder in Congress.

Should he ultimately decide on mounting another bid, Hice would likely appeal to those amongst Paul Broun’s socially conservative base. Prior to his 2010 campaign, he gained notoriety for a 2003 effort aimed at stopping the ACLU’s attempts at having a Ten Commandments statue removed from a Barrow County courthouse.

State Rep. Donna Sheldon announced he entry into the contest last week, following state Senator Bill Cowsert’s announcement he wouldn’t be running.

Stephen Simpson, who was vanquished by Broun in last year’s primary, is giving it another go and Columbia County’s Brian Slowinski has also announced his entry.

-Brandon Howell

South Carolina Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the older sister of late night political satirist Steven Colbert, will fundraise in Atlanta alongside some of Georgia’s most prominent pols later this month.

Colbert Busch, running in a special election next month to fill a vacant congressional seat opposite former Gov. Mark Sanford, is looking to fill her campaign coffers with the assistance of Georgia’s largely untapped Democratic donor base.

According to an invitation sent by a fundraising aide, Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes and Reps. John Lewis, Hank Johnson and David Scott will be at her side at the April 19 fundraiser at a private residence in Atlanta’s Druid Hills neighborhood. (Lewis, who the invitation lists as the primary host, previously endorsed Colbert Busch in the February Democratic primary.)

Admittance to the event costs only $250, though sponsorship rates run between $1,000 and $2,600.

- James Richardson

U.S. Reps. Paul Broun of Georgia and Steve Stockman of Texas have collected the signatures of more than three dozen Republicans on a letter warning congressional leadership from green lighting legislation providing for universal background checks without majority support from the House GOP caucus.

“We are writing to express our strong opposition to legislation requiring private background checks for firearms purchasers,” the pair, joined by 45 other Republicans, wrote. “Under the precedents and traditions of the House, we would ask that no gun legislation be brought to the floor of the House unless it has the support of a majority of our caucus.”

The majority within the majority protocol is known within the conference as the Hastert Rule, named for former Republican Speaker Denny Hastert, and is intended as an ideological check on leadership.

Broun, an outspoken conservative now running for U.S. Senate from Georgia, said the proposed measure, which is a top priority of President Obama and Senate Democrats, violates the freedoms of gun owners on an “unprecedented scale” — and all for naught.

Citing gunmen involved in recent mass shootings, the letter says the tightened purchasing regulations would not prevent criminals from legally obtaining firearms and would instead only punish law-abiding citizens.

“In additional to constitutional concerns, even if every private transfer of firearms were regulated by the federal government, it would not be an effective crime fighting tool,” the letter reads. “Typically, shooters steal firearms (Adam Lanza), pass a background check (James Holmes and Jared Loughner) or receive their firearms through straw purchasers (which is already illegal).”

Even though the state’s congressional delegation is among the most conservative and pro-gun in the nation, only one other Georgian, freshman Rep. Doug Collins, signed Broun’s letter.

- James Richardson

State House Majority Whip Ed Lindsey made it official yesterday that he will be pursuing Rep. Phil Gingrey’s 11th district congressional seat.

Lindsey has served in the state House since 2004 and was a rumored candidate for some time, opting to delay an announcement until the year’s session of the Georgia General Assembly was done.

“I’m the only elected Republican in the city of Atlanta,” he said, according to the Marietta Daily Journal, at an announcement event.  “What that has meant is I have had to come to understand when to fight and when to cooperate.”

An AJC report provided text of an email Lindsey sent this morning to supporters.

“That future is at risk.  America is at a crossroads.  Now more than ever, we need the voice of our people heard in the halls of power in Washington,” it read.

Lindsey joins former Rep. Bob Barr as the only announced candidates in the field. Barr wasted no time making an announcement, entering the fray twenty-four hours after Gingrey made his bid for Saxby Chambliss’s Senate seat official.

Also considering the race is Tricia Pridemore, who tendered her resignation from the Governor’s Office of Workforce Development earlier this week, with most taking the move as an indication that she will run. State Senators Barry Loudermilk and Judson Hill are also rumored candidates.

- Brandon Howell

# # #

Conservative activists at two Georgia universities are silently protesting the state’s firearms-on-campus prohibition by wearing empty gun holsters to class.

Students at Georgia Tech and Kennesaw State University, whose local government passed in 1982 a city ordinance requiring most adults to own a firearm, launched on Monday a weeklong demonstration of what they call an unlawful disarming of law-abiding citizens.

“It’s symbolic that we have to disarm to come to campus, that people, like me, who carry everywhere else we go, to the grocery store, to the mall, I’m armed, but I come and campus and I have to disarm,” Tech student Steve Fox told Atlanta ABC affiliate WSBTV.

Republican House lawmakers approved last month a sweeping overhaul of the state’s gun control regime, allowing for licensed concealed carry of firearms in bars, churches and parts of college campuses, but the measure ultimately fell short in the upper chamber.

The legislature’s refusal to decriminalize concealed campus carry, the student protesters said, violates their freedoms and leaves prohibited zones at risk of violence.

“Really it’s a matter of self-defense,” Austin Isop, another Tech student, said of the ban. “People who can carry off campus legally with a weapons license should be able to do so on campus.”

- James Richardson

Politico’s Morning Score is reporting that Rep. Jack Kingston will officially announce that he’s raised $841,000 in the first fundraising quarter of 2013, boosting his coffers to $1.75 million in preparation for a probable Senate bid.

The numbers are one of the clearest indicators that he is taking a serious look at entering the race, as he raised just $90,000 in the first quarter of 2012, an election year.

Kingston has all but formally announced that he intends to run for the retiring Saxby Chambliss’s seat, speaking at GOP events far removed from his coastal Georgia district since the senior senator announced his planned retirement.

Reps. Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun remain the only two formally announced candidates in the race, with Gingrey having entered the fray already packing $1.8 million on hand. Broun started with a far less substantial warchest, sitting just over $155,000.

The Politico report of Kingston’s numbers went on to state that he “plans a mid-April announcement on his decision in the race.”

Update: A press release from Kingston’s office touted the fundraising totals as some of the strongest in his career while teasing his entry into the Senate contest.

“The report is by far the strongest Kingston has posted in his time in Congress. In comparison, he raised $89,993 in the first quarter of 2011 and had $956,627 on hand,” read the release.

Kingston went on to state in the release that he “will need a strong war chest to turn back their attacks and continue our efforts to cut deficit spending, encourage economic growth, and harness America¹s energy potential.”

-Brandon Howell

State Senator Bill Cowsert said Monday night he would not pursue the north Georgia congressional seat to be vacated by Rep. Paul Broun, who is running for U.S. Senate.

“After many long discussions with my family and law partners, I have decided that I will not seek the Republican nomination for the 10th Congressional District in Georgia,” he said via release to Martha Zoller’s ZPolitics. “After a great deal of reflection, I am confident that the best way to balance my desire for public service and the responsibilities I have as a husband and father is to continue to serve in the State Senate.”

Cowsert’s entry into the contest was widely assumed as inevitable, and the Athens Republican would’ve entered the race as a formidable contender.

His exit leaves Columbia County’s Brian Slowinski and Stephen Simpson, who was handily vanquished by Broun in last year’s primary, as the lone entrants in the race.

State Rep. Donna Sheldon has also been mentioned as a possible contender for the open seat, and former Rep. Mac Collins has said that either he or his son will be in the running. He teased a primary bid against Broun last year, but ultimately chose not to run.

Update: State Rep. Donna Sheldon tweeted out a foreshadowing message this morning, saying only that a “big announcement” was coming in the near future, but offering no direct indication as to what that entails.

The Dacula representative has been speculated as a possible entrant into the 10th congressional district race to replace Rep. Paul Broun, who is now seeking to move up to the Senate. Cowsert’s opting to remain in the state Senate may well have shifted Sheldon’s timetable of announcement, as Tipsheet sources have indicated they expect her entry into the race soon. The tweet appears to confirm such expectations.

Big announcement coming soon!

— Donna Sheldon (@Donna_Sheldon) April 9, 2013

-Brandon Howell

Kasim Reed’s campaign for reelection to city hall has rapidly accelerated its pace of fundraising, constructing a diverse donor network that includes the owner of the Atlanta Falcons, a former U.S. senator and even a top aide to Georgia’s Republican governor.

Reed’s campaign raised just shy of $325,000 in the first three months of the year and reported having stockpiled nearly $1.5 million in cash reserves, according to recently-filed disclosures with state ethics officials.

Prominent contributors include Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who worked closely with the mayor during recent negotiations to land the franchise a costly new venue ($1,000); former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn ($250) and his daughter, Michelle, a possible Democratic recruit for the state’s open Senate contest next year ($1,000); former Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker ($1,500); and Chris Riley ($250), chief of staff for Georgia’s GOP governor, Nathan Deal.

Neither of Reed’s challengers, perennial political candidate Al Bartell and chef Paul Luna, have filed campaign finance reports with the state, though neither are likely to pose serious threats to the mayor’s reelection efforts.

- James Richardson

The campaign arm of House Republicans may be doing more than anyone else to prod Georgia Democratic Rep. John Barrow to pursue the U.S. Senate seat to be left vacant next year by retiring Rep. Saxby Chambliss.

Barrow, a conservative Democrat who has repeatedly foiled state and national GOP efforts to unseat him, recently signaled an interest in the Senate race, even holding invitation-only listening sessions with donors while on recess in Atlanta.

By attacking him early and often, the National Republican Congressional Committee seems to have reconciled itself to Barrow’s maddening perseverance and is simply ready to see him become someone else’s problem.

The NRCC unveiled on Monday a television advertisement attacking the Georgian for his votes against Republican budget proposals and unsuccessful efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

A spokeswoman was unable to specify how much was spent on the ad, but said it would run “multiple times” throughout Barrow’s district during the nearby Masters Tournament.

Not a week goes by where the committee doesn’t release at least one statement attacking the congressman as a do-nothing liberal, but the transition to television–a far more expensive medium than online ads–marks something of an escalation.

Should Barrow choose to remain in the House, his next election is twenty months out. The contest is so far removed that no local Republicans have even made overtures for it.

“Who can blame them for wanting Barrow out of their hair?” one top Georgia Republican strategist told Tipsheet. “They’ve made the calculation, and I think it’s the right one, that if they can dupe him into thinking the grass is greener on the Senate side, then Republicans finally have a chance of getting him out of office.

UPDATE: A Democrat who closely watches local media buys says the spot is slated to run only run this Sunday on a single local broadcast station, Augusta CBS affiliate WRDW, and estimates the expenditure ran no more than $3,000.

Because the tournament, which runs Thursday to Sunday, has reserved all air time for sponsors during hours of play, the source said, the ad can only run in the early morning or evening Sunday.

- James Richardson

The top executive of a Georgia green energy firm that has reaped generous government subsidies will address this week the annual conference of the U.S. Export-Import bank, the company’s primary government benefactor.

John Baumstark, the chairman and chief executive officer of Norcross, Ga.-based Suniva Inc., will participate Thursday in a panel discussion on “overcoming barriers to renewable-energy sales in emerging markets” at the agency’s yearly confab in D.C. Vice President Joe Biden is also on the speaker’s list.

Suniva, an outgrowth of Georgia Tech that produces high efficiency solar modules, won a $780,000 loan guarantee from the taxpayer-backed ExIm earlier this year. The same agency also awarded it a $2 million loan three years earlier to finance the company’s exports abroad.

Conservative critics of the bank, whose 2012 reauthorization nearly doubled its financing authority, argue it distorts the free market by offering rebated loan and loan guarantees to industries that live or die on the government dole.

For Suniva, the criticism is especially poignant.

Even as its less-connected contemporaries downsized operations or shuttered entirely in the last few years, Suniva signaled it would expand its domestic manufacturing footprint, vowing to break ground on a $250 million plant in Thomas Township, Michigan.

But those grand designs were almost singularly underwritten by federal subsidies and tax incentives. (For fiscal years 2011 and 2012, ExIm’s cumulative financing of renewable energy deals crested the $1 billion mark.)

“The secret to Suniva’s ability to ‘overcome barriers’ of foreign markets is simple: corporate welfare,” an ExIm observer who requested not to be identified told Tipsheet. “If fledgling companies want to follow in Baumstark’s steps, they need only drop nearly a half-million dollars on lobbying the federal government like Suniva has.”

ExIm’s conference, which began on Thursday, comes as President Barack Obama has renominated bank president Fred Hochberg to another term at the agency’s helm.

The conservative Club for Growth, a vocal ExIm critic, urged the Senate to block the nomination and warned it would score the vote as a key consideration in the group’s 2013 legislative scorecard.

New numbers regarding Georgia Governor Nathan Deal’s approval put him sufficiently above water, with 48 percent giving him a favorable mark, while 37 percent tilt the other way. Fifteen percent have no opinion.

Though some surveys have put the first-term governor’s approval rating underwater, and below 40 percent, the bulk of results this year have indicated he has strong numbers and solid footing heading into a re-election bid.

Deal’s numbers follow a week in which David Pennington, an insurance executive and Mayor of Dalton, has set a self-imposed deadline of June 1 regarding whether or not he will attempt to oust the governor.

The poll was conducted by InsiderAdvantage and on behalf of Fox 5.

That same survey put the Georgia General Assembly’s numbers slightly underwater, with 35 percent approving their job performance and 42 percent expressing disapproval.

-Brandon Howell