Georgia Tipsheet

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson said Friday he would not challenge Sen. Saxby Chambliss in the 2014 Republican Senate contest, fearing a “nasty campaign” might be a strain too great for his young family.

“Were I to run for the Senate, it would be a terribly nasty campaign,” he wrote Friday on RedState, the conservative blog for which he serves as editor in chief.

“I have a seven-year-old son, a soon-to-be-four-year-old, and a wife who does not like being anywhere near a stage,” Erickson explained. “I’m not putting my family through that when the best outcome would mean a sizable cut in pay and being away from my kids and wife all the time huddled in a pit of vipers often surrounded by too many who viewed me as a useful instrument to their own advancement.”

The sometimes-caustic Erickson, who balances RedState with television and radio gigs, said he believed his campaign would “be a lightening rod … and a distraction.”

RedState has taken a tremendously active role in Senate primaries in the previous two cycles and Erickson said he was content to remain, as he is now, “on the outside assisting and fighting.”

“We will find someone to catapult into the arena,” he said. “It just won’t be me.”

- James Richardson

Conservative Peach State commentator Erick Erickson said Monday night he was supporting businessman Rick Allen in the runoff contest in Georgia’s twelfth congressional district.

The endorsement, though, was less motivated by enthusiasm for Allen than contempt for rival Lee Anderson.

“Anderson … refused in the state legislature to take a ‘no new taxes’ pledge, and voted for the largest tax increase in Georgia history in a way that lacked any testicular fortitude” Erickson wrote at popular conservative haunt RedState on Monday evening.

But beyond Anderson’s legislative record, Erickson said, the sheer optics of a general election debate wherein the drawling south Georgia farmer was opposite incumbent Democratic Rep. John Barrow would devastate GOP hopes of reclaiming the seat.

“And then there is the short, simple, painful truth about Lee Anderson — the man has seemingly never met two syllables without tripping over them,” he wrote. “In a debate, John Barrow would eat the man up with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

- James Richardson

U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss strongtly criticized the Department of Justice on Wednesday for its “notably silent” response to a string of anonymous pranks wherein authorities have been dispatched guns ablaze to the homes of conservative commentators after bogus shooting claims.

Aides to the Peach State pol circulated a letter he sent earlier in the day to the nation’s top law man, Eric Holder, bearing an unusually firm hed: “Chambliss slams attorney general for insufficient response to SWAT-ting.”

The missive didn’t disappoint.

In the month since Chambliss first petitioned Holder to launch a federal probe into the practice, which stung Georgia conservative radio talker and blogger Erick Erickson earlier this year, the senator said he had received only a “cursory, boilerplate response” from Justice Department officials.

“I remain extremely concerned about the danger SWAT-ting presents, and am worried about its use as a tool for silencing political speech,” Chambliss wrote Wednesday. “You and your department should be equally worried about these attempts at intimidation.”

In an accompanying statement, Chambliss implicitly linked Holder’s weak response to his stonewalling a Congressional investigation into a bungled federal gun running operation, for which he was recently found in contempt by the House of Representatives.

“Instead of addressing the dangerous trend of SWAT-ting, Attorney General Holder and the Justice Department have chosen to continue their unresponsiveness to congressional inquiries,” he said.

His letter in full:

UPDATE: Ali Akbar, a Georgia political operative who sits atop the National Bloggers Club, emailed Tipsheet a statement cheerleading the sustained pressure on DOJ from Chambliss and other GOP lawmakers.

“We’ve enjoyed working with elected officials on this issue. Senator Chambliss, Representatives Sandy Adams of Florida and Kenny Marchant of Texas are going to get to the bottom of this SWATting issue, because it’s a free speech issue.”

- James Richardson

Bibb County authorities released this week the audio recording of the anonymous prank last month that sent central Georgia police to the home of conservative commentator Erick Erickson.

When the popular blogger and CNN commentator revealed that he had fallen victim to SWAT-ting–the practice of anonymous persons dispatching authorities guns ablaze to the another’s home after bogus shooting claims–he said the 911 hoax was regarding an accidental shooting.

But the new audio shows it to be far more grim: the caller, who posed as Erickson, said he shot his wife, who now lay dead at his feet, and promised to go shoot others.

Listen to the full exchange between the prankster and emergency services.

- James Richardson

U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss has asked the Justice Department to investigate a string of anonymous pranks in which authorities have been dispatched guns ablaze to the homes of conservative commentators after bogus shooting claims.

In a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Eric Holder, Chambliss said the practice of “SWAT-ting”–which struck the family of Georgian Erick Erickson last month–is a tool by which radicals are squelching the First Amendment.

“The use of SWAT-ting as a harassment tool is apparently not new, but its use as a tool for targeting political speech appears to be a more recent development,” he wrote, according to a press release from the senator’s office. “During the last year, some of the more widely reported cases of SWAT-ting have taken place against blog operators across the country, including in Georgia. The emerging pattern is both disturbing and dangerous.”

“While I am certain that local law enforcement is reviewing each of these instances, I am asking you to please look into these cases as well to determine if any federal laws may have been violated,” the letter closes, demanding a response from Holder by no later than June 29.

- James Richardson

Conservative radio talker Erick Erickson led his Monday drive time broadcast with a reading from Georgia Tipsheet, assailing Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed as a hypocrite for his attacks on Mitt Romney’s business career.

Tipsheet reported this morning that Reed’s Sunday broadside against Romney’s career in venture capital was complicated by a review of his own payroll.

The Atlanta mayor tapped two Bain executives, both Democratic donors, to serve in senior posts in his administration. On multiple occasions Reed even hailed one appointee as a turnaround artist whose experience at Romney’s old firm would serve the city well.

- James Richardson

Conservative radio talker Neal Boortz announced on Monday his intentions retire in January after four decades behind the microphone, yielding his three-hour show to ex-Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain.

But before Boortz could break the news to listeners today, he was preempted by station execs at Atlanta’s WSB, whose syndication of the program reaches more than 6 million.

“Today, national radio talk show host Neal Boortz announced live on his program that he’s retiring from his daily show and passing the torch to his friend and colleague, Herman Cain,” a morning release by WBS read. “His last day hosting The Neal Boortz Show … will be January 18, 2013.”

That release, though belatedly time-stamped at 10:07AM, was floated even before the station began beaming Boortz across the air at 8:30AM, by which time at least one conservative Georgia blog had already caught the news.

Boortz himself posted on his blog a lengthy farewell note to fans and listeners. “It’s finally the right time to put away the headphones,” he said in this morning’s broadcast.

Cain’s return to WSB is the latest reshuffling of the station’s commentators.

When he left last year to launch his bid for the White House, RedState’s Erick Erickson, then only a recently-hired contributor to the station, was promoted from his late evening hour-long broadcast to the two-hour drive-time slot formerly held by Cain.

- James Richardson

Influential conservative commentator Erick Erickson said Thursday he would vote against the state’s July 31 transportation tax referendum.

Erickson–the editor-in-chief of conservative RedState.com, a drive time radio talker for Atlanta’s WSB and an on-air contributor for CNN–previewed his nuanced opposition at Georgia politics blog Peach Pundit.

“First, you should understand that I do not oppose the T-SPLOST in principle,” Erickson writes in his weekly column for the Macon Telegraph, an early version of which he floated online today. “Second, you should know there are programs in the T-SPLOST I fully support and think would create jobs.”

Erickson’s reputation as a rock-ribbed conservative in activist quarters of the party led most to assume he opposed the measure outright. The tax, it seems, he could stomach; the bureaucracy that would implement it, however, he could not.

The ex-Macon city councilman said he could not ultimately assent to the referendum because the “Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) is an unrepentant cesspool of greed.”

“If we approve the T-SPLOST, we are aggressing to subsidize greed, graft, corruption, waste, fraud and abuse within our transportation bureaucracy in perpetuity.”

The news pits him against fellow WSB personality Clark Howard, who earlier this week said investment in the state’s infrastructure was a business imperative.

“I started off being completely opposed to this,” Howard said at a WSB roundtable on the tax. “The more I’ve leaned about it, the more I think we need to do this.”

- James Richardson