Georgia Tipsheet

Both the state House and Senate’s highest ranking Democrats will join Republican Attorney General Sam Olens on a panel set to investigate whether or not state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, an Atlanta Democrat, should be suspended from office while facing federal indictment.

Olens is required by law to sit on the panel, but it was Governor Nathan Deal’s decision to appoint House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams and her Senate counterpart, Steve Henson, as the final two members.

They now have a two-week period to come to a decision, which will be final when rendered.

Brooks faces some 30 counts of “wire, tax and mail fraud and federal prosecutors allege he used donations for a pair of charities he leads for personal expenses,” per the AJC’s report of the panel appointees.

His attorney, former Governor Roy Barnes, has argued that broke no laws in spite of “poor accounting practices.”

Should the panel rule that Brooks is unfit for his office’s official capacities, he would continue to receive both benefits and pay, while being unable to perform any role pertaining to his office. If found innocent, the suspension would subsequently be lifted.

-Brandon Howell

Governor Nathan Deal’s office today announced a spike in revenue to the tune of 8.6 percent compared to May of last year.

The total intake, some $1.35 billion, marked an increase of $106 million in total collections. That number brings the Peach State’s net revenue collections to $15.4 billion, a 6.3 percent increase compared to the same time last year.

According to a press release from Deal’s office, the increase was spurred by collection increases in individual and corporate income taxes, while sales and use tax collections decreased by 6.8 percent compared to May 2012. Almost $27 million came in from corporate tax revenue, compared to $8 million last year.

-Brandon Howell

Democratic Party of Georgia head Mike Berlon is formally resigning on Sunday, but he’s left parting words likely to continue public debate over the party’s strategy heading into the 2014 election cycle.

“We have a great opportunity to win a US Senate seat here in 2014. We also have good shot at the governor’s race with the right candidate,” stated the outgoing chairman, per the AJC.

His thoughts on the governor’s race follow Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s call for the party to focus on the open Senate seat, as opposed to also mounting a challenge to Governor Nathan Deal, who’s considered a heavy favorite for re-election.

“My opinion is Governor Deal has done a good job as governor. The most important effort in the state of Georgia is the 2014 Senate race and, in my mind, the 2016 presidential race,” stated Reed, who’s widely considered a future candidate for statewide office in his own right. “You pick the contests that you have. You lose the second fight by not focusing on the first.”

Those remarks were met with dissent from Democratic lawmakers in the Georgia Senate, with Minority Leader Steve Henson and Whip Vincent Fort each calling on Democrats to mount a credible challenge to the governor, arguing that it wouldn’t dilute any efforts at picking up a Senate seat.

“I think Gov. Deal is vulnerable and, more importantly, I think the public believes he hasn’t done a good job,” Fort remarked.

Berlon’s outgoing political salvo gives further indication that all isn’t settled when it comes to the course the next party leader will chart.

First Vice Chair Nakema Williams will likely step in for now, but her ties to Planned Parenthood are widely expected to make her but a temporary fix. Rumored permanent successors include former House Minority Leader DuBose Porter, former state Senator Doug Stoner, and state Rep. Calvin Smyre. Strategist, and former Kasim Reed campaign manager, Tharon Johnson is also said to be in the mix.

Amid mounting personal legal issues, Berlon announced that he would resign last week. Reed himself was among those calling on him to step aside, saying it was “time to move on,” citing the need for Democrats to avoid distraction due to personal problems.

-Brandon Howell

On Friday Governor Nathan Deal’s office received the official indictment of state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, setting off a process that could end in the Atlanta Democrat’s suspension from office.

A three-person panel, comprised of Attorney General Sam Olens and a member of the state House and Senate selected by Deal, will now review the case. A recommendation to the governor on whether or not the charges will impact “administration of the office” will subsequently be made, and it must be accepted.

The AJC’s report notes that the panel must convene within two weeks of the governor’s office receiving the indictment.

Brooks faces some 30 charges of mail, tax, and wire fraud.

The indictment argues that he “misappropriated funds from the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, of which he served as president, and Universal Humanities, an organization he established in the early 1990s to combat illiteracy in disadvantaged communities.”

Brooks’s attorney, former Governor Roy Barnes, has argued that the embattled rep. “might have been in need of an accountant but did not break the law.” He’s entered a plea of not guilty.

-Brandon Howell

Mike Berlon’s announcement that he’d eventually be resigning as head of the Democratic Party of Georgia may have immediately followed Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s call for him to move on, but that doesn’t mean that the mayor’s political antenna is in total sync with other members of his party.

“You pick the contests that you have. You lose the second fight by not focusing on the first,” Reed told the AJC earlier this week, with regards to whether or not his party should put up a fight against Governor Nathan Deal, widely considered a safe lock for re-election.

He went on to offer lukewarm praise of the Republican governor’s first term in office.

“My opinion is Governor Deal has done a good job as governor. The most important effort in the state of Georgia is the 2014 Senate race and, in my mind, the 2016 presidential race.”

Those comments have been met with pushback from other elected officials within Democratic ranks.

“I think Gov. Deal is vulnerable and, more importantly, I think the public believes he hasn’t done a good job,” quipped state Senate Minority Whip Vincent Fort in comments also to the AJC. “That’s why he’s vulnerable. We shouldn’t run someone against him just because he’s vulnerable. But we should run something against him because he’s done a poor job. The state under his leadership has suffered.”

Steve Henson, the Upper Chamber’s Minority Leader, echoed that sentiment, saying Peach State Democrats “wouldn’t detract from another race if we field a strong, credible candidate for governor.”

Reed went on to call himself “pragmatic,” stating that he believed “in winning,” arguing that the party should put its finite resources towards the race for the retiring Saxby Chambliss’s open Senate seat.

-Brandon Howell

Dalton Mayor David Pennington’s formal announcement of a primary challenge against Governor Nathan Deal has been considered all but a formality, but the first delay in his timetable has been announced.

He originally said he’d have made a final decision by the end of this month, but an AJC report now says that he’s holding off until mid-June on deciding whether or not to mount a campaign against the incumbent governor.

The reason given was the need for more meetings across the state with potential supporters.

“We’ve had some very positive meetings across Georgia,” Pennington told the AJC.

A March speech at Poole’s BBQ in Ellijay, in which the Dalton mayor predicted that a Deal re-election would lead to a Democrat in the Governor’s Mansion come 2018, was met with Deal spokesman Brian Robinson questioning whether or not Pennington could win his own Whitfield County.

-Brandon Howell

High school students in Georgia’s rural Wilcox County held on Saturday their first integrated prom, more than half century since the nation’s high court ordered the benchmark desegregation of public schools, after students campaigned to reconcile their school’s decades-long tradition of extramural, racially-exclusive dances.

The school, whose students number only 400, has not historically sanctioned dances, instead leaving the administration of such events to students and parents. For prom, two private balls, one organized by and for each race, were held.

The unseemly tradition was expected to continue this year, but a vigorous social media campaign by four students, two white and two black, to host an integrated affair earned the Peach State mapdot international notoriety.

And thanks to the efforts of Better Georgia, an upstart band of local progressive agitators, the integration push also meant for Gov. Nathan Deal an unexpected political nuisance.

Sensing the opportunity to marginalize the governor with African American voters, the group publicly demanded Deal intervene. Deal demurred, his aides insisting the governor would not be hoodwinked by a “silly publicity stunt” orchestrated by a “leftist front group for the state Democratic Party.”

But the taciturn response only emboldened the group, whose operatives sowed critical headlines throughout the country. “Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal won’t respond to group’s call to end segregated prom,” one hed, at the highly-trafficked Huffington Post, read. Another from Creative Loafing, a popular Atlanta altweekly, read: “Deal spokesman calls integrated prom push a ‘silly publicity stunt.’”

For now, though, it seems the tradition (and taunting for Deal) has ended.

- James Richardson

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

Dalton Mayor David Pennington, who’s made headlines in recent weeks for considering mounting a longshot primary challenge against Governor Nathan Deal, has set a June 1^st deadline on entering the race.

An insurance executive by tried, Pennington decried Deal’s “backing of the so-called ‘bed tax’ and his intervention in local school districts” in an interview with the AJC.

He went on to say that regardless of what state leaders said, they’ve “expanded government over the last few years.”

Pennington’s early efforts come following a year that, at one time, saw Dalton’s “metropolitan area topped the nation in job losses compared with the previous year.”

His rebuke to any such criticisms? That a mayor has little to do when it comes to the economy, be it state or national.

Prior to his AJC interview, Pennington grabbed some headlines for his appearance at Poole’s BBQ in Ellijay, a known spot for politics in North Georgia, during which he appeared to warn attendees that a second term for Governor Deal could put land a Democrat in the Governor’s Mansion come 2018.

Following that speech, Deal spokesman Brian Robinson dismissed the prospects of strong Pennington candidacy. “It’s doubtful that the mayor could even win his own county,” he said.

Deal won Whitfield County, which encompasses Dalton, with 72 percent of the vote in his 2010 contest against Democrat Roy Barnes, and 53 percent in a Republican runoff against Karen Handel.

-Brandon Howell

Gov. Nathan Deal, whose resignation from Congress two years ago scuttled a corruption probe into the Republican’s auto salvage business, has emerged as the unlikely broker of a compromise between House Speaker David Ralston and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle to tighten ethics rules under the Gold Dome.

On an early morning conference call with Ralston and Cagle, Deal reportedly negotiated a deal under which gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers would be capped at $75, a slightly stricter limit than first proposed, but would still allow lobbyists to finance the travel expenses of aides and family members of lawmakers, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Thursday.

The agreement would also limit the definition of lobbyist, at least as it relates to disclosure, to persons remunerated for their lobbying.

Sounding very much like a possible gubernatorial candidate, the conservative mayor of an extreme north Georgia town roused the lunchtime crowd at a popular restaurant Thursday with a rebuke of Governor Nathan Deal.

“What have they done in three years, period?” Dalton Mayor David Pennington asked diners yesterday at Poole’s BBQ in Ellijay.

On hand for the speech was former Secretary of State Karen Handel, who Deal narrowly defeated in a primary run-off for the governor’s mansion three years earlier.

Though she lives in an Atlanta suburb, more than an hour south of the restaurant, Handel said her presence at the lunch was not an endorsement Pennington, who has not announced a statewide bid, and instead extended Deal a lukewarm compliment.

“I think he’s done a reasonably good job,” she told Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA. “I think the governor has met the commitments he’s made to the people of Georgia.”

But Pennington said the governor had not lived up to the promise of his campaign, warning that a second term may condition voters to instead vault a Democrat into the governor’s mansion.

“Four more years of this, in 2018 if not before, this state’s going back to a Democrat governor,” he said. “And let me tell you this, this Democrat will not be our father’s conservative southern Democrat that we knew twenty years ago. This will be the liberal variety.”

Most public polls have shown Deal with majority job approval and his aides were decidedly nonplussed by the prospect of a possible Pennington challenge.

“Gov. Deal retains strong approval ratings from Republicans who would vote in the primary because of his record of conservative accomplishments,” Deal’s spokesman, Brian Robinson, said. “It’s doubtful the mayor could win his own county.”

Robinson is probably right: Deal won Whitfield County, for which Dalton is the seat, with 53 percent in the head-to-head runoff with Handel and later by 72 percent in the general election contest against former Gov. Roy Barnes.

- James Richardson

A senior political adviser to Rep. Phil Gingrey said Wednesday that the six-term congressman has retained a handful of key operatives and is expected to enter Georgia’s GOP Senate nomination contest “in the near future.”

“All indications are he’s going to be running for U.S. Senate,” Gingrey general consultant Chip Lake said by phone.

Lake said the organization was still “a work in progress,” but said that a pair of Republican firms had been retained to manage the would-be campaign’s digital, mail and paid advertising operations.

The Stoneridge Group will oversee digital and direct mail while GOP adman Sonny Scott’s firm, Rising Tide Media Group, will manage television and radio advertising.

Both companies, which Lake said would effectively round out the nucleus of the campaign, previously worked for Gov. Nathan Deal’s 2010 campaign for the governor’s mansion.

Gingrey has already assumed the posture of a candidate–he massaged on Monday his earlier impolitic comments on rape and his congressional office released two politically-tinged statements only hours apart on Wednesday–but has made no firm public declaration of intent.

That delay, Lake said, is merely the product of family considerations. The congressman has four adult children and more than a dozen grandchildren whose varying schedules have complicated the timing of a formal announcement, “assuming he goes through with it,” he cautioned.

- James Richardson

A poll jointly conducted by two Republican firms shows Georgia Governor Nathan Deal holding just a 38 percent approval rating in the state.

However, just 32 percent of those surveyed gave the governor negative marks, with the remaining percentage being undecided.

Conducted on Monday, 800 Georgia voters were polled, with Deal scoring his best marks amongst Republicans and white voters. He notched 63 percent favorability from voters identified with his party, and 51 percent from whites.

Only 29 percent of voters identified as ‘Independents’ approved his job performance thus far, with 48 percent disapproving. Not surprisingly, his worst numbers were found with Peach State Democrats, with 48 percent disapproving and 12 percent saying they viewed him favorably.

According to the AJC’s Jim Galloway, pollster Mark Rountree, of Landmark Communications, attributed the numbers to nationwide decline in the favorability of governors “because they’re having to make the real decisions between cuts and tax increases.”

Those numbers align with a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP) last December, which placed his approval at 37 percent, with 42 percent disapproving.

Still, they run in contrast to two separate polls released in January of this year.

An AJC-commissioned survey, conducted by Kennesaw State’s Survey Research Lab, gave the first-term governor a job approval rating of 51 percent.

Another, released shortly thereafter by InsiderAdvantage, placed Deal’s favorability at 55 percent, with just 29 percent of Peach State voters disapproving.

To date, PPP’s December poll is the only one conducted to have tested the governor, up for re-election next year, against Democratic opposition.

He bested Blue Dog Rep. John Barrow, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and state Senator Jason Carter in head-to-head contests, but none of the three have expressed interest in a 2014 challenge.

-Brandon Howell

Governor Nathan Deal says that the Peach State’s revenues spiked by $164 million in the month of January, a net increase of 10.4 percent.

“At the end of seven months, net tax revenue collections are up almost $564 million, or 5.7 percent, compared to the same point last year,” read a press release from his office.

Total tax collections for the seventh month of Fiscal Year 2013 totaled $1.73 billion, with $1.025 billion of that coming from income tax revenue. That represents a 16 percent increase from January of 2012.

The most significant increase came from the Corporate Income Tax, collections of which have increased over 700 percent since last year; its total increased by $18.25 million.

-Brandon Howell

U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland said Monday he would not seek the Republican Senate nomination from Georgia, opting instead to run for reelection to his suburban Atlanta district.

“After discussing it with family and friends, and after much deliberation and prayer, I have made the decision to not pursue a statewide office at this time,” Westmoreland said in a statement. “I am honored to be serving as the U.S. Congressman for Georgia’s Third District.”

It was widely expected that Westmoreland, a close friend and political ally of Gov. Nathan Deal, would have entered the race with the overt support and political infrastructure of the governor, but Monday’s news of abstention leaves the state’s top Republican without a candidate to support.

Now, senior Republicans believe, Deal will remain neutral until a runoff–Georgia election law requires candidates clear the 50 percent threshold or default to a runoff with the second-highest vote-getter–when his endorsement would bear more influence. (By enduring the volatility of a crowded primary field, in which a quartet of GOP congressional lawmakers are expected to enter, Deal also avoids the potential his endorsement might miscarry.)

- James Richardson