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Checking other fees such as overdraft fees May apply Amis Bank member FDIC Equal Housing lender it is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and Beyond it who did not support him and I hope he does that former president Trump’s last Republican
Challenger Nikki Haley bows out of the race ahead of Georgia’s president presidential primary on Tuesday so the 2024 presidential campaign is turning to the general election with Trump and President Joe Biden holding competing rallies in Georgia on Saturday November 5th is going to go down as the single
Most important day in the history of our country American democracy that’s what the 2024 election is All About the Weekend campaigning follows a busy qualifying week at the state legislature where local and state candidates line up to pay their fees and register to run for office I didn’t think it would be as
Exciting but it turns out the second time it’s still a charm and I’m really excited I’m wab politics reporter R B I’m politics reporter Sam Green Glass it’s week nine of the Georgia General Assembly and this is a special elections episode from goldome scramble a podcast about the legislature and more from wab
News in Atlanta so Sam hello from one of my favorite places at the capital I am sitting outside on the south steps that face the main legislative building I love doing the podcast here I love doing my closer look appearances here once the weather turns nice enough and well the weather
Has finally turned nice enough all right but before we get to the nice weather let me rewind a couple days to a very rainy day here in Atlanta uh this was earlier this week and we had a special guest at the capital along with pastor
Of the day we got doctor of the day and sitting in the Senate chamber I I I knew the Doctor Who was up there uh and I think you do too it was my wife um Dr duthy contractor was the doctor of the day on Tuesday and and I actually spent the
Morning hanging out with her it was actually kind of a crazy experience for me because I went places I don’t normally get to go I mean she got to go to the governor’s office office for an official picture she got to meet the lieutenant governor the speaker you were
In the Senate she gave a short speech uh in the Senate and then she got to man The Medical Clinic on the second floor of the state capital A lot of people don’t realize that there’s a full clinic in there and I thought I was just going
To get to hang out with her all day instead she was busy all day with patient after patient and here’s my favorite story state representative Michelle Al and my wife have operated together but they never made the connection because well my wife didn’t take my last name so they made the
Connection finally so I I do want to say thank you to everyone here that was so nice to her I mean it was really really appreciated so Sam you know it’s it’s been a busy week here at the state Capal really kind of setting the agenda for the 2024 elections super Tuesday was
This week we had qualifying here at the state capital and Sam you’re going to be on duty this weekend tell the folks what you’re doing Saturday yeah this week really feels like a kickoff to the general election you know Nikki Haley is out of the race on the Republican side
And so we’re increasingly going to see Trump and Biden zeroing in on each other and this general election November matchup and I think that will be really clearly Illustrated on Saturday when both candidates are in Georgia rallying you know almost at exactly the same time in this kind of split screen St
Uh President Biden will be here in Atlanta rallying supporters and former president Trump will be in North Georgia a reliably conservative part of the state rallying his base uh in downtown Rome and I think we can start to see some of the Dynamics that we’re going to
Be dealing with over the next couple of months play out we’re going to see President Biden looking to shore up support among younger voters among people of color his base Coalition Trump trying to fire up more r rule white Republicans in uh you know parts of the state outside of Atlanta and both
Eventually are going to need to compete for these Suburban more independently minded voters that have been really crucial in Georgia in the past elections now it’s important to remind people that we still have the presidential primary for Georgia this coming Tuesday and I want to explain how that works Georgia
Has Open primary so you go to your polling place and can ask either for a Republican or a Democratic ballot on the Republican side there are 59 delegates at stake and what we mean is these are the 59 nominating delegates for the presidential nominations for the Republican side 17 are Statewide delegates
42 are based on congressional districts 14 districts three per District that’s how you get to 42 uh the districts are win or take all when a candidate exceeds 50% on the Dem Democrat side you’ve got 123 delegates from Georgia now there’s something interesting going on with that
Primary and that has to do with this idea of Democrats pulling a ballot but then leaving them blank Sam tell me about it organizers are calling this the leave it blank campaign and they’re modeling it after efforts in earlier primary States most notably Michigan to send a message to President Biden about
His stance on on the war in Gaza I attended a press conference earlier this week and one of the people I met was Rada Nar she helped organized Arab Americans for Biden back in 2020 but since then she’s lost 75 relatives she says in Gaza since that War began and so
Now she’s helped refashion that group Arab Americans for Biden into Arab Americans forward even if we only register 1,200 blank votes which is 10% of President Biden’s margin of victory in Georgia we can still send a powerful message that President Biden must earn our vote through an immediate and
Significant change in his policy that similar campaign in Michigan Drew more than 100,000 uncommitted votes so bringing it back to Georgia more than 350,000 people have already voted early in Georgia’s primary about 230 240 ,000 of those have pulled a republican ballot while about 120,000 have pulled a
Democratic ballot now looking at the ballots on the Republican side you’ve got 11 names because those ballots were set back in November Nikki Haley being one of those still in the ballots Sam you covered Nikki Haley in South Carolina over the past few years you’ve talked to so many independent voters in
The Atlanta suburbs and in Georgia I think the key question is what are these voters going to do exactly you know Haley was getting 30 40% of the vote in some GOP Primary so far and a question is do these voters come around to Trump do they vote for
Biden in November or do they stay home and when we talk about these voters I often think of Atlanta suburbs as you mentioned where I met so many Republicans over the last few years who have soured on Trump don’t want Biden and in the last election in the midterm
Split their votes between Brian Kemp and Rafael waro we heard Haley at the top of the show saying Trump needs to convince her voters to join his fold but Trump responded later that day saying he doesn’t really need too many of them just last month I met Georgia voter
Jennifer Michael at a rally for Nikki Haley in North Augusta South Carolina she’s a Georgia voter but at cross the border uh to South Carolina to hear from Haley and this is what she told me about her plan for Georgia as primary her name is already on our ballot so I can vote
For her whether she’s still running or not and that will be what I will do I will be very curious to see how many people follow Jennifer Michaels lead and still select Nikki Haley or someone else on the Republican ballot on Tuesday and that could give us some clues about the
Amount of work uh that Trump or Biden have to do to convince these very important swing voters to come to their side before November now before we move on Sam I want to talk about another very important group of Voters that we have talked about throughout the years some
Reporting you’ve got coming out on black voters in swing States black voter turnout declin Nationwide between the last two midterms Georgia’s drop off was smaller than other swing States but strategist are warning that a similar decline in black voter turnout from 2020 could be disastrous for Democrats talk
About that Sam that’s right so at the end of last year I got a report that grabbed my attention it was written by Democratic strategists in both Georgia and Michigan and as we all know these are my two states obviously live in Georgia now I am from Michigan so that
Immediately caught my attention but the report offered some really interesting analysis and some potential lessons for 2024 one thing that jumped out to me was that Georgia retained about 90% of black voters so 90% of black voters who voted in the 2018 midterms came back in
2022 but if you break those numbers down there were big drops in voters under 40 specifically I recently met up with some of the authors of this report at Cascade skating in Atlanta it’s this well loved roller rink on Atlanta’s West Side with neon signs and funky carpet strategist
Dean Anthony told me this is the kind of place that candidates need to campaign in and he said that Outreach has to be both early and often the black community is hit 3 four weeks before the actual election day and everybody’s asking what happened it is not on the black
Community to save America but it is right for anyone who is expecting this community’s vote to be intentional about caring for I talked to one voter who was unlacing his roller skates his name was Marcus Allen and he told me he hasn’t voted since Obama in 2008 you have heard
A lot of candidates say we going to do this we going to do that but when they get in the office they don’t do that like downtown the streets the poth holes and everything they need to be fixed over the years they said they going to do it but it never happened Marcus
Allen’s top issue is raising the minimum wage he says he works a lot but is still just getting by and so you know conversations like this really underscore the point uh that it will be really important for candidates to go to places perhaps outside of their normal
Tried and true spots to reach these non voters irregular voters and try and bring them into the fold before November now before we go I do have one important follow-up question did you go skating Sam I pleed the fifth no I didn’t go skating I can ice
Skate I cannot roll or skate so I no I did not strap on any skates for this reporting assignment well as someone who can’t skate or I skate I I’m not going to say anything here what I will say is let’s take a break here this is goldome scramble from [Laughter]
Wab at a time when information continues to come at us faster and faster sometimes you need to hit pause and Rewind mpr’s through line takes you back in time to the source of the new stories filling your feed find nprs through line wherever you get your podcasts the field of mental health
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Right let’s stick with the elections for a moment but I want to turn to local and state races and qualifying week Raul this is kind of an emotional moment set the scene for me so this is like one of the most fun and and crazy weeks at the
Capital because we’re you know we’re still actually in session lawmakers are still meeting but they’re also having to to to go down to the second floor of the state capital and go into the Republican room or the Democratic room and and put their money down and and and say Here’s
What I’m running for and file their paperwork I mean Monday so little got done because well everybody was was so busy qualifying and and it was going really really slow but here’s the thing you get these moments these these interesting images and moments and and let me share a couple that that I
Witnessed personally in the Democratic qualifying room there were four members of of Congress in there at the same time for qualifying Sanford Bishop Hank Johnson Lucy McMath ncka Williams then across the way in the Republican line for the qualifying room you had a state lawmaker who’s next to a candidate in a
Marijuana outfit and then I saw two members of Congress next to each other one of them was rich McCormack dressed in this impeccable suit while Austin Scott is in jeans and this this chill cotton shirt so I mean just this wider range of people in line and some of the
Folks were there with their families kids parents spouses PE people taking pictures on the south steps of the Capal some of them looked like they were doing like a glamour shots deal I mean it was it was it’s just so much going on but one of my favorite conversations was
With state representative Pedro Marine he’s a Democrat from Gwynette County who’s leaving after 22 years in the legislature I have qualified what uh 11 terms 11 times so I’m I’m just I’m excited not to have to do the line not to qualify not to do campaign fundraising you know so I’m a little
Relaxed now here’s the funniest part of that whole conversation at the time we did the interview no one had qualified and no one had told him they were qualifying for a seat so he actually had a check ready to go and he had his paperwork filled out in case no one qualified to
Run or a Democrat didn’t qualify to run for a seat but someone did and he will right off into the sunset Rubble that is absolutely wild I love that uh by the way uh while we’re still talking about qualifying week some developments from my end of the world uh both fton
Superior Judge Scott McAfee and district attorney fonnie Willis both qualified to run again in 2024 Raul you and some other reporters had a quick interview with Willis and she was asked about the possibility of facing a challenger this is a democracy we live in right and so
People have a right to run for office but they should come prepared for a fight they should know that my heart is still in this work my heart will continue to be in this work and I intend to be the DA for the next four years and
N9 months now as of the taping of this podcast nobody on either side of the political aisle has qualified to run against Willis now want to mention one interesting Dynamic when we interviewed her Willis came to the capital on Wednesday about 2 hours after a state senate committee investigating her held
A hearing this is as she’s facing allegations of a conflict of interest in the Georgia election interference case now I did ask her if she was going to appear before that committee and she said she would consult her lawyer about it yeah I covered that hearing and while
It was a lot more cordial and focused than most Congressional hearings typically are my takeaway is that it didn’t turn up anything new now one of the key pieces of legislation that did pass here at the state legislature had to do with implementing the prosecuting attorney’s qualification commission it
Had run into some procedural issues and Senate Bill 332 fixes those now this commission could be used to investigate discipline or even remove Willis that bill now is headed to the governor’s desk meanwhile we are still anxiously awaiting a decision from Judge McAfee in the next week or so so on whether Willis
Should be disqualified from the Trump prosecution now I want to mention one other interesting election story kind of a weird election story and that’s the drama around the Public Service Commission races that are not qualifying here this week at the state capital let’s start off by talking about what
The Public Service Commission is and does it’s a five- member commission that oversees a number of Utilities in the state the most high-profile of these is Georgia Power including regulating how the company makes power and what rates it charges now what was at issue and is still at issue is the election structure
Its five members have to live in one of five districts but they’re elected on a Statewide basis what that has meant in recent years is that the commission is all Republican 2006 2007 that was the last time a Democrat was even on the commission then a few years ago there
Was a lawsuit arguing that the election structure illegally diluted the power of black voters cuz it was there was no way black voters could elect a candidate of their choice and the argument was that Georgia should have a format like it elects members of Congress they have congressional districts and they get
Elected by the voters in those District in 2022 a federal judge agreed and basically canell the elections of two members Republicans Tim Eckles and Fitz Johnson then a different group of federal judges overturned that ruling saying Georgia had a right to pick its format for elections and that the was no
Evidence that race was a factor in picking the format the current format for the Public Service Commission but Secretary of State Brad raffensberger told me he’s still waiting for final orders there’s a lot of moving Parts on that but I don’t want to get into conjectures and making predictions it’s
In his uh biley Wick he’s uh got to make a decision once he does then we’ll know the path forward now James Woodall is the former president of Georgia’s NAACP and one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit here’s what he shared with me I think as this case plays out before the
11th circuit and maybe even higher than that um we still have some unresolved questions about what this means for the state of Georgia and it was my understanding that the elections from the last cycle were postponed because of that lawsuit and it has now been brought to my attention that that includes this
Election cycle as well so I don’t believe there’s nefarious actions on part of the Secretary of State or anything like that but I do think there is something to be said about this kind of being at pause for as long as it has been and so I’m concerned for that and
I’m ultimately concerned for the for what ultimately constitutes our democracy now here’s the bottom line the Commissioners who were supposed to run in 2022 Eckles and Johnson along with Republican Trisha Pridmore who’s supposed to run this year they’re going to continue serving on the commission without having to run for
Reelection this is kind of an important drama that I think most people in the state do not know about but we are glad to know that you are following as well as our climate and environment team here at wab will continue to keep tabs on this all right let’s leave elections
Behind for a moment the house passed the fiscal year 2025 budget this week Raul you’re our resident budget Guru remind us when that budget kicks in and maybe give me some highlights so this is the budget that will start on July the 1st that’s Georgia’s fiscal year July 1st to
June the 30th Governor bran K made his proposal back in January included $2,500 pay raise for public school teachers and staff while state employees and University system of Georgia employees got a 4% raise now the next major step on that $36 billion budget was legislative hearings bringing us to this
Week now while State lawmakers cannot add money to what the governor proposed they can change where the money goes and the house rolled out its changes this week and then approved them in the full house so here are some of of those changes for example more money for professional licensing at the Georgia
Secretary estate’s office look there’s a lot of attention on the secretary’s office for elections and rightfully so but that office also has a role in licensing for example veterinarians Barbers building contractors and you know what lawmakers here have been hearing from those people about licensing issues anything else
Interesting that cropped up in budget talks this week you know kind of a bigger picture thing that that I found interesting during his budget presentation House Appropriations Committee chairman Matt Hatchet had this to say adjusting provider rates periodically helps ensure an adequate network of Health Care Providers the
House has funded a number of Provider rate increases and looks to the Senate to help fully fund these adjustments and I want to give a personal example about this conversation on Healthcare my older son had developmental issues as an infant when when we were still a military family and we were placed in
This program called babies can’t wait and it helped us get access to all sorts of therapies that he needed now those services are simply not available if the state or even private insurance doesn’t pay high enough rates and so in this year’s budget you see more money for
Speech therapy physical therapy and more and while Drew and I are now on private insurance since she left the military I think our listeners need understand that especially in more rural areas and even some outer Suburban areas you have to have a certain number of patients for
Some Specialties and that has to be a combination of well-funded State funding private insurance funded and even out of pocket to make that work so from here the 2025 state budget goes to the Senate where they’ve actually already started hearings and this is something we hear a
Lot in the context of the conversation about Medicaid expans expion and Hospital closures in rural areas um R before we go something I also want to note that we’re tracking are these continuing efforts to push through bills related to immigration policy uh this week Republican lawmakers in the Senate
Took a bill originally related to Motor Vehicles stripped out the language and inserted in a very controversial measure hb31 would now allow anyone to sue their local government for not fully coordinating with Federal immigration authorities and the remedy could be stripping all of their state funding except for things like emergency
Response this is an example of using a vehicle uh both literally and figuratively this bill was originally about Motor Vehicles to get around that crossover day deadline now this change was not flagged anywhere publicly before the committee meeting Democrats were blindsided by it and there was no real
Opportunity for the public to come in and comment on it so this is something we’ll continue to follow it’s not certain to become law yet but we will keep tracking it Sam I want to mention two quick things on on House Bill 301 I’m going to be keeping an eye on the
Reaction of the county and local governments and their lobbyist up here of what this could mean for those governments and the other interesting law that kicks in here the law of unintended consequences something I’m definitely going to be watching as this bill moves forward and rul before we go
Uh you wanted to talk about a dynamic here at the state capital that you think about a lot and that is the State House of Representatives versus the state senate you know Sam we talk so much about Republican versus Democrat rural versus Urban versus Suburban sometimes we talk about the divides within the
Parties themselves but I really want to remind folks that there’s this dynamic between the house and the Senate which sometimes can kill legislation whether they’re personal battles between the bodies or between the caucuses themselves and Monday we saw a flash of it from Republican Senate Majority Leader Steve G the Senate passed 67
House bills through March 1st the house has only pass 26 Senate bills what have they been doing I can’t ask the question but thank you Senator the Senate on the other hand has passed 139 Senate bills and the house has passed 280 house bills so the house is outpacing
Us uh 280 to 125 so there’s a lot of work for us to do look whether it’s priorities the just the raw number of bills or just plain politics there’s going to be some legislation that doesn’t make it because of this house senate Dynamic you saw that with mental
Health care reform last year and I’m already starting to see it with one health care bill and one housing bill so definitely a dynamic that I’m watching here at the state capital and that’s it for this week gold Dome scramble is a production of the wab politics team our
Producer is Brendan rivers and our managing editor is Alex helck and you can get more Georgia politics every Tuesday and Thursday with the political breakfast podcast and check out w.org underthe gold Dome we’ll see you next Week ever wondered where to find the best dumplings in town curious about Atlanta’s obsession with lemon pepper join us on Savory stories a new podcast as we uncover The Untold Tales behind Atlanta’s culinary scen from the roots of your favorite dishes to the creators that bring them to life we’re diving
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