Category: Georgia Politics
-
How Rural Georgia Lost HOPE
For the first sixteen years of its existence, Georgia’s HOPE scholarship program did something unusual for a state entitlement: it tilted toward the people who needed it most. Not dramatically, not necessarily by design, but measurably. From 1995 through 2011, the 147 counties that I call “Notlanna” – sparsely populated rural counties and the state’s…
-
TIGC’s slightly belated hot take on Tuesday’s PSC massacre
Georgia Democrats have historically done a good job of registering voters and a lousy job of getting them to the polls. On this past Tuesday, they did a much better job on the second part. The drubbing of two incumbent Republican Public Service Commission members, Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson, was by any measure historic.…
-
Elections really do have consequences
Pregnant women in Franklin County and neighboring areas of northeast Georgia can no longer deliver babies at St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital just outside Lavonia. But Georgians and, indeed, all Americans now have the privilege of being able to buy gun silencers without having to pony up a $200 tax. How, you might wonder, are…
-
A question for Georgia’s Democratic Party leaders
I have a question for the Democratic Party of Georgia. Why should any prospective donor, large or small, contribute a single dime – nay, even a penny – to this party? I write this, by the way, as somebody who has not voted for a Republican since the late Mike Egan was my state senator…
-
Helene depressed Georgia’s early vote by about 100,000 votes; impacted both parties but probably hit GOP hardest
An analysis of the impact of Hurricane Helene on early voting in Georgia.
-
Sorting through Georgia’s early voting numbers with political algebra and fuzzy math
A second look at Georgia’s early voting data.
-
My insanely premature analysis of Georgia’s first week of early voting
In my most recent post, I scratched my head about whether Hurricane Helene would depress the vote in the counties she hit the hardest – and, more specifically, whether the fact that she ravaged much more Republican than Democratic territory might impact the outcome of the presidential race in Georgia. Now that we’ve got the…
-
Is Mother Nature voting in this year’s presidential election?
Could the weather gods be messing with our politics? Maybe even engaging in election interference? Probably not, but it’s hard to study a map of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Helene and not conclude that somebody is highly annoyed with Republicans. Even Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who represents northwest Georgia, noticed the political…
-
Can Brian Kemp make Paul Krugman feel better?
Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist, seems even gloomier than usual these days, especially about the state of rural America. He recently went up with a column headlined “The Mystery of White Rural Rage,” which he called “arguably the single greatest threat facing American democracy.” He added: “I have no…
-
Would ‘special rural districts’ be a first step down the slippery slope to county consolidation?
In a curious bit of legislative strategy, the House Governmental Affairs Committee last week combined a couple of bills that didn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with each other. House Bill 1253, as originally written, would have overhauled the way appointments are made to the boards of directors of the state’s 12…