Welcome Home Sally – The 2018 Political Season Has Begun
One thing for sure, Sally Quillian Yates sure knows how to make an exit. With only a few days remaining as a career prosecutor at the Justice Department, she chose to go out with a bang. By tradition, the Deputy Attorney General from an outgoing Administration – in this case Ms. Yates — becomes Acting Attorney General for a short time until the new Administration’s selection of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer is confirmed by the Senate. This is usually a quiet caretaker role to ensure a smooth transition.
Then came President Trump’s decision to issue last weekend an Executive Order temporarily suspending travel to the U.S. of citizens from seven Muslim countries. Despite the Justice Department’s own Office of Legal Counsel’s prior review and determination that the Executive Order was legal, Ms. Yates’ personally found the order objectionable on policy and legal grounds and instructed the Justice Department to not defend it in court. For this act of [insert here your personal or political preference among the following nouns or adjectives: courage, arrogance, conscious, or partisanship], she was summarily fired and replaced.
Within hours of this showdown, Ms. Yates was heralded back home as the future savior of the Georgia Democratic Party – and even Republicans should recognize that she would be politically formidable. Despite how one might feel about her final twenty-four hours as a federal government employee, her career as a federal prosecutor has been impressive. She tackled political corruption in Georgia on the local and state level in a bipartisan fashion, successfully prosecuting corrupt Atlanta officials in an Airport bribery scandal, Mayor Bill Campbell, Fulton County Commission Chair Mitch Skandalakis, and State School Superintendent Linda Shrenko. As U.S. Attorney from 2009 to 2013, she helped raise awareness of the scourge of human trafficking in our state and directed her office to successfully attack and prosecute this crime.
If Ms. Yates chooses to enter the Democratic political arena, she faces tough odds. Georgia under Republican leadership has a great deal to be proud of in recent years. Governor Deal and the Republican dominated General Assembly have together helped navigate Georgia through the worst economic decline since the Great Depression, maintained Georgia’s AAA bond rating, made progress on saving the HOPE scholarship, launched criminal justice reform, improved the state’s business environment making Georgia the number one state in the nation to do business, expanded school choice through the Charter School Constitutional Amendment and special needs scholarships, deepened the Savannah Harbor, tackled human trafficking, conserved water, and significantly stepped up funding on transportation.
However, much more needs to be done and next year’s statewide races for Governor and other constitutional offices will be about Georgia’s future challenges and not past accomplishments. Small town Georgia continues to lose jobs and population. Urban, suburban, and rural school districts alike must find a way to reach students at the youngest ages who come from challenging socio economic backgrounds, and high school students who don’t want to go to college must still learn job skills to help them compete in the 21st Century. We have a road transportation system that needs greater attention despite recent gains and our mass transit network in Metro Atlanta remains a patch work of disjointed “Tower of Babel” systems. Our statewide network of trauma centers is inadequate. Medical care for the neediest among us must be addressed. We have a growing legal immigrant population struggling to assimilate. The necessary broadband infrastructure must be developed to keep Georgia regionally, nationally, and globally economically competitive. These are just some of the issues that must be addressed by our future leaders.
Strong political competition from serious-minded candidates on both sides of the political spectrum generally improves the quality of political debate and, more importantly, good government. Therefore, even Republicans should — albeit reluctantly — welcome Ms. Yates to the political arena if she chooses to enter it.
Game on in 2018 and may the party that addresses Georgia’s future best win.
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Yates would be an improvement over other recent Democrat candidates but that is not saying much. Two legacy candidates (Nunn, Carter) and the hat guy did not do well. The future for Dems in Ga. does not look good.
It is interesting to note her husband ran unsuccessfully for congress many years ago and he is a big party donor but I don’t see her running for anything. Instead she will take a high paying job in one of the big law firms.
I particularly like this sentence:
“Strong political competition from serious-minded candidates on both sides of the political spectrum generally improves the quality of political debate and, more importantly, good government.”
Competition is really is the American way, but when it comes to politics we actively work against competition. Georgia is one of the least competitive states in the country and it is the result of partisan reapportionment practices that allow politicians to choose their constituents.
Instead of a system that promotes competition and choice between competing ideas, we have a election that encourages polarization. Over the long-haul this lack of competition is a fundamental weakness for Georgia.
“partisan reapportionment” does not explain why Dems hold none of out statewide offices.
Agreed. They are in the minority statewide. Of course if they had more seats in the General Assembly or in Congress, they would also have more viable candidates for statewide office.
Democratic chances will in large part depend on black turnout and ability to make inroads in rural Georgia. Yeah, I know point one (the black vote) is a “duh” moment, but blacks only made up 27.6% of the state’s total turnout last fall, compared with about 30% in 2008 and 2012. And only about two-thirds of registered blacks showed up to vote last November, compared to about 80% of whites. While Trump probably still would have won Georgia even with an enhanced black turnout, the race could have been much closer, maybe a 1 or 2-point spread which would have emboldened Democrats for 2018. The “outside metro Atlanta” collapse of Democrats, which basically goes back to November 2002 (see Barnes, Roy E.), remains a problem for the party. Both Carter and Nunn won metro Atlanta in their respective statewide races 3 years ago, but not by much, and in any event far from enough to offset big losses in the “other” Georgia.
Maybe if Dems campaigned outside metro areas particularly in N. Ga. they would broaden their base. My recollection in 2014 is Nunn made one trip to N. Ga. and that was to get Zell Miller’s endorsement and Carter never went north of Atlanta.
It’s really two sides of the same coin. Mitigate their rural losses (which is partly done by increasing black turnout; the post-Obama decline in the black belt really hurt Clinton. The story of rural margins this year was a little cross-over or new GOP voters, but a lot of rural black stay home.) But they also have to role up bigger margins in ATL. Dems probably aren’t going to get the non-ATL margin below 15%, which means they still need to win the Atlanta Metro (which includes the big GOP exurbs north of Cobb, Fulton, and Gwinnett) by close to 10 points. Clinton won it by six and a half and it wasn’t enough.
Aw, garsh, Ed (blushing) — didn’t know you realized I’d been gone. Thanks for the big bold greeting! 🙂