McKoon Called Out By Duncan for Shafer Endorsement **Update: McKoon Responds**

No surprise @joshmckoon that you endorsed @davidshafer. After all you’ve been one of his personal attorneys for yrs. Wondering if you told the other members of the Ethics Com that tidbit before you participated in Shafer’s sexual harassment investigation and cast a vote? #gapol

— Geoff Duncan (@GeoffDuncanGA) June 7, 2018

McKoon’s responses:

I didn’t participate in the investigation. The committee hired an independent investigator so that findings would be beyond question, reproach or politics. She found allegations against him had been "fabricated" but you continued to smear him as part of your desperate campaign.

— JoshMcKoon ?? (@JoshMcKoon) June 7, 2018

For eight years, I have fought hard to reform the culture of the Capitol. You were nowhere to be found. You talk the talk but never walked the walk. #gapol

— JoshMcKoon ?? (@JoshMcKoon) June 7, 2018

Sen. Josh McKoon has come out and endorsed David Shafer in the Lieutenant Governor’s race. In response, Geoff Duncan has raised questions about McKoon apparently being Shafer’s personal attorney yet apparently voting on Shafer’s sexual harassment investigation.

McKoon’s endorsement:

“When I was a candidate for Secretary of State, I focused on my own campaign and stayed out of the other contested races. I had preferences, but I largely kept them to myself.

My wife Jacqueline and I both voted for David Shafer for Lieutenant Governor. He is the real deal. As executive director of the Georgia Republican Party in the early 1990s, he helped lay the groundwork for the Republican majorities we now enjoy. Then he ran for office himself and has spent the last sixteen years delivering on the campaign promises that Republicans made to win that majority.

David and I differ stylistically. Where I led by drawing public attention to issues I cared about and building grassroots coalitions, David led by drafting and passing laws.

In fact, he is perhaps the most successful conservative lawmaker in the history of the state. He wrote Georgia’s zero based budgeting law requiring every penny of state spending to be justified. He wrote the constitutional amendment that capped the state income tax. He served on the conference committee that wrote the final draft of the ethics law that was the centerpiece of my first campaign. He worked incredibly hard to deliver the first ever limitation on lobbyist gifts in Georgia history. His name has been attached to virtually every pro-life bill during his tenure in the Senate.

While I was calling for more transparency in our legislature, David Shafer led the effort as Senate President Pro Tempore to fund the wiring of every committee meeting room in the Capitol and broadcast our meetings live on the Internet and archive those broadcasts forever. He made it so that every Georgian can watch the Senate operate without taking time off work or traveling to Atlanta, leveling the playing field for people who cannot afford to hire lobbyists to be their eyes and ears at the Capitol.

David Shafer is exactly what we need in our next Lieutenant Governor. That is why he has been endorsed by virtually every conservative leader and organization in the county – Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, American Conservative Union, National Rifle Association, Georgia Right To Life, Citizens for Trump and many others.

I am proud to add my endorsement. If you believe in the causes I have championed over the last eight years at our State Capitol, the single best thing you could do to see that they get a fair shake in the future is to support and vote for David Shafer for Lieutenant Governor.

David’s opponent in the runoff, a gentleman who served in the General Assembly for a half decade, is running around the state portraying himself as a “reformer” and “outsider.” He offers no reforms. He simply makes one attack after another on David Shafer. These attacks are false and unfair and exactly what is wrong with politics today. Here is the truth. David Shafer is the real reformer in the race for Lieutenant Governor. On issues of ethics and transparency, David Shafer has provided real leadership and made real reforms.

I appreciate your support of me. I hope you will join me in supporting David Shafer for Lieutenant Governor.”