January 26, 2021 6:00 AM
Morning Reads for Tuesday, January 26
Good morning! Today is the 5th day of the 2021 Legislative Session. It is easier than ever to follow along at the General Assembly’s spiffy new website!
- WANTED: one new chancellor for the University System of Georgia.
- Many homebound elderly Georgians are eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. How will they get their shot?
- More on how many Georgia Republicans want to make it harder to vote.
- Something’s rotten in Brunswick. Like, literally. Something smells.
- Thomasville native Lloyd Austin was confirmed as President Biden’s Secretary of Defense.
- If you are a sentient being who owns anything with a screen and ever used that screen to access the outside world in the second half of 2020, you are familiar with Alvin the Beagle. Here’s why he was so important to Raphael Warnock’s senate win.
- Fauci gets real on what it was actually like to work for Trump.
- The motivation behind Superbowl-bound NFL star Leonard Fournette’s decision to wear the name of Jordan Davis, the slain son of Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath, on his helmet this season.
About Author
Teri
Teri Anulewicz is a Democrat who represents House District 42 in the Georgia General Assembly. She previously spent nearly a decade on the Smyrna City Council. A native New Orleanian and quasi-Texan, Teri graduated from Agnes Scott College in 1998. She's been a front page contributor since 2015, and she compiles each Tuesday's Morning Reads.
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Lie down with dogs and rise up with fleas:
“On a January day in 2020, famed attorney L. Lin Wood returned to Mercer University’s law school in Macon to launch its “legal legends” lecture series in the college’s L. Lin Wood Courtroom.
Mercer President William D. Underwood has called him “a loyal alum who never forgot the role Mercer played in helping him” in his future success. Wood also was a major donor, whose pledged $1 million contribution put his name on the courtroom where he spoke.
Now, in a stunning turn, the two sides are embroiled in an escalating dispute that feels like the opening salvo in a messy divorce. Wood told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Mercer spread lies about him, damaging his reputation, and a simple apology at this point won’t be enough…
Pressure inside the law school has become so tense that Dean Cathy Cox held a Zoom call on Friday to clear the air with students. She explained that severing ties may not be so easy because the two sides signed a contract. Wood pledged the money to be given in annual installments over a decade, and the school agreed to name the courtroom for him.
Cox, the last Democrat elected Georgia secretary of state, has known Wood for years and told students he even represented her once when someone was attacking her reputation. She went on to say she was not a trained mental health professional, but worried about Wood. She even mentioned his strained relationship with his adult children to the group on Zoom.
“This is all extremely troubling what is going on with him,” Cox said.
She didn’t realize Wood was listening to the Zoom call until he spoke up after several minutes of Cox expressing her concerns about him.”
https://www.ajc.com/news/tensions-between-lin-wood-and-mercer-boil-over/ETLPUJFKOZCP7HW3YOTW7UYKGM/
A big OOPS!
While I never bought into the election fraud theories, I don’t mind requiring voter ID for absentee ballots or limiting who can vote absentee. What I’d have an issue with is taking these steps then also making it more difficult for folks to get an ID or limiting the number of days for early voting. I’d even be okay with adding days for early voting. Spreading out voters over the entirety of the voting period in future elections might even limit the likelihood of long lines on election day.
David Clark’s behavior this morning proves that he is not only a despicable little attention whore, he probably wasn’t much of a soldier either.
You think he will turn this into a campaign issue later on? How he stood up to mean RINO Ralston by not getting a test. He’ll probably wet his pants if Trump runs again.
As soon as he’s done filing his lawsuit, declaring victory, challenging the Speaker to a duel and calling every voice of dissent “fake news”, then yea, he’ll certainly campaign on his historic feat of non-compliance.
The GOP has become a clown show without the entertainment factor. How any serious person could support these impudent shills is beyond me.
The Georgia GOP can only blame themselves for this clown. Well, that and a propensity for the electorate to vote for anyone with an “I” beside their name on the ballot. Michael Brown originally won the Republican nomination for the seat in 2014 and was running unopposed in the general when he suffered a fatal heart attack. The state GOP’s executive committee then bestowed the guaranteed seat to David Clark with no obvious qualifications than being the brother of the one-term previous holder of the seat Josh Clark.
Gwinnett may be deep purple now but Buford is still blood red. Short of a major felony, the seat is his as long as he wants it.
Re: making it harder to vote
I like waiting until Election Day to vote in case a candidate does something particularly stupid right before an election.
Every eligible citizen should get to cast their vote in the most convenient way for them.
Their vote; their choice.
A few months ago I said I would vote for Raffensperger again because of how he handled the election.
I’d also have no problem putting him on a pike for this though: “Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has rejected Trump’s fraud claims, also said he supported scrapping no-excuse mail voting because the system was too taxing on local election administrators.”
Y’all found resources for multiple recounts; y’all can find resources for citizens to cast their vote easily.
I agree with you, Bertha, from your preference for election day voting to both of your takes on Raffensperger.
Raising the expense factor is just a big leaf. Gopers liked mail voting fine until they found out Dems liked it even more.
The expense of absentee voting has never been an issue, and the argument wholly ignores the impact of the pandemic on increased use of absentee voting. Worse, requiring ID with absentee will most significantly effect the elderly- and disabled. I think SoS supports eliminating no-excuse absentee voting just because it is politically tenable but improbable to pass. Eliminating no-excuse absentee voting would invite legal challenges galore, but just requiring ID may not. But the argument about the volume of absentee voting again ignores the pandemic. And…it’s extremely weak in terms of leadership and policy, because it says that instead of supporting and strengthening our election system and election workers, i order to handle the voting, let’s just nix all the voting instead. It is profoundly disdainful of the strength of the election system and election workers. And speaks to deep incompetence in administrative capacity.
On the philosophical side, all we heard from Republicans in the wake of Trump victory, and Dems complaining about rules like the electoral college was—- those are the rules, and if you want to win, craft a better message. You can change the rules if you can, but it’s really about the candidate and platform.
Now, the Repub response is not even addressing the misguided direction of the candidate and platform (despite every bit of evidence to the contrary having already been stated by the SoS and many others..), and instead giving additional life to the lost cause of election fraud theories. Going down that path is going in the wrong direction. My guess is they don’t go down the path much- just enough for the ID requirement- but the real concern about redeveloping faith in election systems will remain.