Handicapping Georgia's 6th District Congressional Race

 
Early primary voting in Georgia begins next week.  As such, I wanted to write some thoughts for individuals in Georgia’s 6th US Congressional District to consider.  Normally, a race like this would be much easier for me to boil down and decide.  However, this race, which is to represent the newly configured 6th congressional district, and which has nine Republicans qualified and running, has been extremely challenging to analyze.  Keep in mind, everything I offer for you here is my opinion based on my criteria, based upon certain facts which I know, and which I will discuss below.  

There are some great people running who I will not have time to mention.  That does not mean I do not appreciate the time, effort and devotion they have given to the cause.  But in this piece I will only include the top three candidates, based upon my personal judgment, who I believe will receive the most votes in the upcoming May primary.  If I am wrong and someone else earns a spot in the top three, good for them.  But I have to start and stop at some point because the usefulness of what I present would be severely diluted were I to include all nine in this discussion.

And so, I may be wrong in this, but in alphabetical order I expect the following three candidates to wind up as the top three vote-getters:

                     Jake Evans                                 Rich McCormick                           Mallory Staples

These three candidates have raised the most money, have the most money on hand to finish the race, and for this and other reasons I expect they will end up one, two and three, in no particular order, by the end of voting on May 24th.

My purpose here is not to predict an outcome.  My purpose is to explain my rationale for selecting one of these candidates to support in the primary.  Whoever wins the primary will receive my full support in the race in November.  All of these three are good people, patriots, who desire good things for America and the 6th District.  But they do have decidedly different campaigns, different approaches to campaigning, toward the job of an elected official, different sources of financial support, primary issues and past histories.  For the sake of brevity, and to arrive at my ultimate purpose here, I will not perform an exhaustive analysis of every conceivable issue to formulate an opinion.  My purpose here is to boil it down to what I believe is most important.  

Campaign Finance

It takes money and the ability to raise it in order to compete in a congressional election.  Generally, there is a direct correlation between the amount of money a candidate spends and the number of votes he or she receives.  Campaign consultants speak of that in terms of votes-per-dollar.  But for my purposes, where that money comes from is equally important.  Those outside a candidate's home district do not necessarily have the welfare of that district in mind when they decide whom to support.  They have their own criteria and concerns.  A candidate who receives overwhelming amounts of money from outside of his or her home district will find it difficult once in office to not repay favors, at the expense of objectivity, especially when staying in office requires ongoing support.  

Of the three top candidates, Rich McCormick has received the most money.  In fact, McCormick has collected more money than the other two candidates combined.  That makes sense because McCormick has name recognition having narrowly lost in 2020, at least as those who certified the vote totals would have us believe. 

But scanning down the list of donors and from where they originate, it is striking the extent to which Rich McCormick's financial support derives not from within the 6th District, not even Georgia, but instead from all over the country.  Of his contributions from last quarter, only 27% came from individuals in Georgia, of course even less than that from within the 6th District.  That means that out of the total dollar amount contributed to the McCormick Campaign, three of every four dollars came from sources outside of Georgia, donated by various individuals, organizations and PACs who have little or nothing to do with the people of the 6th district or their concerns.  The largest PAC contributions came from WINRED PAC which has contributed an aggregate of over $195K, and Club For Growth PAC which has contributed an aggregate total of over $88k to the 2022 McCormick campaign.  Rich McCormick has contributed $240K of his own money so far.

I started this discussion with the McCormick campaign because his is the largest, most diverse group of contributors to analyze.  The next largest is Jake Evans.  Of his last quarter reporting, as opposed to McCormick's 25%, 77% of Jake Evans' contributions came from individuals in GA, $200K coming from Evans himself, leaving 23% arriving from out of state. Of the Evans total, $83K or 17% came from PACs.

Regarding Mallory Staples, last quarter 87% of her contributions came from within GA including $250K coming from herself and $34K from PACs.  13% of Mallory Staples’ contributions arrived from sources outside the State of Georgia.

Domestic Issues

Public pronouncements regarding domestic issues among the three, Rich McCormick, Jake Evans and Mallory Staples, are very similar.  All are pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment, for protecting the border,  lowering taxes, law enforcement, balancing government spending with government revenues, and achieving election integrity.  All three candidates emphasize allegiances with President Trump and a desire to make America great again.  Although Trump endorsed Rich McCormick in the 2020 general election, he has not yet endorsed anyone in this Republican primary.  

Regarding the 2020 election, Jake Evans speaks of arguing on behalf of the Pennsylvania Senate before the Supreme Court.  I do not mean to minimize that work because it was important. But his portrayal of personal involvement has been a bit misleading to laypersons.  Evans' work before the high court was limited to writing and submitting a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of the PA Senate Republicans, who were not the primary litigants in the case.  Still, Evans' efforts to achieve a fair election should not be discounted.

Foreign Affairs-Ukraine

In foreign affairs, I chose the war in Ukraine as my bellwether issue.  In questioning the candidates, we find some significant differences of opinion, and in approaches to formulating policy.  To each candidate I asked the following question, “What should the US policy in Ukraine be?”  Here is how they responded:

According to Rich McCormick, a former Marine, America should not place boots on the ground. However American taxpayers should pay to supply weapons systems and war fighting capabilities to the Government of Ukraine.  When I suggested that his policy is identical to that of President Biden, Nancy Pelosi, George Soros and the mainstream media, McCormick differentiated his proposed policy saying the present administration does not go far enough.  When I offered that his proposal would prolong the war in Ukraine, killing and injuring more Ukrainians and destroying more cities, his answer was that Putin is not our friend, is a bad guy, and has done evil things.  McCormick spoke of no strategy to end the conflict, only to prolong it.

I asked Jake Evans the same question.  His answer was short and to the point.  According to Evans, America should neither send money nor weapons to Ukraine.  Jake did not offer to elaborate any further.
 
Asking Mallory Staples what the American policy in Ukraine should be, she indicated that she had questions about the present policy, was not convinced that Ukraine’s President Zelenski was the good guy the Biden Administration and MSM portray.  She recalled the 2014 “color revolution” in Ukraine and understood it largely to be a US intelligence services overthrow of the elected Ukrainian Government.  She spoke of her knowledge of the Obama Administration using Ukraine as a money laundering operation, and worse, and that Biden and son Hunter were chief operators in all that.  She said she does not trust this administration to carry out Ukrainian policy on behalf of the people of the United States.

Allegations Against Candidates

There have been allegations, which began leading up to the 2020 election, that Rich McCormick previously voted in two state elections in the same year, Florida and Georgia.  Those allegations are being resurrected.  I looked into this with modest resolve two years ago and found very little.  My feeling is that if it did happen it was a mistake on his part happening to move to Georgia during the lead up to an election.  Incidental instances of these kinds of things do not bother me.  It is purposeful, orchestrated activities designed to change the outcome of elections that bother me.  I do not see this allegation as anything that would affect my support.

Regarding Mallory Staples, I know of no allegations by any candidate, or by any media sources or individuals, leading me to a question her past or conclude that she has acted in any way other than with integrity.  She is new to politics and therefore does not have an extensive record of activism, nor of pronouncements for the public to scrutinize.  Thus, similar to my conclusion of Rich McCormick's alleged past voting activity, I see nothing about which to comment with Ms. Staples.

Recently, two allegations have surfaced concerning past political activities of Jake Evans.  The first is one I saw in a mailer which arrived from a no-name, faceless political organization alleging that Evans wrote certain things in a college term paper.  I just shook my head.  I do not count college academic writings from ten or fifteen years ago very highly when evaluating whether a candidate is worthy of my vote and support.

That said, another allegation recently surfaced appearing to have legs.  It is a very complicated set of legal circumstances, with constitutional ramifications, which when compared against campaign pronouncements of Jake Evans, give me pause.  I have spent considerable time to try to understand what I am about to present.  I will try to make it as simple and straightforward as possible.

In 2014, a Tea Party activist whom I knew, Carolyn Cosby, allegedly collected contributions from local Tea Party attendees in Canton and used those funds to place an ad in a local paper.  The ad advocated that a certain Democrat elected official be voted out of office.  In my mind, and the minds of most conservative-minded individuals I know, Carolyn Cosby had an unqualified right to do that as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution.  Neither she, nor anyone should be required to provide notice or register with the state or federal agencies to carry out that very simple, constitutionally-protected activity.  The practice of free speech, whether paid for by several individuals comprising a private group, or one individual, is an unqualified right.

The Late Carolyn Cosby

But little was it known to Carolyn that at the time there was legislation on Georgia's books conveying certain authority to a governor-appointed ethics board, renamed the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, empowered to review allegations of campaign finance violations and issue findings of probable cause should that body agree with a complaint.  This board was one appointed by then Governor Nathan Deal, who you might recall was forced to resign from Congress due to well-founded allegations of profiteering from his political position with respect to a vehicle repair shop in Gainesville in which he held ownership.

The ethics commission of Governor Deal was petitioned by the Cobb County Democrat Party to review allegations made against Carolyn Cosby for the crime of taking out a political ad in the name of her private group or groups urging the defeat of a Democrat elected official, but without first registering with the State of Georgia.  This governor-appointed ethics board heard the Cosby complaint and subsequently issued a finding of probable cause of a violation of the statute, turning this case over to Deal’s Attorney General, who was, and still is Georgia’s Attorney General, Chris Carr.  At some point in this series of events, Carolyn Cosby was hit with a fine in the combined amount of $30,000 for taking out political ads, and not registering as the statute required.  That's correct, I said thirty thousand dollars.
 
So this seemingly inconsequential act of constitutionally-protected free speech by a political activist was made to become an example, the effect of which was to warn other political activists against attempting to remove sitting incumbents from office through words published at a cost in local periodicals.  Being a Tea Party leader in Gainesville myself, and because I knew Carolyn, I was confounded that any governing board in the United States would imagine that it had the power to restrict protected free speech as this board was attempting to do.

The case went on for the next three years, finally on April 17, 2017 an administrative law judge ruling against Carolyn Cosby.  The convoluted legislation authorizing this ethics commission into existence further challenged the precepts of the US Constitution by stipulating that it was not the administrative judge who even had the final say in cases that arose under its provisions.  Instead, the final authority to review findings and enforce penalties associated with its own findings, resided back in the hands of the original ethics commission issuing the finding of probable cause.  So in essence, the Georgia legislature gave Governor Deal’s appointed ethics commission the presumed powers to act as a grand jury in campaign finance cases, issue findings of probable cause, turn those findings over to be prosecuted, albeit with no public hearing or jury trial as the 6th Amendment guarantees, and also, very importantly, with the power to review cases within 30 days of an administrative court judge’s final determination, either accepting that determination as written, or summarily rejecting it.  So the Georgia legislature created an appointed board with not only the power of a grand jury to find probable cause, but also, in the end judge the merits of any case arising under its own finding.  What I just described is unconstitutional.  It sets members of the executive branch of government as also members of the judicial branch, defying the principle of separation of powers residing in both the US and Georgia Constitutions.

And so now we go back to the issue of the 6th District Congressional race.  During the year 2016, one of the candidates, Attorney Jake Evans, was appointed by Governor Deal to sit on the ethics commission.  In April of 2017, while Evans sat on the board an administrative judge issued a finding of Cosby's guilt of violating the statute.  According to the statute, that event triggered the possibility of a final review of the case by the same ethics commission that initially started the ball rolling with a finding of probable cause.  The statute allowed the ethics commission 30 days to review and either affirm the judges ruling, or even go so far as dismiss the case altogether.  During the interim, both the prosecuting attorney and Carolyn Cosby’s defense attorney petitioned the ethics committee to be heard well within that 30-day time period, certainly time enough for the ethics commission to react.  During that time, however, the chairman of the ethics commission resigned the post.  As a result, there was no chairman to even receive, much less act upon the requests made from both sides.  Those requests were not brought up by the remaining board until after the 30 days written in statute had expired.
 
That brings us to Jake Evans’ involvement in all of this.  In this video of the day’s proceedings, the first order of business was the Carolyn Cosby case.  Starting three minutes in, the gentleman on the left briefs the board with certain information about the case.  After all, this case had not been heard by the board since it originally issued the probable cause ruling in 2014.  And to be fair, Jake Evans had likely never heard of it at all.  The gentleman on the far right then speaks to the issue of the board’s complete powers to accept the judge’s ruling, or even to dismiss the case altogether, but only to the extent that a hyper-technical interpretation of the statute required that action to occur within 30 days.  Even though the ethics board had no chairman and was thus debilitated from even receiving the requests, or certainly acting on the requests from both sides of case, the board chose not to err on the side of caution by hearing the new arguments from both sides prior to accepting or rejected the judge's ruling.  The board instead chose the position that its hands were tied by statute due to the fact that the administrative court ruling had passed beyond 30 days.  At the 30-minute mark of the video, Jake Evans concurs with the others that because the board did not act in a timely fashion, which according to the 6th Amendment of the US Constitution is indeed its responsibility, it had no power to take the matter any further.

What we have here is a clear miscarriage of justice, a railroad job against an activist for political purposes, under the color of law, in violation of both Georgia and US Constitutions.  This miscarriage of justice was affirmed at the time by now 6th District Candidate for Congress Jake Evans, who makes it a campaign pledge at virtually every event that he will remain a strict constructionist in defending the US Constitution.  When given an opportunity to do just that, and strictly apply its meaning in this politically-charged ethics case, in my view, very unfortunately, he failed to perform that vitally important job while the other members of the ethics board failed to do theirs.  Arguably, the statute empowering this entire commission defies the separation of powers doctrine in the first place.  

One overriding principle in achieving justice is that a punishment should fit a crime.  Even if one chooses to take the side of the ethics board in the Cosby case, a fine of $30,000 for taking out a political ad is excessive.  

In the end, after five years Attorney General Carr filed a voluntary dismissal motion in Superior Court, effectively dropping the case from consideration, without a hearing, without a trial.  On April 17, 2019, the two year anniversary of the administrative judge's final ruling, Carolyn Cosby died.

Conclusion

I know this has been a long piece.  And if you are still with me, thank you.  This has taken several hours for me to write, and I did it because this election deciding who will represent Georgia’s 6th District is vitally important not only to us as its people, but also to the nation as a whole.  

To serve as a representative in government, other than avoiding the very appearance of impropriety, the first requirement is to be a devoted listener.  An elected official cannot represent constituents unless he or she first listens and understands what they have to say.  Subsequently, he or she must remain free from extraneous worldly considerations to act in the best interests of those constituents.  In my mind, for the reasons I have given, I believe the viable candidate who would best fulfill that responsibility is Mallory Staples.  I extend to Mallory all of my support and pray she is elected the next 6th District US Representative in November.