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This week I was at a CLE (Continuing Legal Education) seminar where the topic for the seminar was voting and election law. Any pretense of the event presenting a neutral view was quickly dashed by the first lecture, given by Emmet Bondurant, who is among other things the lead counsel for Common Cause, one of those organizations that claims to be non-partisan, but tends to only be led by progressives.
Bondurant noted that Georgia is the most partisan gerrymandered state in the nation (not California, Maryland, Illinois, New York, or North Carolina) with the only evidence presented being the fact that in 2016, 80% of legislative incumbents faced no general election opposition.
Never mind that other considerations like incumbency and the financial advantages and name ID that brings may be a factor, or that people of similar political thinking tend to live by others with similar political thinking.
But this Chairman's Corner isn't about the biased information presented in that, or any of the other lectures. It's about something sadly far more troubling.
After the lecture I was getting coffee when I heard another attorney behind me talking with Mr. Bondurant. The man, likely in his late 50's to mid-60's asked Bondruant if he thought there would even be a 2022 election if Donald Trump was re-elected.
Maybe it was the nearly 2 hour drive in the rain that morning to get to Emory's Law School by 8 am or the fact I had to bite my tongue during Mr. Bondurant's talk, but I couldn't let that level of malarkey go without butting in, to which I turned, looked squarely at him and simply said, "Really?"
He double-downed his assertion with the progressive's favorite go-to, and claimed it was so because Trump is a "fascist."
To which I replied, "So he's just like those people who put my great, great uncle in Auschwitz and gassed him to death?"
He tried to protest, and I said I don't discuss things with illogical and irrational people and he was too old and too educated to state such ridiculous things.
Sadly though, he is not the only one who believes the fairy tales the left has spun about Donald Trump. To be fair, they are not much different than one's I heard on the right during the last presidency, including questions as to whether or not Obama would relinquish the office to Trump. Maybe in Georgia we are a little skittish. After all, Gov. Ellis Arnall didn't hand over the office after his term had expired during Georgia's " three governors controversy ," however, as much skepticism the right had about the President who reminded Congress he had a "phone and a pen" and bypass them with both (and why wasn’t that abuse of power impeachable), what was not as prevalent on the right was the vitriol that the left has fomented against Donald Trump and those of us on the right.
The last election was full or stories about GOP headquarters being vandalized and volunteers being attacked by progressives. Even our own Cobb GOP HQ had someone call and say how bad it would be if we found ourselves down range and just last year, our own Carolyn Meadows had to have extra sheriff deputies patrol her house because of threats from the “tolerant” left.
If you thought this was going away any time soon, it’s now an election year and things are looking to get worse. Just this Saturday, volunteers from the Duval County, Florida (Jacksonville) Republican Party were allegedly nearly run down by 27-year-old Greg Timm while holding a voter registration drive. Luckily, no one was injured and by the end of the weekend, the end of the weekend, Timm was in jail on $500,000 bond .
However, as with any terrorism, and violence designed to achieve a political end is terrorism, Duval County GOP Chairman Dean Black told the press in a statement that the Duval County GOP would not be deterred. Black stated, “ The Republican Party of Duval County will not be intimidated by these cowards and we will not be silenced. I call on every Republican in our great city to stand up, get involved, and show these radicals that we will not be intimidated from exercising our Constitutional rights. ”
I know every Republican volunteer in Cobb County, Georgia would feel the same way.
The stakes this election are too high to sit on the sidelines. They are too high to say we can live with a Democrat because we just don’t like the Republican. They are too high not to look at the bottom of the ballot with as much passion as the top of the ballot.
And if you’re not willing to be intimidated into silence by a punk kid (or a 60+ year old lawyer), then there is nothing out there too scary to face to win in November!
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