It’s been a few years since Georgia politics started. We started by talking about the current president who is running for re-election and the former president who is being indicted. Who do you think won the election?
Democrats raised millions of dollars, most of which went nowhere, while Republicans defied expectations and delivered voting machines that few expected.
It’s been a year full of ups and downs, but we’ve decided to create a Santa-themed award to rank the highs and lows of Christmas Day. Cookie winners are recognized for their outstanding achievements in governance and total political survival. Lump of coal is for those who say even Santa needs to make better choices.
The cookie is then sent to:
Georgia election official. Four years after a contentious election that included death threats against county election officials, state election officials returned to the polls on election night in 2024. Despite bomb threats, last-minute rule changes, 14-hour days, and endless surveillance leading up to the election. The vote count showed Georgians voting almost smoothly, with a clear presidential result by midnight. Kelly Loeffler and Georgia Republican. I spoke with Loeffler several months after losing the 2021 Senate race to Sen. Raphael Warnock. Rather than return to her and her husband’s successful business, she wanted to stay in the political world that had essentially rejected her and build the infrastructure she says was missing when she ran. As she planned, she spent millions of her own money to launch a statewide political operation that helped the state’s Republican Party deliver a victory to Donald Trump in Georgia this year. What is the reward? Mayor Andre Dickens has been nominated as a Cabinet candidate for the Trump administration and has received a lot of goodwill from Republicans who hope he will appeal to them in the future. Just six months ago, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens was knee-deep in a water crisis he didn’t cause. And he also fell into a communications crisis of his own making when he remained out of town due to a burst pipe in the city. In addition to the battle over Atlanta’s public safety training center, Dickens seemed to be in trouble and on edge. Now, as the year draws to a close, training centers have been built and the water continues to run (for now), Dickens heads into the 2025 election year with no obvious challenger in sight. President Jimmy Carter. There is political survival and practical survival, and Georgia President Jimmy Carter exemplified the latter. The Plains native turned 100 in September, voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in October, and continues to inspire people around the world with his example of long service. Herschel Walker. After suffering a truly heartbreaking loss to Sen. Raphael Warnock in the 2022 race, the former University of Georgia superstar has largely disappeared from public life. But a year and a half later, Walker quietly returned to Athens to finish his college degree at age 62, proving this month that it’s never too late to pick up unfinished business. With his diploma in hand, he was selected as President Trump’s ambassador to the Bahamas.
This year has brought many negative points in the political world. The 2024 coal lumps will be sent to:
President Joe Biden. The aging president, who promised in 2020 to be a “transitional” leader, only helped hand the White House back to President Trump in 2024. Democrats insisted that Biden was perfectly fine and would be fine for another four years, but the president’s stagnant and chaotic performance in Atlanta showed on the debate stage that that was simply not the case. Democrats’ last-minute replacement of Vice President Kamala Harris denied voters a real primary and gave the country the second Trump presidency that Biden had long warned about. Georgia State Board of Elections. Never before has a little-known, unelected state election official caused such havoc after President Trump praised the activist Republican majority by name at a rally in Georgia this fall. President Trump’s “pit bull, fighting for integrity, transparency, and victory” passed a series of last-minute changes to voting rules, leaving election officials busy making adjustments. Although the justices ultimately overturned the most sweeping rules and said the board should stay in its lane, confusion and bad blood among board members remained. Georgia Democratic Party. Is Georgia really a battleground state? State Democrats are pointing to better vote totals and two state House pickups than in 2020 as proof that the 2024 election wasn’t so bad after all. However, in 2022, the entire state will be wiped out, and Trump will win the state this year, so the Democratic Party will not only prove that Georgia is a battleground state, but will do everything possible to make it a battleground state in the first place. There are many things to do. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis; For Willis, who started out as something of a superhero on MSNBC by prosecuting Trump in a massive election interference scandal in Georgia, the reason is that he had a secret romantic relationship with the special prosecutor he hired to do the job. So, he was only disqualified from that incident. Weeks before the Trump case stalled in December, Willis’ other major extortion case against rapper Young Thug and his network of associates also stalled. The judge in the case criticized Fulton County’s “really bad lawyers,” and legal experts called the longest criminal trial in Georgia history a waste of time. Fulton County Jail leaders. One would think that after lawsuits, federal investigations, and state investigations all revealed inhumane and unconstitutional conditions at the Fulton County Jail, someone somewhere in leadership would start fixing the problem in earnest. Dew. But that’s wrong. County leaders say they need more funding, but the Justice Department report says money alone won’t address what it called a culture of poor management and abuse. Prisons are now likely to require local, state and federal officials to contribute to the solution. Things could get underway in earnest once the first-ever president appointed there takes the oath of office again in January.
Congratulations to the cookie winners! And hats off to those who earned Lumps of Coal. Fortunately, with 2025 just around the corner, we can all resolve to do better next year.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
