Casey Cagle and the Sell Out of Georgia to Wealthy, Out-of-State Donors
After the primary, Casey Cagle was flying high. He was well ahead of his nearest competitor, Brian Kemp, and most considered him to be the shoo-in to be the gubernatorial nominee on the Republican side, with these next few weeks a mere formality before he’d be the real nominee.
Well, bless his heart.
Cagle has a history of tripping over his own feet, and therefore, it’s not terribly surprising he’s done it again. This time, of course, he’s hitting the ground chin first.
First reported by Channel 2 last night, and then explored in-depth in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Clay Tippins has released a recording of a conversation he had with Cagle about his backing of the student scholarship organization (SSO) bill – that passed – in which Cagle admitted to pushing the bill he knew to be terrible policy (1,000 different ways, apparently) just to prevent the Walton Foundation from donating $3 million to another opponent in the race, Hunter Hill.
Yuck.
We’d like to believe that money doesn’t completely run the show in this country – that our legislators can, and occasionally do, think for themselves and put the good of the country first. Then, there is the transcript from Tippins’ recording to remind us that’s not even remotely true. And not only is that not true, but there’s not even a good guy in this picture. No, Tippins is not the good guy here.
Georgia is a state where it’s legal to record a conversation if one of the parties involved knows it’s happening, which in this case was Tippins. However, if you think he went into recording this conversation with the best of intentions of everyday Georgians at heart, folks, I have some oceanfront property in Colorado I’d like to sell you. I’ve never met Clay Tippins, but it took exactly ten minutes into the last gubernatorial debate for me to sum him up: He thinks he’s awesome and that he knows way more than he actually does. Why Casey Cagle would even talk to Tippins about super-secret reasoning (especially when it’s super-bad) is beyond me, so I don’t sympathize. Not even a little.
Of course, Tippins wanted to prove that Cagle would sell out to big donors. Duh, dude. That clearly happened when he threw Delta under the bus to secure the NRA endorsement. I guess this is further proof, but who really needed it?
On another note, Cagle clearly was worried about Hunter Hill. I do not understand this fear, but perhaps in that gubernatorial debate I watched, Hill forgot to sharpen his knives. Perhaps Cagle should have been scared… but not from what I witnessed. So, not only was this an amateurish mistake, it was totally unnecessary.
What a mess. How it affects Cagle’s poll numbers remains to be seen, but I can imagine this will tighten the race with Kemp significantly.
About Author
Holly Croft
Holly is an archivist at one of Georgia's institutions of higher learning. In a past life, she was a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill. She cares a lot about records management, open records laws, and privacy laws. Political persuasion? It's complicated. What's not complicated is that she's proudly equal parts Bulldog and Tar Heel.
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Speaking of which, HOC is supposedly coming back this month with Claire at the helm. If anyone knows exact dates, please post.
Unfortunately, either Cagle or Kemp is likely to be the next Governor of Georgia. We scrapped the bottom of our shoes and they are what we got. The age of Trump is fully upon us.
However, that is the way I felt after the Dem primary for mayor of Atlanta.
We could have done so much better. I think.
Yep.
I regret voting in the Democratic primary. Now I will not get to choose between tweedle dumb, and tweedle dumber.
I don’t see it making much difference in the runoff. Cagle has a big edge in funding and organization and support from party regulars. He’s just as Trumpy as Kemp. He’ll talk guns and ACA in private and business development and income tax cut in public. At intervals he’ll point out Kemp’s troubles with security at SoS.
Cagle is a corporate whore. Willing to sell himself to the highest bidder. I truly hope Kemp wins the run-off. He is the only GOP choice if Abrams loses.
LOL. Even our resident Trumpsters know that what you really mean is that Kemp is the only GOP choice left that Abrams can beat.
Abrams has been raising a good deal of out-of-state funds as well. Strings? Are there ever not strings attached?
I appreciate your positive feelings for Abrams. I do. But Kemp will beat her handily, just as easily as Cagle will.
And once Kemp loses, Trump will find an ambassadorship for him at NATO or somewhere. They have about 5 different American ambassadors running around at their HQ. Decent title. Don’t do squat.
Once Kemp loses to Cagle, that is…
As much as I hate to refer to the bucolic humor often associated with Louisiana politics, the only way Abrams wins will involve a “Dead Girl, Live Boy…” scenario.
Well, I’m sorry to say that I agree. Abrams unless she can start polling in the upper 40’s and break the 40% stuck range she’s got zero chance. I will consider it “a win” if she bests Hillary’s numbers from 2016.
I hate Cagle. I would much rather Kemp be the next Governor if a GOP victory is imminent in November. I would love nothing more than to see Cagle, who thinks he is owed this position not even make it to the general election.
Is Cagle a political hack? Damn right. Is Gov. Deal? Double down on it. And before the Blue team here gets too excited I grew up in the single party state of Georgia that only had Louisiana to look down on for corrupt politics. “Some of the people who ate my barbecue didn’t vote for me” as stated by ex-Gov. Marvin Griffin when he wasn’t reelected kind of says it all metaphorically. The lake front “cottages” at Georgia Power’s Lake Burton still have residents who are past political kingpins or their descendants. Lester was the only ex-Gov. in my memory to die relatively poor. Is anyone but the most naive fooled into thinking any politician at the state level or above is in it for purely altruistic reasons?
This isn’t the bombshell the Blue team needs and my own take on it is that the only mortal wound taken here politically was by Clay Tippins. Deal barely got out of Washington with his robes singed, played games with his PACs, fired the investigators of those games, had the taxpayers pay off the fired investigators, and was still reelected. This is coming from a guy who argued on the old site with Buzz that the then $58 MM tax credit for “scholarships” was a shell game diverting tax monies to private schools without the state even having to play bag man. I certainly didn’t agree with nearly doubling it. The revelation that politics played a role in it in an election year is no more surprising than the wind blast that revealed Trump’s bald spot.
No, it definitely wounds Cagle. All it does is make it obvious to the less informed what a hack he really is. However, it’s probably not enough of a wound to make him lose the primary and not enough of a wound for him to lose in November against Abrams. The biggest risk here is him going to run off where he has to expend more time and money to beat Abrams.
I almost never agree with Mr. Pope’s comments on here, but you summarized Cagle’s fear of Hill perfectly. You should be a contributor on this blog. I’m sure I’d enjoy reading your entries even if I disagree with what you have to say.
On another note, Holly total missed that there is a hero here and it is Lindsey Tippins. Although I actually like the bill, I have to admire someone sticking to there principles like he did. A stark contrast to shoeless Cagle.
The Marietta Daily Journal opinion piece crediting Clay Tippins’ uncle Sen. Lindsey Tippins with resigning over this bill got it wrong. A fact that they could have discovered in their own paper in this article:
http://www.mdjonline.com/opinion/around-town-tippins-resigns-as-senate-education-committee-chairman/article_a19b7f74-36d6-11e8-94bc-33e8beab804f.html
Lindsey Tippins resigned his chairmanship in protest of being circumvented in the passage of HB 787. Another piece of bad legislation that gives charter schools the same money as public schools percentage wise regardless of them meeting the state average on the College and Career Ready Performance Index, getting to pick and choose their students (meaning the public schools get the behavioral problem children and the higher maintenance children with disabilities), and in spite of the fact that there are 577,000 traditional public school students in 46 school districts already receiving less funding than the average charter schools receive. It is in my opinion an even more odious bill than the tax credit bill in question, (HB 217, which L. Tippins also voted against), as it takes more of the available funds from the public schools who can afford it the least. It is another cog in the wheel of returning Georgia to separate, but unequal.
The nephew Clay Tippins seems to lack his Uncle’s sense of decency regardless of how you feel about Cagle, Kemp, et al.