Oh wow:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Jason Carter, Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, probably wasn't expecting friendly correspondence from incumbent Gov. Nathan Deal when he checked the mail on Thursday.
But that's exactly what he got. The Republican governor's campaign sent Carter an invitation to a fundraising event with a $500 buy-in later this month:
It's hard to know whether the invitation was deliberate, but Carter made clear he will not be attending the event. - Huffington Post, 9/4/14
Carter responded on Twitter:
Great response. But on a serious note, this race is incredibly important for Georgia's future:
http://mdjonline.com/...
Georgia has opted out of expanding Medicaid under Obamacare, aiming to avoid increased costs. On top of that, at the close of this year’s legislative session Gov. Nathan Deal signed a bill making sure Medicaid cannot be expanded in Georgia without approval by the legislature.
HB 990 bars any expansion of Medicaid eligibility “through an increase in the income threshold without prior legislative approval.” The law specifies the approval must be by a legislative act or joint resolution of the General Assembly. Maybe this is a hedge against the possibility of pro-Medicaid expansion Democratic nominee for governor Jason Carter winning in November? Carter, trailing Deal, is trying to make Medicaid a key issue in the race.
Expansion or not, Georgians are still going to be on the hook for some of the costs of bigger Medicaid rolls in other states by virtue of a new tax on health insurers, hospitals, medical device producers and pharmaceutical companies. Reports Kaiser Health News: “With an $8 billion tax on insurers due Sept. 30 — the first time the new tax is being collected — the industry is getting help from an unlikely source: taxpayers.”
Georgia is among 23 states rejecting Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. Yet over the next eight years, the non-expansion states will have to pay $152 billion for extending the program in other states, but will get nothing in return, according to an analysis of data from the Urban Institute research center. If the states opted for expansion, they would get nearly $386 billion in federal money from 2013-22 to pay all medical costs for new Medicaid enrollees in 2014-16 and at least 90 percent of costs going forward. - Marietta Daily Journal, 9/4/14
And Carter has a great shot at unseating Deal:
http://www.economist.com/...
Mr Deal can boast that unemployment has fallen from 10.1% when he took office in 2011 to 7.8% now. But it is worse than it was in April (6.9%) and better than only one other state, Mississippi. Average hourly wages have increased 3.7% in Georgia under Mr Deal, less than the national average of 4.6%. The governor has offered tax breaks for new factories and cut a few regulations, but this has yet to bear fruit.
The governor has taken a firm stand on health care, albeit mostly to say “no”. His last significant act as a congressman (his previous job) was to vote against Obamacare. As governor, he spurned federal money to expand Medicaid, the public health programme for the hard-up, reasoning that Georgia would eventually get stuck with much of the bill. Mr Carter has not talked much about health care—the word “Obamacare” is toxic in Georgia—but he says he would expand Medicaid. That should help him with blacks, who are 30% of the population and solidly Democratic, but who don’t always vote.
Mr Carter knows he needs a good turnout among blacks. “I’d tell you how important it is to get out and vote, but y’all already know,” he told a sea of pink, green and yellow hats at Atlanta’s Jackson Memorial Baptist church on August 10th. Ben Jealous, a former head of the NAACP, a civil-rights group, has crunched some numbers. If 60% of Georgia’s unregistered black voters get registered and then turn out at levels seen in previous elections, that would be 290,000 extra votes—30,000 more than the average margin of victory in Georgia’s recent governor’s races.
Mr Carter talks more about education, but his ideas sound somewhat half-baked. He wants a new, separate education budget—Georgia spends less on education than 39 out of the 50 states. Mr Carter says a top-to-bottom review of government spending would uncover needed cash. But when pushed, he cannot pinpoint the wasteful expenditure he would cut. “Everyone knows it’s there,” he says, which is not much of an answer.
By contrast, Mr Deal is happy to keep schools much as they are. Besides rewarding the best teachers with more pay, he intends only to tinker with the formula for funding schools. At a festival in Norcross on August 29th he thanked Vietnamese parents, through an interpreter, for educating their children so assiduously. “We appreciate your respect for family and for religion,” he said. A star-struck manicurist in the crowd said he would vote for Mr Deal because “he really cares about the Vietnamese community”. But he will have to try hard to win more minority votes: he received hardly any four years ago.
Mr Deal faces allegations that his aides smothered an investigation into the finances of his 2010 campaign. Charles Bullock of the University of Georgia predicts that he will win anyway, but that Mr Carter’s “brand power” will help the Democrats in future elections. Mr Carter has time on his side. His grandfather did not become governor until his second attempt. - The Economist, 9/6/14
We can defeat Deal, we just have to make sure our base comes out and votes. Click here to donate and get involved with Carter's campaign:
https://carterforgovernor.com/