The General US Politics Thread

The left-leaning blog Jezebel has footage of the Pooler Republican staking that position at one of his nine town halls this week across his coastal Georgia district.

After a constituent asked him about what he could do as a member of Congress to cut through the local backlog, Carter said, “if there are grants available, we’ll do everything we can to help them.”

He then quipped, “unless they’re a sanctuary city. Then we won’t,” a remark that drew some chuckles from the Homerville crowd.

Carter doubled down when another constituent asked about his comment.

“I voted for a bill that does not allow for federal law enforcement grants to go to any sanctuary cities,” he said. “I was very serious about that.”

“If you’re a sanctuary city,” Carter added, “that means you are refusing to enforce our immigration laws here in the United States, and if you’re doing that then I don’t want to be sending you any federal grants to go to your city.”

The second-term lawmaker was one of 225 House Republicans and three Democrats to help pass the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act in June, which would let the federal government deny so-called sanctuary cities federal grants. That includes the Justice Department, which has set aside money for cutting down on the rape kit backlog. The bill has yet to move in the Senate.

Georgia has more than 10,000 untested kits backlog sitting in local police evidence lockers, according to the Joyful Heart Foundation, a nonprofit that tracks the backlog. A state law that passed in the final minutes of the 2016 legislative session requires Georgia law enforcement to find and count untested sexual assault evidence.

State Rep. Scott Holcomb, the De Kalb Democrat who sponsored the legislation, called Carter’s position “indefensible.” “We don’t play politics with helping victims of rape and sexual crimes,” he said. “We help them — regardless of where they live. Period. Full stop.” Carter said in a statement Saturday that he “can’t imagine the traumatic experience” rape victims face. “I will do everything I can to assist with this situation and reduce the backlog whether it’s in the form of grants or other ways,” he said. “However, regarding grants, if it is a federal law enforcement grant I do not support them going to sanctuary cities.”

The conference, which drew nearly 3,000 liberal activists downtown to the Hyatt Regency, provided an early staging ground for Georgia Democrats either seeking elected office or mulling another run. And it provided each a chance to introduce themselves to a vast audience full of potential volunteers and donors.

Abrams, who is running for governor, has been a constant presence at the conference. The Atlanta legislator drew a standing ovation at the Thursday kickoff after a speech outlining how Democrats can win Georgia, and she joined “Iron Stache” Randy Bryce — the Democrat challenging House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin — for a Friday evening happy hour.

Evans, [also running for governor on the Democratic ticket], was scheduled to speak early Saturday — just before U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts gives a keynote address.

And Ossoff was to headline a panel Saturday on midterm elections in the “resistance era,” one of the first public appearances he’s made since losing the most expensive U.S. House race in history in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District.

The title: “Leaving it all on the field.”

She called that 2008 coalition the “strike team,” and her story Thursday at Netroots Nation was meant to rev up the progressive activists streaming to Atlanta for the four-day conference to be just as willing to ruffle Democratic feathers as Republican ones.

“We weren’t going to overthrow the legislative order. We didn’t have the means to topple the Speaker of the House. But we could make their work harder,” she said. “We could summon their victims to the Capitol. We could resist.”

Abrams would join the ranks of the party’s leadership two years later, winning a vote to lead the House Democratic caucus. But as she races for governor against a staunch Democratic rival – state Rep. Stacey Evans – she’s banking on mobilizing progressive voters in Georgia frustrated with the establishment...

At the conference’s opening session, Abrams described the strike team’s mission with candor: To “disrupt the operations of the Republicans and slow down their agenda.”

(Coalitions and caucuses ebb and flow in Georgia’s Legislature, stealthily forming and disappearing with the political tides. But we had never heard of this one before Abrams’ speech.)

They set out to cultivate back-bench legislators, prepare questions for them to ask, demands for them to make. And they didn’t clue in the party’s leadership on their efforts.

“Not because they might object but because we didn’t need or want their permission,” she said. “Because resistance demands independence and flexibility.”

She said her team lost more than it won, but “because we tried, because we resisted, we slowed the pace of stupid and blocked the advance of mean.”

After her speech, she said among the successes was spurring Democrats, many who rarely rose to speak, to ask a long list of questions ahead of a hectic legislative deadline in 2008 that delayed GOP priorities.

Abrams parlayed the Strike Team into a broader message about the Donald Trump presidency.

“We need the resistance to fight not only our opposition but sometimes our leadership,” she said. “That’s not treason. That’s not betrayal. That’s democracy.”

But the biggest applause line came near the end of her speech, when she talked about how the path to victory in Georgia combines white progressives and black Democrats locking arms to “speak to disaffected Republicans without losing our souls or our election.”

“We can win the highest office in Georgia without changing my hair, my gender, my race or my beliefs,” she said. “With you beside me, with progressives owning their power across this country, we can demand more of our leaders and bring our vision to life.”

Democrat Jon Ossoff was given a hero’s welcome at the Netroots Nation panel on Saturday, greeted by a dozen supporters wearing his campaign T-shirts who packed the first few rows of the room.

Acknowledging he didn’t win the race – “take this with a grain of salt,” he said – Ossoff urged other would-be candidates to focus on building a grassroots army of volunteers to deliver on-the-ground intensity to match the battle on the airwaves.

And he said his campaign, which spurred visits by Donald Trump, Mike Pence and other GOP luminaries, proved that seats drawn to be “impenetrable” to Democratic challengers could be competitive.

“In the second round here, it was a full-on battle royale. You had a scenario comparable of what a competitive race will look like next cycle. And still the margin was tight,” said Ossoff. “And if you replay that scenario over and over again in the 60 or 70 districts more competitive than the Sixth, it bodes well – but it’s no reason to be over-confident.”

He shared the stage with David Nir, the Daily Kos political director who helped jumpstart his campaign by raising record sums for the first-time candidate.

“We’ll never see the likes of the fundraising we had for Jon’s campaign ever again,” said Nir, adding that it outpaced the cash it raised for liberal icon Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Ossoff interjected, to laughter: “Appreciate it.”

In hindsight, Ossoff said, he would have made some “technical changes” to his campaign. He would have sought more early-voting sites in the district, which stretches from east Cobb to north De Kalb. And he would have more aggressively pushed back on escalating “cynical” attacks from national GOP groups that sought to paint him as a naive, and sometimes dangerous, charlatan.

“We do have to fight back when folks resort to tearing apart society to win elections.”

Of the internal Democratic battles between progressive advocacies and establishment-types that are dividing the party, Ossoff insisted “Democrats are united no matter what you hear on cable news or the hot-take.”

“My message for folks who are wringing their hands are snap out of it and get back in the fight.”

And to other prospective candidates either inspired or chastened by his experience, he had this counsel:

“My first piece of advice is run. And run fearlessly.”

Evans, a Smyrna state legislator who is white, expected a tough audience at the Netroots Nation event, where her rival Stacey Abrams has had rockstar status. But she didn’t seem prepared for the outraged welcome she received.

Almost as soon as she took the stage, a ring of demonstrators – some holding stark signs criticizing her – fanned out in front of Evans. Pleading repeatedly for the chanting to stop – “let’s talk through it,” she implored – the demonstrators at times overwhelmed her speech.

It underscored the intense level of vitriol already rocking the race for governor.

Abrams, seeking to be the nation’s first black female governor, has embraced a staunchly progressive platform and has pledged to mobilize a legion of minority voters who rarely cast ballots. Evans wants to rebuild a tattered coalition of liberals, working-class voters and suburbanites who have steadily spurned the party for the GOP.

The two have divided the state’s party, each divvying up endorsements from high-profile politicians and support from key advocacy groups that doesn’t cleave to racial lines. Evans enjoys backing from several prominent black politicians, while Abrams has a core of white progressive support.

She aimed to deliver a mostly biographical speech about her troubled childhood and her plan to bolster the state’s popular HOPE scholarship, but instead spent much of her time on the podium feuding with protesters. At one point, she tried unsuccessfully to start a dueling chant of “HOPE, HOPE, HOPE.”

“Oh, y’all, let’s just talk for a second. Georgia is my home,” she said.

She later tried to plow through her speech, emphasizing left-leaning values that Democrats share.

“As we built resistance to President Trump – not me, to Trump – we must unite over these ideals,” she said.

Monica Simpson, one of the few demonstrators wielding signs who would speak publicly, said she made her stand because she wanted to show she was “true to progressive values.”

Asked why Evans hasn’t met that standard, she couldn’t point to any votes or policy stances, but said she wants “a candidate that truly speaks to my community.”

“This is our opportunity, especially as black women, to make it known or clear that this is standing on true progressive values,” said Simpson, who lives in Atlanta. “And if you’re not, we’re going to make that clear.”

Abrams campaign had no immediate comment on the protests.

Evans joins the ranks of other Democrats who have been booed or heckled at Netroots events: Nancy Pelosi was booed and heckled in 2013, Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley’s speech in 2015.

After the din died down, Evans criticized the protesters for refusing to “take the time to look at either one of our records.”

“I bet if they did, they’d be really upset to know that Abrams teamed up with Republicans to cut HOPE scholarships,” she said, referring to a 2011 deal Abrams struck with Gov. Nathan Deal aimed at preventing the lottery-funded program from going broke that slashed awards. “They have a right to be heard, but so do I,” she said. “We can’t move forward in Georgia or the country if we don’t have productive dialogue.”