Tag: Zell Miller

Georgia's contentious race for governor and a hurricane that ruined cotton, pecans, and other crops were among the state's top stories of 2018. A state law requiring motorists to drive hands-free and a cyberattack on Atlanta's computer network were also among the Top 10 stories in Georgia for the year. After a grueling and contentious race for Georgia governor, Republican Brian Kemp emerged victorious over challenger Stacey Abrams, a Democrat. Hurricane Michael slammed southwest Georgia as a powerful Category 3 hurricane after crossing the Florida Panhandle, still packing more than enough force to shred homes and ruin valuable cash crops in a destructive march toward the Carolinas. Proponents of the legislation said that distracted driving had led to a recent spike in fatal crashes. Authorities say the suspects demanded a ransom payment. The victory gave the city its first major league title since the Atlanta Braves won the 1995 World Series. The University of Georgia made it to the Southeastern Conference championship game, but lost to the University of Alabama 35-28. The airmen belonged to the 156th Airlift Wing in Muniz Air Base from Puerto Rico. An Air Force investigation blamed human error , saying the crew failed to follow standard procedures to deal with an engine problem in the air.

The “October surprise,” that peculiarly American tradition of a last-minute revelation intended to alter the course of a political campaign, has typically hinged on an act of unsavory behavior. Trump won, anyway. Similarly, in early November of 2000, news broke of George W. Bush’s decades-old D.U.I. On Monday, photographs surfaced showing Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee, participating in the burning of a Georgia state flag, in 1992, when she was a sophomore at Spelman College, in Atlanta. An attempt to change the flag nearly derailed Governor Zell Miller’s political career, in 1994, and, eight years later, Governor Roy Barnes lost his bid for reëlection partly as a result of his having successfully removed the Confederate elements from the flag. Elements of the Confederate flag had been incorporated into the Georgia flag in 1956, as part of that state’s massive resistance against the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Fifty-three years ago, Lester Maddox, an entrepreneur who had failed in two previous attempts to be elected to public office, launched a quixotic campaign for governor of Georgia. Maddox won his first political campaign, and was sworn in as governor. The playbook of racist populism that was so key to the victory of Donald Trump in 2016 was perfected in the South—Trump, in effect, treated the entire country as if it were the South in 1966—and the governor’s race is another testament to its durability. It is likely that a part of the state’s population will consider the burning of a Confederate-tinged flag twenty-five years ago to be an act of outrage that is disqualifying for the governorship.

YOUNG HARRIS, Ga. (AP) — A governor and senator, friend and counselor to presidents, Zell Miller walked the marbled halls of American power. He was remembered more simply Monday as a “Methodist and Marine” whose accomplished public life was the outgrowth of personal virtues traced to his Appalachian roots. “In the art of politics, he was Michelangelo,” his former aide and prominent Democratic strategist Paul Begala told several hundred mourners at Young Harris College in Miller’s hometown, where he was born during the Great Depression and died Friday. Monday’s funeral service launched three days of public honors for Miller, who served as Georgia’s governor from 1991 to 1999 and U.S. senator from 2000 to 2005. Miller is remembered throughout Georgia as architect of an education lottery that has financed pre-kindergarten programs for 1.6 million children cumulatively, while providing HOPE college scholarships for 1.8 million more. Like most white Southern politicians of his generation, he once opposed civil rights legislation, but later condemned his own inaction and fought, unsuccessfully, to remove Confederate insignia from the Georgia state flag. He is sometimes recalled nationally as the stridently independent Democrat who late in his career accused his party of veering left and coddling terrorists; he opposed same-sex marriage and in 2004, he backed the re-election of Bush, the former Republican president who will eulogize him Tuesday. Begala gave a nod to some paradoxes, a “career politician” who campaigned “like an outsider,” a “deeply devoted Christian” who cursed like the Marine that he was. Recalling Miller’s explanation — “My family is more important than my party — Begala joked: “Which is true, because he only had one family.” Miller never did switch parties. “She’d say, ‘Zell … from here, you can get to anywhere in the world.” “Yes, Ms. Birdie,” Begala said.

Today in 5 Lines After threatening to veto a $1.3 trillion spending bill Friday morning, President Trump signed the measure, averting a government shutdown and funding the government through September. Trump campaign officials reportedly encouraged young adviser George Papadopoulos to accept an interview with a Russian news agency before the 2016 election. The Trump administration announced sanctions against an Iranian hacker network for its involvement in “one of the largest state-sponsored hacking campaigns” ever prosecuted by the United States. Former Georgia Governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller died at age 86. More than 500,000 protesters are expected to be in Washington, D.C. on Saturday for the March for Our Lives, an anti-gun-violence rally. The demonstration is one of 800 sister events planned around the world. Today on The Atlantic Who Is John Bolton? : President Trump’s new national-security adviser once advocated for war with North Korea. (Jodi Kantor, The New York Times) Visualized Where Are Tomorrow’s Protests?