Brian Kemp’s Private Political Party Financed Under SB221 Must be Shut Down

Dur­ing the 2021 Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly, at the obvi­ous behest of Gov­er­nor Bri­an Kemp, Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Mullis (R‑53rd), Miller (R‑49th), Dugan (R‑30th), Gooch (R‑51st) and Kennedy (R‑18th) intro­duced a bill which would fun­da­men­tal­ly change the land­scape of Geor­gia pol­i­tics, effec­tive­ly coro­nat­ing Kemp, ele­vat­ing his pow­er from that of mere state gov­er­nor, to that of ver­i­ta­ble state king.SB221, a par­ti­san bill passed by Repub­li­cans in both hous­es along par­ty lines, empow­ered new­ly-crowned King Kemp to accel­er­ate an exist­ing pro­gram appar­ent­ly bent on sup­press­ing the polit­i­cal pow­er of Geor­gias tra­di­tion­al vot­er-cen­tric, grass-roots-based elec­tion sys­tem, and replace it with the pow­er gen­er­at­ed from the solic­i­ta­tion and receipt of vast quan­ti­ties of dol­lars secured from anony­mous donors, who could be sit­u­at­ed lit­er­al­ly any­where in the world.

SB221 was one of those, Gov­er­nors Bills we hear about each year. Even though the gov­er­nor is part of Geor­gias EXECUTIVE branch of gov­ern­ment, rather than LEGISLATIVE branch, for some rea­son not obvi­ous to me, each year the office of Geor­gias gov­er­nor is allowed rep­re­sen­ta­tion in both cham­bers of the Gen­er­al Assem­bly. And each year the gov­er­nor assigns his leg­isla­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tives the task of propos­ing pet leg­is­la­tion, effec­tive­ly coerc­ing bills into pas­sage by the pow­er of the chief exec­u­tives office.

SB221 is not a ter­ri­bly long or com­pli­cat­ed bill. Its terms come to a point quick­ly, pro­vid­ing exact­ly what the gov­er­nor desired at the time to become law. Judg­ing by events, no changes would be allowed.

SB221 ordained a new cam­paign financ­ing vehi­cle into law, a lead­er­ship com­mit­tee, empow­ered to estab­lish a ver­i­ta­ble slush fund, the size of which would soon dwarf the capa­bil­i­ties of tra­di­tion­al polit­i­cal par­ties or down-bal­lot can­di­dates to raise mon­ey. Here is how the bill defines a lead­er­ship com­mit­tee.

As you can see, a lead­er­ship com­mit­tee real­ly has noth­ing to do with lead­er­ship per se, and one may be con­sti­tut­ed by a sit­ting gov­er­nor or lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, or a par­ty nom­i­nee for either office. But SB221 also opens the door for par­ty cau­cus­es of either leg­isla­tive body to con­sti­tute lead­er­ship com­mit­tees, fur­ther pro­vid­ing:

The pur­pose of a lead­er­ship com­mit­tee is sim­ply to solic­it and receive con­tri­bu­tions, out­side of the tra­di­tion­al cam­paign financ­ing guide­lines, whether in-kind or in cash.

And as we will see, when put to prac­tice by the gov­er­nor the term, per­sons, will not con­fine itself to indi­vid­ual, nat­ur­al peo­ple, but will also encom­pass, legal per­sons, such as cor­po­ra­tions and LLCs. SB221 was care­ful not to define the term, per­sons, pos­si­bly such that it might be thin­ly con­strued by leg­is­la­tors, but broad­ly inter­pret­ed in prac­tice, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ple of how they make-the-sausage dur­ing the Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly.

The pro­vi­sions of SB221 mak­ing this law so extra­or­di­nary are the fol­low­ing, pro­vi­sions which effec­tive­ly remove-the-train­ing-wheels from pre­vi­ous prac­tices of polit­i­cal fundrais­ing, cur­tail­ing any pri­or lim­its on what all those per­sons may con­tribute:

So, there you have it, the real pur­pose of SB221, pos­si­bly not com­plete­ly evi­dent to leg­is­la­tors who vot­ed for it unknow­ing­ly in 2021. In prac­tice, SB221 allows any legal per­son to con­tributeunlim­it­ed fundsin sup­port of then gov­er­nor, now effec­tive­ly king, Bri­an Kemp. And King Kemp has used that fea­ture to its utmost,rais­ing over $50 mil­lion in his Geor­gians First Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee, as last report­ed fol­low­ing the end of June, 2023.

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SB221 Fast-Tracked Into Law With No Public Hearing

Dur­ing the 2021 Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Geoff Dun­can fast-tracked SB221 through the Sen­ate, orches­trat­ing its progress with min­i­mal dis­cus­sion, min­i­mal active con­sid­er­a­tion and, impor­tant­ly,NO PUBLIC HEARING.On Feb­ru­ary 22, 2021, SB221 stealth­ily dropped into the Sen­ate hop­per.Wast­ing no time, the next day, Feb­ru­ary 23rd, Dun­can sched­uled the Sen­ates first required read­ing. Once read, rather than refer­ring SB221 to a Sen­ate com­mit­tee for con­sid­er­a­tion and a pub­lic hear­ing, Dun­can bypassed the nor­mal leg­isla­tive process, assign­ing the bill direct­ly to the Sen­ate Rules Com­mit­tee, nor­mal­ly the final step in bring­ing a bill to the floor for a vote. The next day, Feb­ru­ary 24th, Sen­ate Rules returned the bill, favor­ably report­ing it back to the Sen­atewith no changes. The Sen­ate read the bill for a sec­ond time on Feb­ru­ary 25th, and a final time on Feb­ru­ary 26th, com­plet­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion require­ments in the min­i­mum time nec­es­sary under Sen­ate rules. Sen­a­tor Bran­don Beach tem­porar­i­ly delayed the bills final pas­sage, intro­duc­ing a floor amend­ment, which imme­di­ate­ly failed. After the 3rd read­ing, Dun­can brought the bill to a vote and passed it by a mar­gin of 30 to 21. Notably, only three Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors,Bran­don Beach(R‑21st),Greg Dolezal(R‑27th) and (now Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor)Burt Jones(R‑25th), opposed the bill, along with every Sen­ate Demo­c­rat in the cham­ber.

SB221 met even less Repub­li­can resis­tance in the Geor­gia House, as Speak­er Ral­ston cleared the tracks for the gov­er­nors rail­road job to pass through. While Democ­rats offered a tray of con­cerns,main­ly regard­ing the ques­tion whether polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions could be accept­ed while the Gen­er­al Assem­bly con­vened, no amend­ments or changes made it into the bill. Con­cerns over the issue of receiv­ing con­tri­bu­tions dur­ing the Gen­er­al Assem­bly, which I have heard voiced by leg­is­la­tors as well, appear to be inau­then­tic, a smoke­screen of sorts to hide the true inten­tions of SB221. That is because there is noth­ing writ­ten into the bill to address that con­cern, and one need not leg­is­late the kinds of unbri­dled fund-rais­ing author­i­ties SB221 empow­ers sim­ply to deal with a tim­ing issue. SB221 passed the Geor­gia House on March 18th by aunan­i­mous vote of Repub­li­can House mem­bers. Because the bill remained unchanged from the ver­sion arriv­ing from the Sen­ate, the upper body would nev­er con­sid­er it again. Passed unchanged by both cham­bers, SB221 next pre­sent­ed itself at the gov­er­nors desk, at which it became law with Kemps sig­na­ture on May 4th.

As a result of becom­ing law, SB221 has effec­tive­ly over­writ­ten many of the tra­di­tion­al par­ty-based elec­tion inten­tions pre­scribed in Title 21 of Geor­gia Law, effec­tive­ly can­celling them by virtue of a cor­po­rate-based cam­paign-financ­ing and influ­ence-pur­chas­ing scheme in which donors, their iden­ti­ties shroud­ed behind the veils of cor­po­ra­tions or LLCs, may con­tributeunlim­it­ed sums of mon­ey or valu­able in-kind ser­vices, their names remain­ing unknown for­ev­er, dark mon­ey flow­ing into Geor­gia from all cor­ners of the coun­try, con­ceiv­ably orig­i­nat­ing from lit­er­al­ly any­where, or from any­one around the world. As a result, while most vot­ers have no idea that kind of poten­tial mon­ey-laun­der­ing oper­a­tion would be pos­si­ble under Geor­gia law, the fact is that the pow­er over Geor­gias cam­paign fund-rais­ing process­es, intend­ed and writ­ten into law under Title 21, prac­ticed by all par­ties since antiq­ui­ty, has been clev­er­ly divert­ed away from the peo­ple, and chan­neled to a cor­po­rate-based, anony­mous­ly fund­ed, polit­i­cal mon­ey-rais­ing machine. Sad­ly, in the ensu­ing three years since the bills pas­sage, hard­ly any­one has noticed.

Constitutional Conflicts

Since SB221 becom­ing law, Geor­gias elec­tion sys­tem has been run in notable con­flict with mean­ing­ful require­ments pre­scribed in both the US and Geor­gia Con­sti­tu­tions. Rather than remain­ing part and par­cel of a repub­li­can form of gov­ern­ment, as guar­an­teed under Arti­cle IV, Sec­tion 4 of the US Con­sti­tu­tion, by empow­er­ingcor­po­rate enti­ties to make unlim­it­ed polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions from anony­mous sources, those con­tri­bu­tions going direct­ly to the most pow­er­ful elect­ed office holder(s) in state gov­ern­ment, a prac­tice which has the effect of over­whelm­ing the nat­ur­al voice and will of the peo­ple, the State of Geor­gia under Bri­an Kemp has assumed an iden­ti­ty sim­i­lar to that of acor­po­rate-fas­cist state. If you have nev­er heard that term, here is what it means:

CORPORATE FASCISMis a sys­tem under which the peo­ples gov­ern­ment, over time, becomes so heav­i­ly influ­enced by cor­po­rate spe­cial inter­ests, inter­ests which have the means nec­es­sary to pur­chase oper­a­tional influ­ence at the very high­est lev­els of the peo­ples gov­ern­ment, that the gov­ern­ment is for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es, even­tu­al­ly tak­en over by those cor­po­rate spe­cial inter­ests. At that point, the gov­ern­ment becomes almost sole­ly a tool of those cor­po­rate spe­cial inter­ests.

The oper­a­tion of a cor­po­rate-con­trolled state gov­ern­ment is in con­flict with the require­ments of any con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­lic, which, as Lin­coln appro­pri­ate­ly described at Get­tys­burg, is strict­ly gov­ern­mentof, by and for the peo­ple.

SB221 is also in prin­ci­ple con­flict with the Geor­gia Con­sti­tu­tion, which rec­og­nizes:

SECTION II.

ORIGIN AND STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT

Para­graph I. Ori­gin and foun­da­tion of gov­ern­ment.All gov­ern­ment, of right, orig­i­nates with the peo­ple, is found­ed upon their will only, and is insti­tut­ed sole­ly for the good of the whole.Pub­lic offi­cers are the trustees and ser­vants of the peo­ple and are at all times amenable to them.

Para­graph II. Object of gov­ern­ment.The peo­ple of this state have the inher­ent right of reg­u­lat­ing their inter­nal gov­ern­ment. Gov­ern­ment is insti­tut­ed for the pro­tec­tion, secu­ri­ty, and ben­e­fit of the peo­ple;and at all times they have the right to alter or reform the same when­ev­er the pub­lic good may require it.

Thus, accord­ing to Geor­gias Con­sti­tu­tion, it is sole­ly the right of thepeo­pleto reg­u­late their inter­nal gov­ern­ment, not the right of pri­vate, anony­mous inter­ests whose iden­ti­ties are for­ev­er con­cealed behind a cor­po­rate veil. That is because all true gov­ern­ment is found­ed upon the WILL OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE GOOD OF THE WHOLE, not the will of well-heeled, hid­den spe­cial inter­ests.

Who Would Propose Such Egregious Legislation?

Per­haps as much as any action under­tak­en by Bri­an Kemp as Geor­gias Gov­er­nor, his foist­ing of SB221 dur­ing the 2021 Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly, aid­ed by Gen­er­als Dun­can and Ral­ston con­duct­ing its pas­sage in their respec­tive hous­es, pro­vides Geor­gians, both Repub­li­can and Demo­c­rat, defin­ing insight to under­stand Kemps polit­i­cal inten­tions. Pri­or to SB221, Geor­gias Gov­er­nors seat had long been regard­ed one of the most pow­er­ful in the coun­try. After becom­ing law, SB221 hand­ed Geor­gias new king the where­with­al to eschew any mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tion with, or respon­si­bil­i­ty toward the peas­antry, they being the mem­bers of the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty (what­ev­er GRP even means at this point). The pow­er King Kemp pos­sess­es under SB221 tran­scends any pow­er he would have at this point of his gov­er­nor­ship with­out it. With­out SB221, Kemp would be just anoth­er lame duck gov­er­nor. But with it, as I wrote in April,Bri­an Kemp Has Become His own Polit­i­cal Par­ty, Say[ing] ‘FU’ to Geor­gia GOP.Embold­ened by an aver­age annu­al cash flow of tens of mil­lions, much of it con­tributed to Kemp anony­mous­ly from behind cor­po­rate veils, last Feb­ru­ary Bri­an Kemp con­firmed his inten­tions, declar­ing to his assem­bly of elite con­trib­u­tors,We can no longer rely on the tra­di­tion­al par­ty infra­struc­ture to win in the future,rub­bing his new­ly-estab­lished source of polit­i­cal pow­er into the faces of hard-work­ing, rank and file Geor­gia Repub­li­cans.

Below you will find a few rep­re­sen­ta­tive lines from KempsJune 30, 2023 Geor­gians First Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee dis­clo­sure state­ment:

Who, for exam­ple, are the own­ers of a real­ty com­pa­ny in Cal­i­for­nia, who thought so high­ly of Geor­gias Gov­er­nor Bri­an Kemp as to award him one-quar­ter mil­lion dol­lars in Novem­ber of 2021? From where and from whom did that out-of-state enti­ty, four thou­sand miles from Geor­gia, receive those funds? We dont know the answers to those ques­tions and we nev­er will. Any of these firms, or tens of oth­ers show­ing up onthis report, could rep­re­sent for­eign own­ers and for­eign con­trib­u­tors. Those own­ers or con­trib­u­tors could be in Chi­naor Rus­siaor Ukraine­or even Iran for all we know. The repeal of SB221 is aNATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE.And that is just one of sev­er­al major prob­lems here. Anoth­er is that, pri­or to SB221 pass­ing into law, from any of these enti­ties Bri­an Kemp would have been lim­it­ed to receive a max­i­mum of $7600, an amount which he could use in a par­ty pri­ma­ry, and an equiv­a­lent amount in a gen­er­al elec­tion. There are very few grass-roots Geor­gia Repub­li­cans who can com­pete for a gov­er­nors atten­tion, or favor, against cor­po­rate enti­ties from all over the coun­try, who are send­ing unlim­it­ed amounts of dol­lars, deriv­ing funds from unknown sources, con­ceiv­ably any­where in the world.

Enriched with Dark Money, King Kemp Turned His Back on Working Georgia Republicans

Last sum­mer, King Kemp ignored his respon­si­bil­i­ty as the leader of his par­ty, to address the par­ty faith­ful at the Colum­bus Repub­li­can Par­ty Con­ven­tion. In so choos­ing, His Roy­al High­ness demon­strat­ed to Geor­gia, and the world, that he no longer regards the tra­di­tion­al, Title 21 Repub­li­can Par­ty a viable, polit­i­cal vehi­cle fit for its pur­pose. By virtue of SB221, King Kemp has effec­tive­ly become his own polit­i­cal par­ty, vast­ly more pow­er­ful than any Repub­li­can orga­ni­za­tion in the state. And, obvi­ous­ly, the ambi­tion to become not only the most pow­er­ful gov­er­nor in the his­to­ry of Geor­gia, but also, to take cer­tain pow­er with him when he leaves, are excel­lent rea­sons King Kemp would foist SB221 upon the Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly in 2021.

Where Do Leadership Committee Funds Go After Kemp Leaves Office?

You have heard it many times, You cant take it with you. Gen­er­al­ly that idiom is true. But is it real­ly true in the case of the gov­er­nors lead­er­ship com­mit­tee war chest? No, it does not seem to be true at all. Regard­ing dis­po­si­tion of those funds, accord­ing to SB221,

Thus, SB221 opens the door for King Kemp to trans­fer any remain­ing funds from his Geor­gians First Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee to a new com­mit­tee, such as one cre­at­ed to sup­port a suc­ces­sor to win coro­na­tion in 2026, for­ev­er behold­en to his or her bene­fac­tor, Kemp. But thats not all. Notice SB221 also allows Kemp to trans­fer remain­ing funds as pro­vid­ed by Code Sec­tion 21–5‑33. So, lets look at what that sec­tion pro­vides.

Accord­ing to SB221, when leav­ing office Bri­an Kemp may do one or all of the fol­low­ing with the remain­ing funds of his lead­er­ship com­mit­tee:

1. Donate the funds to char­i­ty;
2. Donate the funds to a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion sub­ject to cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions;
3. Trans­fer the funds to a polit­i­cal par­ty or anoth­er can­di­date;
4. Give the mon­ey back to the orig­i­nal con­trib­u­tors;
5. Trans­fer the funds to a future guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date;
6. Repay him­self for per­son­al funds expend­ed in his polit­i­cal cam­paign;
7. Trans­fer the funds to a PAC of his choice.

Of those alter­na­tives, choic­es 2, 3, 5 and 7 con­ceiv­ably allow Bri­an Kemp to retain at least loose con­trol over the future use of funds remain­ing in his Geor­gians First Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee once he is out of office. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are numer­ous. For exam­ple, over the past two years Bri­an Kemp has been estab­lish­ing non-prof­it cor­po­ra­tions, termed Repub­li­can Coali­tions, in coun­ties all across Geor­gia. As we wit­nessed last year, those pri­vate non-prof­its are set up to com­pete against local and coun­ty Repub­li­can par­ties full of MAGA sup­port­ers. To that effect, Kemp appar­ent­ly used his influ­ence to take advan­tage of a loop­hole in a Chero­kee Coun­ty ordi­nance gov­ern­ing the man­ner in which coun­ty elec­tion board mem­bers are appoint­ed, the coun­ty com­mis­sion choos­ing a Repub­li­can Coali­tion Kemp can­di­date to fill that spot rather than a Repub­li­can Par­ty can­di­date, as the law obvi­ous­ly intend­ed. Thus, we see the ground­work Kemp has been estab­lish­ing to sub­tly cor­po­ra­tize coun­ty elec­tion sys­tems around the state. Fur­ther­ing that pur­pose, Kemp could trans­fer cer­tain remain­ing funds to his coun­ty-based Repub­li­can Coali­tion non-prof­it cor­po­ra­tions, or even estab­lish a new non-prof­it cor­po­ra­tion to receive those funds, osten­si­bly out­side of his con­trol.

Kemp could con­ceiv­ably trans­fer the mon­ey to a cam­paign for wife Mar­ty to run for gov­er­nor in 2026. If you think that not cred­i­ble, you were not around when Alaba­ma Gov­er­nor George Wal­lace ran wife Lurleen as a care­tak­er gov­er­nor in 1966. Mrs. George Wal­lace ran and won the elec­tion, but unfor­tu­nate­ly died of can­cer two years lat­er.

Kemp could trans­fer the funds to a PAC of his choice, which, with a nod and a wink from Kemp, would use those funds to sup­port a future run by the for­mer gov­er­nor to become Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor.

Kemp could trans­fer the funds to the Repub­li­can Par­ty, which would be okay under cer­tain con­di­tions, or even anoth­er par­ty he might start up, which would not be okay.

Bri­an Kemp might even use the present influ­ence of his posi­tion to leg­is­late pro­vi­sions, in addi­tion to those orig­i­nal­ly adopt­ed under SB221, to give him addi­tion­al options when his term ends in 2026.

But if you think Geor­gias King Bri­an Kemp might sim­ply walk away from all that mon­ey con­tin­u­ing to flow as we speak into his Geor­gians First Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee, in excess of $50 mil­lion as of the last report­ing date, June 30, 2023, well, Im not sure you are see­ing the sit­u­a­tion for what it is.

Summary-The Republic Must be Restored

SB221 was passed into law with no input from Geor­gia cit­i­zens. In short, SB221 must be repealed, the funds remain­ing in all lead­er­ship com­mit­tees estab­lished under its pro­vi­sions either pro­rat­ed back to the orig­i­nal con­trib­u­tors, or trans­ferred to NON-INCORPORATED Geor­gia polit­i­cal par­ties, prop­er­ly reg­is­tered as pro­vid­ed under OCGA 21–2‑110. The good peo­ple of Geor­gia have suf­fered cor­po­rate influ­ence sub­vert­ing the pur­pos­es of state gov­ern­ment too long. Their good nature has been tak­en advan­tage by unscrupu­lous politi­cians using the pow­er of unlim­it­ed cor­po­rate fundrais­ing to con­trol the levers of gov­ern­ment, peren­ni­al­ly pro­mot­ing and aid­ing pri­vate inter­ests at pub­lic expense. No more. The time to repeal SB221 is now. I urge all Geor­gians to con­tact their rep­re­sen­ta­tives and sen­a­tors to solid­i­fy a move­ment to repeal SB221 dur­ing the 40 days of the Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly com­menc­ing Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 8, 2024. SB221 was a rail­road job. The long black train of dark mon­ey must be derailed.