Elections have consequences, according to an old adage that is plainly aimed at urging people to vote for certain political candidates. If voters don’t, as the saying warns, they’ll have to live with the ramifications. In the same token, how lawmakers vote also has consequences, but maybe not the ones you think.
Of course, constituents can vote out incumbents who do not uphold their values. However, several lawmakers who have voted their conscience on various bills in the past couple years have faced a different set of consequences. It represents a troubling trend.
Tort reform activists recently celebrated a hard-fought but narrowly-won victory. Senate Bill 68—a commonsense effort to curb lawsuit abuse—has been meandering through the legislative process. Gov. Brian Kemp threw his weight behind the measure, and it cleared the House by the slimmest margin possible.
It passed largely along party lines—except three Democrats crossed over to vote for it and eight Republicans opposed it—and some of those legislators are already feeling the heat from voting independently. “A prominent Republican legislator may have lost his job because he opposed [Senate Bill 68],” reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. By his job, the Journal-Constitution does not mean his position as state representative. Being a senator or representative is a part-time job, and most lawmakers also need full-time employment in the private market to make ends meet.
“State Rep. Vance Smith, R-Pine Mountain, isn’t commenting on what happened with his role as president and CEO of the Harris County Chamber of Commerce. But officials said he was ousted from the job on Friday, only hours after the House narrowly approved the measure without Smith’s support.” Was he terminated for voting against tort reform? Perhaps.
Meanwhile three rogue Democrats—Reps. Michele Au, Carl Gilliard and Mack Jackson—courageously crossed party lines and supported the proposal. Now they are in hot water too. Jackson admitted that a fellow lawmaker dressed him down as if he were a child for supporting tort reform.
“The chains and shackles that she thought she had on me had to be broken,” Jackson asserted, “Because in that very instance, I realized that she only tolerated me as long as I went along to get along. I was never allowed to be free.” Now he is unsure over whether he will remain a Democrat.
This only represents the most recent attempts to punish legislators over a single vote. Two years ago, then-Rep. Mesha Mainor, D-Atlanta, broke party lines and voted for Senate Bill 233, which was an innocuous measure. It allocated $6,500 to qualifying K-12 children to use toward private school tuition, tutoring, homeschooling supplies, etc. For her single vote, her colleagues called for her ouster and were prepared to back a primary challenger. She ultimately switched parties because of this and then lost re-election.
Two years prior, two Republicans also felt undeserved pain from activists. Former Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, voted for the state’s landmark voting bill—Senate Bill 202—which garnered all kinds of animosity. The bill became law, but because Fleming supported it and protestors mobbed his workplace, his employer asked him to resign.
Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, found himself facing an even more bizarre set of circumstances. A political action committee tweeted at the clients of Albers’ employer at the time. It accused him of co-sponsoring Senate Bill 62, which the organization grossly mischaracterized as “a bill meant to suppress black votes & institute a new Jim Crow.” Senate Bill 62 did nothing of the sort and actually passed with bipartisan support, but the problems sparked by this tweet storm caused Albers to lose his job.
The nature of these tactics reveals an unwelcome evolution in Georgia politics. For many, it means that lawmakers must either vote with you 100 percent of the time or else they are deemed expendable and worthy of being stripped of their dignity and day jobs. This leaves little room for legislators to vote their conscience, be independent or have a maverick streak, and it flies in the face of one of former President Ronald Reagan’s more famous quotes: “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally—not a 20 percent traitor.”
Elections have consequences and every vote Georgia’s legislators cast has consequences for them, but I would generally prefer those to be limited to official affairs in the Gold Dome and the ballot box. Political activism that seeks to destroy people’s lives based on a single vote undermines our political system, and might encourage officials to vote in a manner that is not appropriate but will inoculate them from undeserved blowback.
