McKoon’s Big Gamble
In the Georgia Senate, Josh McKoon distinguished himself as champion for faith issues under the Gold Dome. His crusade to pass a Georgia Restoration of Religious Freedom Act (RFRA) won him many admirers among the grassroots and Christian Conservative base of Republicans in Georgia, but also the ire of Georgia’s top corporations and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce (along with leaders in the Georgia General Assembly who wished McKoon would just take his RFRA Bill and go home).
While I won’t rehash here the fight concerning the information and, more importantly, the misinformation that was spread to attack, and eventually defeat, the legislation, the battle made McKoon one of the most well known legislators in the State.
McKoon was even given the opportunity to argue his case in the opinion pages of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writing an op-ed for the Dec. 8, 2015 editorial page where he pushed back on the accusations that RFRA would hurt Georgia’ economy stating, “Like the Saturday Night Live character played by Jon Lovitz — who would tell one false and ridiculous story after another punctuated with the tag line ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket,’ — opponents of religious freedom have come up with their latest whopper to oppose the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. They now claim that a religious freedom law will retard economic development and discourage tourism.”
McKoon’s efforts even won him the praise of the largest Protestant denomination in Georgia. To show their support for McKoon’s efforts and the RFRA legislation, the Georgia Baptists took out billboards to highlight the legislation and praise McKoon.
While McKoon’s first attempt, SB 129, passed the Georgia Senate, it failed to get a vote in the House in 2015. However, a second, more watered down, attempt backed by McKoon (HB 757) passed the General Assembly only to be vetoed by Governor Nathan Deal in 2016 who deemed the bill as “unnecessary” given already existing Constitutional protections.
“It illustrates how difficult it is to legislate on something that is best left to the broad protections of First Amendment of our Constitution,” Deal said as reported by GPB.
Likewise, McKoon vowed to bring the legislation back during the 2017 legislative session. However, soon after his 2016 re-election, McKoon started to shift his focus to his 2018 run for Secretary of State and never dropped another RFRA bill.
Flash forward to 2024 and McKoon is now the Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. A curious opportunity that State Election Law gives to the political parties is the opportunity to submit questions for the primary ballot to be answered by the party’s primary voters. The Republican and Democratic State Parties can put questions on the statewide ballot and county parties can add additional questions that will only be voted on by voters in their county. These questions are non-binding and cannot create law like ballot questions on Constitutional amendments or local SLPOSTS, but give the parties an easy method to test policy ideas in front of their electorate.
The Georgia Republican Party submitted eight ballot questions, all of which received overwhelming “YES” votes, except for Question 8, which was an overwhelming “NO”. The Questions and results from the Republican Primary ballot are below:
Q1: For future elections, do you want hand marked paper ballots, scanned and verified by hand count on live stream video? 64.32% YES
Q2: Should the legislature enact the FairTax replacing the state income tax and state sales tax with a consumption tax equal to current state funding and taxing no legal citizen or family up to the poverty level of spending? 64.62% YES
Q3: Should the legislature ban registered lobbyists from serving on the State Elections Board? 91.91% YES
Q4: Should the Georgia Republican Primary have a closed primary, meaning that only registered Republicans would be allowed to vote in the Republican Primary? 66.21% YES
Q5: Should public officials who allow illegal migration to occur be held responsible for crimes committed by illegal aliens? 83.09% YES
Q6: Would you support a statewide vote to allow gaming in Georgia so the voters can decide this issue instead of politicians in Atlanta? 81.39% YES
Q7: Currently, hundreds of thousands of hours and dollars are spent every year cleaning up voter rolls. Would you support an amendment to the National Voting Rights Act that would require registered voters to renew their registration every four years? 80.08% YES
Q8: Do you believe unelected and unaccountable international bureaucrats, like the UN controlled World Health Organization (WHO), should have complete control over management of future pandemics in the United States and authority to regulate your healthcare and personal health choices? 93.34% NO
On a October 3, more than four months after the primary election, Chairman McKoon sent the following email from his official GAGOP account to members of the Georgia General Assembly highlighting the results of JUST ONE of the eight ballot questions:
From: Josh McKoon
Sent: Thursday, October 3, 2024 11:52 AM
Subject: GOP Voters Show Strong Support for Constitutional Amendment on Gaming – Results from Ballot Question 6
Dear Representative NAME WITHHELD,
I’m writing to bring an important issue to your attention. During the May primary, the Georgia Republican Party included eight questions on the statewide ballot, one of which gauged voter support for a statewide referendum on amending the Georgia Constitution to allow “FULL GAMING,” including resort-style casinos and sports betting.
Georgia Republican voters overwhelmingly supported this referendum, with 81.39% voting in favor and 18.61% against. A total of 640,134 Georgia Republicans cast votes on this question, and this measure passed in every county across Georgia. If you’d like to see specific numbers for the counties you represent, I’ve attached a detailed breakdown. The margin clearly demonstrates the strong desire among Georgia Republicans to resolve the matter of gaming in Georgia through a binding statewide referendum.
While the Georgia Republican Party does not take an official position on this issue, I felt it important to share this information as you consider whether to support a statewide referendum on gaming.
Thank you,
Josh McKoon
Chairman, Georgia Republican Party
It’s hard to image that the Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party would have so much free time approximately one month before the November election (and just days before early voting began) in one of the most critical swing states in the nation to pause and remind Republican members of the Georgia General Assembly, many of whom were facing off against challengers themselves, that four months ago, Republican primary voters voted overwhelmingly to support a referendum to allow FULL GAMING in the State of Georgia.
McKoon’s email was not just untimely, but it also misrepresents the what the ballot question actually said.
Given the email McKoon sent to members of the General Assembly, it would seem like the question only asked, “Would you support a statewide vote to allow gaming in Georgia.”
However, according to the full question posed, voters were likely voting on whether THEY or “politicians in Atlanta” should decide the issue. So the ballot question does not seem to gage voter support as to whether or not GOP voters want casinos, but whether they want to be the ones to decide that issue for themselves.
One has to wonder why McKoon decided THAT one issue of the eight was the one to highlight to members of the General Assembly just before early voting started – and while McKoon was also embroiled in pointless legal challenges involving the State Elections Board.
It seems likely the same Georgia Baptists who took out billboards praising McKoon’s leadership on RFRA would be shocked to see McKoon suddenly using his position as Chair of the Georgia Republican Party to highlight casino gambling…a issue that the Baptists have lobbied against for years.
While McKoon is careful to say, “the Georgia Republican Party does not take an official position on this issue“, then why bring up the issue at all? The legislators I have spoken with don’t remember receiving similar emails about the other seven ballot questions, and McKoon’s highlighting of just one of the eight seems to place it above the others. And while the GAGOP cannot take an “official position” to support casino style gambling without the State Committee passing a resolution to that effect. McKoon is wrong when he says the “Georgia Republican Party does not take an official position,” because it has.
In fact the State Committee of the Georgia Republican Party has passed a resolution condemning gambling in Georgia which would, indeed, make that an “official” position of the Georgia Republican Party:
WHEREAS, Georgia Republican legislators have introduced legislation that would allow for casino gambling in Georgia; and
WHEREAS, the gambling bills now mask the negative connotations of casino gambling by referring to casinos euphemistically as “destination resorts”; and
WHEREAS, the usual arguments for opening the state to casino and horse racing continue to be, “this will create jobs” and “it is for the children” because it will generate revenue for Pre- K and for the HOPE scholarship, and
WHEREAS, these reasons fail to overcome the substantial societal costs of casino and horse racing, which include:
- because gamblers are twice as likely to divorce as non- gamblers,
- an increase in local crime by at least ten percent within five years or less after the establishment of a casino, including an increase in prostitution;
- local job loss because local citizens change their spending habits,
- an increase in bankruptcies, and
- an increase in child neglect and domestic violence; and
WHEREAS, all tax payers, including non-gamblers, end up paying higher taxes for these publicly borne social costs; and
WHEREAS, the proposed establishment of the gambling industry in Georgia violates free- market principles by instituting a politically protected industry that will drain customers from legitimate businesses not similarly protected; and
WHEREAS, once the gambling industry is allowed to operate legally in the state, its lobbying power will grow and increase its influence over legislators and local community officials; and
WHEREAS, once the State of Georgia allows Class III gambling, this would open the door for any Indian tribe to “venue shop” for property to open casinos on land that would be taken out of the governance of the State and off the local tax digest; and
WHEREAS, the State should not have a vested interest in predatory activities such as gambling for the sake of filling State coffers at the expense of ruined lives and broken families;
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, We, the delegates of Georgia Republican Convention, urge the members of the Georgia Legislature to cease and desist with any efforts to open the State of Georgia to casino and horse racing;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the Secretary of Georgia Republican Party Convention is directed to immediately transmit an appropriate copy of this resolution to the Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and to all elected Republican officials in the Georgia Senate and in the Georgia House; to the Honorable Nathan Deal, Governor of the State of Georgia, the Honorable Casey Cagle, Lieutenant Governor of the State of Georgia; and to the Honorable David Ralston, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Over the years, there have been plenty of resolutions passed in all levels of the Georgia Republican Party to condemn casino style gambling. Resolutions do not automatically expire unless they have an expiration date, so a resolution, like the one passed above, is continuous until it is replaced or repealed. It would seem from those facts that McKoon is wrong…the Georgia Republican Party does have an official position on the issue, and it’s not in favor of gambling.
It also creates an odd dichotomy. On one hand, you have the GRA effort with the Catoosa County Republican Party claiming that the leadership, not the voters of the party, should decide the party’s nominees, while McKoon, a long-time member and backer of the GRA, seems to be pushing to legislators that it is the voters, not the party leadership, who should decide policy.
One can only speculate on the reasons McKoon has decided to use his position as party chairman to advocate for this one of the eight ballot measures…but that may need to be the focus of another post here on PeachPundit the Blog. Until then, we will have to see if McKoon’s big gamble pays off.
