The Georgia governor’s race is Republican Brian Kemp’s to lose, political scientist Charles Bullock, an expert on Georgia elections, told Oconee County Republicans on Thursday night.
“The Republicans should win this,” Bullock, distinguished University of Georgia professor, said. “This is still a Republican state.”
Oconee County Republican Party Chair Tammy Gilland told those gathered for the Grand Opening of the 2018 Campaign Headquarters last week that the local party is excited about the election season but is aware that much work needs to be done.
Gilland said party members need to make a lot of phone calls and knock on lots of doors to “spread the word about the great candidates that we have.”
The Oconee County Republican Party Executive Committee has placed severe restrictions on media coverage of its meetings, starting with the one on Thursday and running through the election in November.
Tammy Gilland, chair of the local party organization, said that media representatives are allowed to attend the next three party meetings but that they are not allowed to record the meetings in any way and not allowed to take any notes.
Oconee County officials are still waiting on Presbyterian Homes to indicate how much money it wants the county to borrow through bond sales to help finance construction of its Presbyterian Village Athens on U.S. 441 at Hog Mountain Road.
In the last two weeks the company began land clearance and construction of a chain-link fence along U.S. 441 for its complex. The county had issued a Land Disturbance Permit for the 79-acre property nearly a year ago.
Bishop Mayor Johnny Pritchett has written to the Georgia Transportation Board criticizing the proposed close-in U.S. 441 truck bypass of Bishop and saying the state should resurrect the 2007 plan that called for a bypass further east of the city.
Pritchett told state Transportation Board Chair Jamie Boswell that the current plan, which the state revealed in March, does not address his concerns about traffic inside Bishop reaching the bypass, the use of roundabouts on each side of the city, and the safety of the road south of Bishop.
The Georgia Secretary of State Office, which is responsible for elections in the state, does not know how many people voted in either the May 22 primary elections or the July 24 runoffs.
The 159 counties in the state filed that information with the Secretary of State Office shortly after each of the two elections as part of the certification process for elections.
Parents dropping their children off at Oconee County’s new Dove Creek Elementary School for the first day of classes on Wednesday will use the school’s entrance off the newly paved V.M. Osborne Road.
Buses will use another entrance directly off Hog Mountain Road.
