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Gerrymandering at Work
REPUBLICANS WIN FIVE OF SIX ATHENS SEATS IN LEGISLATURE
By Blake Aued news@flagpole.com
The new state House and Senate districts
Republicans drew for Athens post-2020
Census worked exactly as intended last
week, handing big victories to GOP incum
bents despite scrappy Democratic challeng
ers to all five.
Alarmed that Democrats briefly flipped
two Republican-leaning House seats in
2017, and concerned about the blue trend
in the metro Atlanta suburbs creeping
toward Athens, Republican legislators
sliced Athens like a pie into four House
districts earlier this year, packing the most
Democratic parts of the city into Rep.
Spencer Frye’s district and distributing the
slightly less blue parts among three other
districts dominated by the deep-red sur
rounding counties. Similarly, Clarke County
remains split into two Senate districts, as
it has been since 2006, when Republicans
divided it in a rare mid-decade redistricting
to give now-Gov. Brian Kemp’s brother-in-
law, Bill Cowsert, a leg up.
“The truth is, as a Black woman running
in a majority red district, my opponent
already had an advantage due to unfair
redistricting and privilege,” House candi
date Mokah Jasmine Johnson said.
Johnson lost to Rep. Houston Gaines
(R-Athens) 57%-43% in 2020. In this year’s
rematch—after Republicans added more
of Jackson and Barrow counties to Gaines’
district—he won by 22 points.
It was the same in every other Athens-
area race. Cowsert beat Andrew Ferguson
64%-36%. Sen. Frank Ginn (R-Danielsville)
beat Conolus Scott Jr. 62%-38%. Rep.
Marcus Wiedower (R-Watkinsville) beat
Jeff Auerbach 60%-40%. Rep. Trey Rhodes
(R-Greensboro) beat Kat Howkins 66%-
34%. Yet all five Democratic challengers led
the Republican incumbents by double digits
in Athens.
Republicans didn’t need to change much
about the 10th Congressional District,
which leaned far to the right before and
remains conservative now. Democrat
Tabitha Johnson-Green lost to Republican
Mike Collins by 30 points—a similar result
to 2020, when she ran against U.S. Rep.
Jody Hice, who left the seat in an unsuc
cessful primary challenge to Secretary
of State Brad Raffensperger. Collins, like
Hice, is hardcore MAGA, embracing Donald
Trump even after Trump endorsed Vernon
Jones for the seat.
As they did around the state, Democrats
did backslide slightly in Clarke County
compared to 2018 or 2020, when they
received 70% of the vote locally. This year,
Democrats’ share of the vote in ACC ranged
from 64%-68%, with attorney general can
didate Jen Jordan and Charlie Bailey in the
lieutenant governor’s race actually outpac
ing Stacey Abrams at the top of the ticket.
The exception, both locally and statewide,
was Sen. Raphael Warnock, who won 71%
of the vote in Athens to Herschel Walker’s
27%. Turnout in Athens was also down a
bit, from 62% in the midterm four years
ago to 59%.
Why the discrepancy between Warnock
and Abrams? “The difference isn’t about
them, but about who they ran against,” said
ACC Commissioner Tim Denson, chair of
the ACC Democratic Committee. Kemp ran
an effective campaign, he said, while Walker
“jumped from mistake to mistake.”
Those mistakes have already cost Walker.
Now that Democrats will retain control of
the Senate regardless of what happens in
the Dec. 6 runoff, conservative voters wary
of Walker’s past have less reason to turn
back out.
CCSD Opens New Health Clinic
It’s been quietly seeing patients for the
past two months, but the Clarke County
School District held an official ribbon-cut
ting ceremony Thursday for a new health
clinic at Alps Road Elementary School. It is
temporarily situated in a mobile building
outside Alps, but the new Clarke Middle
School next door will include a permanent
space for the clinic. Construction on the
new school is scheduled to start in January,
and it’s expected to open in fall of 2024.
The clinic is currently open Monday,
Wednesday and Friday afternoons, Tuesday
mornings and all day Thursday, although
hours are eventually expected to expand,
said Suzanne Lester, a professor of family
medicine at the UGA/Augusta University
medical partnership and director of the
Athens Mobile Free Clinic. It’s currently
focused on seeing students, staff and their
families at Alps and Clarke Middle, although
that could expand as well with more hours.
UGA President Jere Morehead’s
Interdisciplinary Seed Grant Program pro
vided $100,000 in funding for the clinic,
which will be staffed by students from the
medical partnership, law school, Mary
Frances Early College of Education and
College of Family and Consumer Sciences,
supervised by professors. Law students will
be on hand to help address the underlying
causes of health problems—for example,
a leaky roof a landlord refused to fix that
resulted in a student coming down with
pneumonia, said Peter Rutledge, dean of
the law school. Education students will pro
vide bilingual services to Hispanic families,
dean Denise Spangler said.
The clinic is similar to one that CCSD
partnered with the Athens Neighborhood
Health Center to open at Hilsman Middle
School in 2019, with one key difference,
Lester said: The Clarke Middle clinic does
not bill anyone, not even insurance compa
nies. All services are free.
ACC Eyes West Broad School
Could the Athens Land Trust take over
the West Broad School after all?
More than three years after former
school superintendent Demond Means
ended a community garden and farmer’s
market program at the vacant school, the
Athens-Clarke County Commission is cir
cling back to the property as the favored
site for a sales tax-funded youth develop
ment center.
The West Broad School was the high
est-rated location studied by a site selection
committee and favored by a majority of
residents who provided input, as well. The
committee considered about 20 sites, nar
rowing the list down to three after holding
public input sessions, considering com
ments submitted online and meeting with
pastors in the West Broad area.
“It was probably the most positively
commented on... but I think that’s probably
because it’s the site most people know,”
SPLOST Program Administrator Keith
Sanders told the commission at a Nov. 10
work session.
The West Broad School—consisting
of one 1938 building and two built in the
1950s on about three acres at West Broad
and Minor streets—has been a political
football for almost a decade. The segrega
tion-era school closed as Clarke County
began the integration process in the 1960s,
then became the alternative school Rutland
Academy, which moved to a new building in
2009. It has sat vacant ever since. In 2012,
with the blessing of then-superintendent
Philip Lanoue, the Athens Land Trust
started a program there where students
grew crops on a former ballfield and sold
them at a weekly farmers market, alongside
vendors from the surrounding neighbor
hood. In 2016 Lanoue floated a plan to
turn the school into administrative offices,
which drew criticism because it would have
required paving over the garden for parking.
Means scuttled that plan, instead proposing
an early learning center.
Meanwhile, the Boys & Girls Club backed
out of plans for a Vincent Drive youth
development center that was included
in SPLOST 2011. The commission then
focused on the West Broad neighborhood—
roughly bounded by Hancock Avenue, Alps
Road, Baxter Street and Milledge Avenue—
and chose the Athens Land Trust to run
it. ACC offered the Clarke County School
District $3.2 million in SPLOST funding to
help renovate the buildings for a commu
nity center in 2018 in exchange for turning
it over to the land trust to operate, with a
pledge from the land trust to match it, but
in a racially charged vote, the school board
rejected that plan in favor of Means’.
“The whole concept of this community
center pretty much started with what
was happening at the West Broad School,
and it’s clear the public understands this
is clearly the best site for that project,”
Commissioner Melissa Link said. “I just
hope the school board will be open to finally
allowing the property to be used for the
greater community benefit.”
After Means’ contentious tenure ended,
the school board also rejected an early
learning center plan put forward by his
replacement, Xernona Thomas, because it
would have involved saving only the 1938
building and tearing down another that
historic preservationists argued could be
saved. Newly appointed Superintendent
Robbie Hooker hasn’t said publicly what he
intends to do with the property.
“The years just tick by. It’s like we’re in
a Dickens novel, right?” Commissioner
Russell Edwards said. “It’s just so sad that
what I estimate to be just a handful of
voices that are antagonistic against this use
right here” have been blocking the project.
“I’m just tired of hearing it,” he said. “It
should be there.”
Although a CCSD employee sits on the
site selection committee, no one from ACC
has reached out to the school district. That’s
because, as Sanders explained, county staff
doesn’t contact landowners until later in
the site selection process in order to leave
all the options open for the commission,
including eminent domain. However,
Sanders and Manager Blaine Williams clar
ified that ACC can’t use eminent domain to
acquire another government entity’s land.
That presents a challenge. “You don’t
have to Google search very far. This is very
controversial. And this is the school dis
trict’s property,” Williams said.
Other potential sites include Gresham’s
disco and car lot across Paris Street from the
West Broad School and a vacant lot at the
end of Honeysuckle Lane near McAllister’s
Deli. A vote to choose a site is scheduled for
March
The youth development center will
include a commercial kitchen, commu
nity garden, market pavilion and meet
ing rooms, and provide job training and
small-business support for adults and high
school students. ©
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FLAGPOLE.COM ■ NOVEMBER 16, 2022
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