by Dave Williams | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Democratic Party of Georgia filed a federal lawsuit Thursday challenging a state law that authorized the formation of “leadership committees” that can raise and spend unlimited contributions on behalf of statewide and legislative candidates.
Senate Bill 221, which the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed in 2021 virtually along party lines, created eight leadership committees to be chaired by Georgia’s governor, lieutenant governor, the general-election nominees opposing those two statewide incumbents and the heads of the majority and minority caucuses of the state House of Representatives and Senate.
While leadership committees can accept unlimited donations, traditional campaign committees working on behalf of individual rank-and-file candidates are subject to limits, typically maxing out at $26,400 per election cycle.
In 2022, incumbent GOP Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams used their respective leadership committees to raise $94.6 million between them.
But this year, with no gubernatorial election on the ballot, Abrams’ leadership committee is essentially defunct, while Kemp’s Georgia First leadership committee is free to transfer unlimited contributions to Republican legislative candidates.
The suit, which seeks to invalidate the law, claims such unequal treatment is unconstitutional.
“If you have one side allowed to collect unlimited amounts of money while the other side is handcuffed, that violates freedom of speech,” said former state Sen. Jen Jordan, D-Atlanta, who led the opposition to the legislature in the Senate in 2021 and is representing the Democratic Party in the lawsuit. “The playing field needs to be even … and let the chips fall where they may.”
Kevin Olasanoye, the Democratic Party of Georgia’s executive director, said Kemp used funds raised by Georgia First to help bankroll May’s successful reelection campaign of Andrew Pinson, appointed to the high court by Kemp in 2022. Pinson defeated former U.S. Rep. John Barrow, a Democrat, in a rare contested state Supreme Court contest.
The governor’s leadership committee also is raising money to help incumbent Republican legislators seeking reelection this year in districts where Democrats have been making inroads and aiding GOP challengers in districts represented by Democrats, Olasanoye said.
“If you can raise unlimited contributions through a leadership committee … why do we have campaign-finance limits for individual candidates?” he said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
