Political aftershocks, afterthoughts

“There is a political component here — and I am not talking about party.”

David Ralston

Speaker, Georgia House of Representatives 

We commend Gov. Nathan Deal for his veto of the “religious freedom” bill that passed the Georgia General Assembly in the session just concluded. The governor’s reasoning — “I do not think that we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in Georgia” — goes right to the heart of the matter.

We made no secret of our objections to the bill as it was first introduced, and nothing has been done or said subsequently that changes those objections. Not only do we consider such legislation (in Georgia and elsewhere) fundamentally misguided and ill-conceived, but it enshrines discrimination and exclusion under banners of “liberty” and “freedom” — an Orwellian strain of political branding that certainly didn’t begin with this kind of issue and is not the exclusive domain of any party.

But it’s what has happened in the aftermath of the bill’s passage that is of more pressing concern now.

According to members of the Columbus legislative delegation and other Capitol sources, it is Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus — a principal sponsor of, and three-year advocate for, the religion bill — who was the target of some expensive political payback. Specifically, Columbus State University and the National Infantry Museum lost millions in funding because McKoon’s colleagues in the legislature — controlled in both chambers by his own party — wanted to send him, and the voters of his district, a message about playing ball.

McKoon has been an outspoken ethics hawk during his Senate tenure, a role for which we have applauded him, though it no doubt rubbed some of his colleagues the wrong way (if perhaps for the right reasons). He has also introduced legislation to term-limit the House speaker, only to drop it at the urging of Senate leadership; and he reportedly suggested a change in the governor’s power to fill a prematurely vacated U.S. Senate seat (as then-Gov. Roy Barnes did with Zell Miller after the sudden death of Sen. Paul Coverdell.)

But it was the religious liberty legislation — a compromise version altered from earlier drafts — that stuck Republicans between two of their core constituencies: religious and social conservatives, who provided most of the support for the bill, and a pragmatic business community that vigorously opposed it.

We all know the realities of political maneuvering, the process of trade-offs and compromise, and sometimes the necessity of practicality over pure principle. But civic patience has its limits with elected officials trying to evade important but politically difficult decisions. No doubt many lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike, would have preferred that the whole issue just go away. Of course, there was always another way to stop it: Vote it down.

Instead, it was left to a term-limited governor to get both his state’s (and party’s) legislative branch, and a hefty chunk of the Georgia economy, off the hook.

The next General Assembly session should be interesting indeed.

This story was originally published March 29, 2016 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Political aftershocks, afterthoughts."