Blue Dog Sanford Bishop has represented the southwest corner of Georgia, bordering on Alabama and the Florida Panhandle since 1993. Lately, the 76 year old congressman has become more corrupt and very noticeably senile; he should have retired already. The Republicans thought they could pick him off last year by gerrymandering his district, which went from a partisan lean of D+6 to a partisan lean of D+4. It didn’t work; he beat Republican Chris West 132,675 (55.0%) to 108,665 (45.0%) by running up big wins in the 3 biggest counties— Muscogee (D+37), Bibb (D+44) and Dougherty (D+42)— that protected him from West’s big showing in the backward rural white counties like Lee (R+40), Grady (R+36), Crawford (R+44) and Schley (R+55).
This year’s election may be more fun to watch. Conventional wisdom was that the GOP would put up Tracy Taylor, the Dougherty County Republican Party Chair and last year’s failed state legislative candidate (HR-153). Taylor was badly beaten by Democrat David Sampson— 10,824 (56.1%) to 5,809 (34.9%). However, a more colorful character just jumped into the primary this week- MAGA- QAnon activist Chuck Hand. Hand and his crackpot wife, Mandy, were arrested by FBI agents on March 11, 2022, over a year after their participation in the J-6 insurrection. They were both captured on closed circuit TV inside the Capitol.
On his Facebook page during the sacking of the Capitol Hand wrote: “We’re in the capital (sic). Taking our house back.” They both pleaded guilty on October 14, 2022. And they were both sentenced Jan. 13, 2023 to 20 days in jail. Only he's running for Congress (so far). They live in tiny Butler (pop. 1,881), the biggest town and the county seat of Taylor County (pop- 7,816). In 2020 the County went 63% Trump, 36% Biden, fairly close to the demographic white/Black breakdown of the county.
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