Taxes. Vaccinations. Chickens.
Republican party leaders in Catoosa county, in the north-west corner of Georgia, ran prospective GOP candidates through a battery of ideological questions, permitting some to run in the party primary while denying others.
Local political purity tests have been discussed by both Republican and Democratic party officials for years, but this is the first time a county’s political body has actually attempted the feat.
Perhaps that’s because of the punishing backlash now facing the six executive committee members of the Catoosa county Republican party after a lawsuit from disqualified candidates: fines of $1,000 an hour, times four for the number of Republican candidates the county’s GOP body refused to put on the ballot, times six for each of the executive committee members. That’s $24,000 an hour for the whole group until they comply with a judge’s order to put the candidates on the ballot.
“The criteria they’re using is how we vote in the commission meetings,” said Vanita Hullander, a Catoosa county commissioner initially barred by the county’s GOP leaders from running for re-election as a Republican in the 14 May primary. “They’re very manipulative, and they’ve been trying to take control of the commission for a long time.”
Hullander is a lifelong conservative Republican, she said. But after the county party’s executive committee questioned her about votes on local tax increases, vaccination requirements and a contentious local ordinance governing where and how residents may keep chickens on their property, it declared it would not allow her on the Republican ballot line. The group also barred three others.
Others, like Jimmy Gray, a candidate for commissioner, were not barred. Notably, Gray’s stepmother, Regina Gray, is chairwoman of the Graysville precinct of the county’s party.
The disqualifications would have left only one person running for the chairperson’s seat: Nick Ware, a perennial candidate with hard libertarian views.
“This is my opinion: a number of people on the committee … they’re really libertarians,” said Chuck Harris, a Catoosa county commissioner who is not up for re-election th