RIP John Lewis

Things could soon get interesting in the Peachtree State. Or maybe not.

Representative John Lewis, one of the lions of the Civil Rights movement, and a genuinely great American, has died.

With his death, Brian Kemp, the Trump suckup who is governor of Georgia, may find his 15 minutes of fame. It will be up to him to decide whether to fill Lewis' House seat.

It's a tricky situation. Kemp is Constitutionally bound to hold a special election for the seat, but the Constitution doesn't specify how soon the election is to be held after the seat becomes vacant. (Article I, §2,4)

Kemp could in theory table the special election and let the clock run out until the November general election. He could plead that it could take months to set up a special election, which among other things would require printing a great many absentee ballots due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Neither Trump nor Kemp was a fan of Lewis. He was Black, popular, and powerful, and to their alligator brains that was three strikes. It could be to the Republican advantage to leave the seat empty for a while.

But does Kemp want to leave the 5th District unrepresented for any significant length of time? It's a Black majority district, and such precincts have historically not been of interest to Southern governors. But . . .

The 5th is not just any district. Located in the north central part of the state, it includes the capital Atlanta and its suburbs, the headquarters of the CDC, the headquarters of several major corporations, and Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, a major airline hub. Its population of some 760,000 are largely educated professional types who are unlikely to sit still and let the governor mute their voice in Congress.

It doesn't apply directly to the subject here, but this striking sentence is in Article V of the Constitution: "no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate." So why shouldn't what's good for the Senate not be good for the House? Sounds like a good question for the good folks in the 5th District to ask.

And there's always the old favorite: "No taxation without representation." Well, OK, there's no tax involved here. But no action that could affect the 5th should take place without representation. Keep that in mind, Sycophant Kemp.

RIP, John Lewis. Please assure Dr. King that we're still carrying on the best we can.


--- Diogenes, 7/18/2020


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