Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District

Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District does not include Houston County, but surrounds our county on the north, south, and the west. This puts many of us in middle Georgia in the 2nd Congressional District (those of us who live in South Macon, Byron, or Unadilla). The district includes most of Macon, Albany and Columbus. The elected representative for the House 2nd District is Sanford Bishop.

Sanford Bishop is part of the Blue Dog Democratic coalition in the House. This caucus was established in 1995, after the Republicans were swept into power after the first two years of Bill Clinton’s first term in office. One explanation says the Blue Dog moniker resulted from “choked blue by the extremes in both parties.” Initially, there were 23 members. By the time 2017 arrived, that number had fallen to 14. They were considered centrists in the Democratic Party who advocated for National Security and fiscal restraint. Every Democrat in the House and the Senate voted for the so-called $1.9 trillion stimulus package that was signed by President Joe Biden last week. If you have been breathing for the past four years, you know very well that there is no such animal as a Democrat in Congress that shows one ounce of fiscal restraint (there aren’t that many Republican either).

Sanford Bishop was first elected in 1992. His re-elections have been routine, with the exception of 2010, which he won 51-49% in a year the Republicans dominated House elections. Now, Sanford Bishop has become an automatic “Yes” vote for any legislation the Democrats want to introduce. He co-sponsored and voted for the very controversial “Equality Act,” which gives the government the power to dictate how Americans think and act regarding sex and gender issues. He was a co-sponsor to the January 2021 Impeachment of Donald J. Trump. He gets a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood. Congressman Bishop is the Chair of the House subcommittee on Agriculture. Not coincidentally, he received over $399,000 in campaign donations from agribusiness for his 2020 re-election efforts. In 2011, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Rep. Bishop in its Most Corrupt Members of Congress annual report.

More recently, in 2020, a House Ethics Investigation was launched after it was determined that Representative Bishop may have misused more than $90,000 in campaign funds. It is alleged that Bishop used campaign funds for personal expenses including gasoline purchases for himself and his family, greens fees at country clubs, school tuition, and luxurious vacations. Why do the good citizens of the 2nd Congressional District tolerate this? Mr. Bishop has held office in Congress over 25 years, and his constituents routinely re-elect him every two years. He is a guaranteed affirmative vote for Nancy Pelosi, no matter how radical the legislation. The 2nd Congressional District is gerrymandered for a Democratic victory. It will be interesting to see if that remains following the release of the next Census report, which will more than likely impact Congressional boundaries in the 2022 election.

I have never been a fan of term limits because I feel as though people should be responsible and informed enough to elect the most viable candidates. I suppose I need to admit that I am wrong and that we need term limits, exactly as we have for our presidents with the 22nd Amendment. The Democratic-majority House just passed the HR1 bill, which Federalizes our elections. Unless the Senate does-away with the Filibuster, HR1 has zero chances of becoming law. The purpose of this law is to keep the Democrats in power for as long as they possibly can. This law would be easily declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, as it flies in the face of the U.S. Constitution.

Georgia is on the verge of passing common sense change to our state voting laws. Kudos to our Republican legislators for meaningfully dealing with this major problem that surfaced in a mighty way in 2020. The U.S. Constitution states very clearly that state voting laws can only be changed by state legislatures and not consent decrees negotiated by Stacey Abrams. I hope we can genuinely repair the damage that occurred from this disaster that occurred in the November 2020 election. Hopefully, we can begin to remove and replace incompetent legislators such as Sanford Bishop.

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