“As coronavirus crept into Georgia, Rich McCormick downplayed the threat of a deadly pandemic, hawked snake oil and pledged to dismantle our health care system. Meanwhile, Carolyn Bourdeaux has consistently called for quality, affordable health care and increased protections for Georgia seniors and families. After watching her parents struggle to pay for their health care, it is personal to Carolyn when she sees the skyrocketing cost of prescription drug costs and attempts to take away protections for people living with pre-existing conditions. After coming within 433 votes of winning in 2018, Carolyn Bourdeaux is going to finish the job by defeating her tax-cheating, special interest-backed opponent, and I look forward to serving with her in Congress.” – DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos
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To: Interested Parties
From: Avery Jaffe, DCCC Regional Press Secretary
Date: June 15, 2020
Subject: UPDATE: The Case Against Rich McCormick
As the Democratic nominee for Georgia’s 7th Congressional District in 2018, Carolyn Bourdeaux came within 433 votes of defeating a tenured incumbent and drove him into retirement soon after.
Now, Bourdeaux has captured the Democratic nomination in Georgia’s rapidly-shifting 7th District after Democrats significantly out-voted Republicans in Tuesday’s 7th District primary despite Republican-led statewide efforts to suppress the vote.
After her razor-thin margin in 2018, Bourdeaux is in a formidable position to flip this district by building upon her already-strong brand with higher, presidential-level turnout and an open seat.
Despite being outspent on the airwaves, Bourdeaux won the primary outright in a six-candidate field – a commanding performance powered by record-breaking Democratic turnout.
Bourdeaux will now face a lesser-known candidate in unvetted, untested, MAGA conspiracy theorist Trump supporter Rich McCormick, who emerged from complete obscurity thanks to seven figures of Washington special interest spending on his behalf.
McCormick enters the general election against a formidable, better-known Democratic nominee having defined himself entirely by his reckless agenda in the primary, leaving him completely unequipped to make his case to a moderate 7th District that is set to reject extremists like him and embrace commonsense candidates like Bourdeaux as it grows more diverse by the day.
On health care, Republicans’ Achilles heel in districts like GA-07, McCormick has made himself particularly vulnerable by hawking snake oil coronavirus cures and advocating for health care repeal.
McCormick’s vast social media presence reveals his extreme and utterly reckless agenda, like on February 27 of this year when McCormick celebrated that “nobody in the United States has died of [coronavirus], we have zero cases in Georgia,” downplaying calls to prepare for a pandemic that has since claimed over 100,000 American lives and comparing it to the flu.
Soon after, McCormick began peddling the FDA-revoked hydroxychloroquine drug to the online masses.
McCormick’s stances on the issues show he’s the type of far-right extremist that Georgia Republicans love to nominate and mainstream suburban Georgians are set to reject. (See also: Collins, Doug and Handel, Karen.)
With unprecedented grassroots energy, Bourdeaux’s proven record as a tough campaigner and McCormick’s shady profile and extreme health care platform, Democrats are in an excellent position to flip this seat this November.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING
“[T]he region, and particularly Gwinnett, has changed dramatically over the years. The now majority-minority county voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Stacey Abrams for governor two years later. That same cycle, Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux came within 500 votes of defeating Woodall.” [AJC, 5/3/20]
“Health care was at the heart of Bourdeaux’s campaign in 2018, and she said it will be a central theme in her second bid for Congress” [AJC, 2/7/20]
“‘Tell me what we haven’t done to contain this virus? So far, nobody in the United States has died of it,’ [McCormick] said. ‘To put this in perspective, 12,000 year people die every year of the flu,’ he noted, on a day when worldwide infections from the coronavirus passed 83,000 and a second case showed up in California.” [Daily Mail, 2/28/20]
“Voter records show McCormick was registered to vote in Florida from 2000 to 2019. But, he moved to Georgia around 2005. We asked McCormick’s campaign whether he filed his taxes in Florida – where there is no state income tax – while he was living in Georgia. The campaign’s answer was unclear.” [Fox 5 Atlanta, 5/14/20]
Rich McCormick: A Shady Rubber Stamp for the Special Interests’ Agenda
RECKLESS AND EXTREME ON HEALTH CARE
Rich McCormick is wrong on practically every priority for Georgia families, and especially on health care.
McCormick’s policies would be a total disaster for Georgians in the 7th District, starting with his pledge to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. McCormick calls the health care law preserving protections for Georgians with pre-existing conditions “a disaster,” which will come as a shock to the more than 355,000 7th District residents with pre-existing conditions whose coverage could be at risk if McCormick had his way.
A health care opponent, McCormick also opposes a woman’s right to choose – just like the Atlanta politicians who passed Georgia’s extreme and rigid abortion ban law that threatens to drive business out of the state.
On the other hand, Carolyn Bourdeaux’s priorities reflect the challenges that too many seniors and families across Georgia face. Bourdeaux watched as her parents drained their bank account, struggling to pay for prescription drugs. She personally knows the struggles families face to afford quality health care.
In Congress, Bourdeaux will fight for lower prescription drug costs, protect coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, ensure everyone has access to quality, affordable health care and protect a woman’s right to choose.
A SHADY SPECIAL INTEREST SNOWFLAKE
McCormick was propped up in the primary by swampy Washington special interests who “dropped over $1 million in the primary to help boost McCormick and knock down his opponents,” dragging his campaign across the finish line.
His priorities reflect their agenda, not Georgians’. McCormick is all-in on the GOP tax scam that gave away billions to special interests like big drugmakers and said he would “double down” on it in Congress. And speaking of taxes, McCormick also supports the so-called “FairTax” – a reckless scheme that would raise costs on seniors and working families across metro Atlanta by 23 percent.
During the GOP primary, Republican Mark Gonsalves called McCormick a “puppet of the establishment” and “an establishment plant who is already controlled by Washington super PACs.” He dogged McCormick over his corporate PAC donors and highlighted McCormick’s apparent lie as to his whereabouts during the 2016 election.
After McCormick tried to claim he was in Afghanistan during the 2016 election, Gonsalves pointed out that McCormick was actually on vacation with his wife in Turks and Caicos during that time. In response, McCormick blocked Gonsalves on Twitter. What a snowflake!
That’s when things started to get really weird. Soon after, a Fox 5 Atlanta investigation raised real questions over McCormick’s voting history while McCormick’s campaign provided hostile responses (Snowflakes!). The investigation found that McCormick had been registered to vote in Florida as recently as 2019 while also being registered to vote in Georgia since 2005.
Florida, of course, has no state income tax. But Georgia does.
It’s unclear why McCormick would still be voting absentee in Florida more than a decade after he moved to Georgia. And when asked if McCormick has ever paid Georgia state income taxes, he didn’t respond.
Despite Rich McCormick’s head-first dive into bed with the Washington special interests, Carolyn Bourdeaux has outraised McCormick and has done so without a dime of corporate PAC money.
Today, Bourdeaux has the support of a leading anti-corruption organization in recognition of her efforts to reject the Washington special interests that McCormick embraces and their stranglehold over our democracy.
A CORONAVIRUS QUACK SELLING SNAKE OIL TO GEORGIANS
No doubt about it: Rich McCormick downplayed the threat coronavirus posed to Georgians. It’s an unforgivable political sin.
McCormick also hawked the dangerous FDA-revoked drug favored by President Trump because it would help his political career.
He repeatedly praised Donald Trump’s unprepared response to the coronavirus and Brian Kemp’s subsequent hasty reopening of bowling alleys and nail salons, even as the pandemic raged through Georgia and killed more than 2,000 people. And in the middle of the pandemic, McCormick even spread President Trump’s unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that former President Obama personally spied on him.
McCormick claimed that President Trump’s unprepared response to the coronavirus would “save lives,” even as analysts concluded more than 36,000 lives could have been saved if the White House had acted just one week sooner. And he told a Republican audience that he specifically loved how the federal government “decentralized command” – in other words, failed to lead and left it up to states to fend for themselves.
McCormick’s recklessness couldn’t be more different than Bourdeaux’s approach to protecting Georgians’ access to health care amid a pandemic. While McCormick compared coronavirus to the flu, Bourdeaux took the potential threat seriously and called for increased protections for Georgians before the pandemic reached the United States.
Bourdeaux also opposes Washington Republicans’ dangerous lawsuit to repeal the entirety of the Affordable Care Act and allow big insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. If successful, those insurance companies could consider the coronavirus a pre-existing condition and tens of thousands of Americans would be blocked from getting the care they need.
Finally, Bourdeaux agrees with Georgia Republicans and Democrats that it’s long past time for the Peach State to finally expand Medicaid, delivering quality, affordable health care to more than 100,000 uninsured kids and families in GA-07.
PATH TO VICTORY
The path to victory for Democrats in Georgia’s 7th Congressional District picks up right where it left off in 2018. After Tuesday’s blockbuster Democratic primary turnout in GA-07, it looks better than ever to flip in 2020.
For the first time ever in a presidential year, more Democrats voted in the 7th District primary than Republicans – and it wasn’t even close. By a 14-point margin, Democratic turnout clobbered Republicans 57 to 43 percent.
In 2018, Bourdeaux’s upstart, grassroots campaign put this district on the map. Her efforts across Gwinnett and Forsyth counties led GA-07 to be the nation’s closest U.S. House race in 2018, while Stacey Abrams won the district outright. Facing a looming 2020 rematch in this rapidly Democratic-trending district, Congressman Rob Woodall became the first Republican in a swing district to announce his retirement in 2019.
Georgia’s 7th Congressional District consists of Atlanta’s diversifying suburbs in Gwinnett County, which has swung hard against Republicans. Gwinnett County is one of just six counties nationwide that voted for Hillary Clinton after supporting John McCain and Mitt Romney. The remaining vote comes from Forsyth County, which has the fastest-growing population in Georgia.
In the adjacent 6th District, Congresswoman Lucy McBath has also paved the way for how Georgia Democrats can win in suburban Atlanta. GA-07 is even more diverse than GA-06. Between 2012 and 2020, GA-07 became more than 11 points less white and now almost half of the district’s citizen voting age population is non-white.
In 2018, voters of color turned out at an even greater rate they did in 2016. In 2020, we are on track for an historic number of people of color to head to the polls and represent a key part of the coalition to elect Bourdeaux as the first Democratic member of Congress from GA-07 in 37 years.
Bourdeaux’s path to victory is also fueled by her strong fundraising ability and popularity among Democratic grassroots donors. According to FEC reports Bourdeaux has already raised nearly $2 million for her current campaign, totaling a whopping $4.6 million raised for her campaigns since 2017.
With GA-07 party registration and vote share trending toward Democratic and independents voters in recent years, Carolyn Bourdeaux’s strong name ID and proven skill as a campaigner will allow her to continue making inroads with GA-07, building upon her impressive electoral coalition. Bourdeaux is already capturing the clear grassroots enthusiasm and record-breaking Democratic turnout permeating through the Atlanta suburbs and exurbs, giving Democrats an excellent shot to flip this seat in 2020.
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