The COVID-19 pandemic has played parents against school authorities. A high-level murder trial that stirred racial tensions took place in Coastal Georgia. And fierce battles over a revision of the state’s electoral law were fueled by unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Before we turn the calendar around to 2022, when the election year gadgets are sure to blow up, here’s a recap of the 2021 milestones from the Georgia Recorder that will remain in the minds of millions for a long time to come.
COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination regulations cause outrage
The COVID-19 virus often dictated the news in 2021, touching Georgians in many ways. The expanded availability of vaccines and testing in the spring indicated a return to normal, only to remove that illusion created by the Delta and Omicron variants.
For the first few months of the year, all adults were eligible for the miraculous new vaccines, and more people were returning to their normal routines. The vaccines have drastically reduced the chances of the virus spreading and the chances of getting seriously ill if infected.
Even so, with many Georgians either rejecting the vaccines or reluctant to get a vaccination, hospitals were overcrowded with unvaccinated patients taking beds as new coronavirus varieties spread.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s colleges and universities, as well as many public school systems, struggled with mask guidelines, vaccination regulations for employees, and setting standards for the vaccination status of students and employees.
The Georgia Republican governor and attorney general have also taken legal action to combat the Biden government’s vaccine mandates for federal contractors and healthcare workers.
The murderers of Ahmaud Arbery found guilty
An almost entirely white jury in Glynn County in November issued a guilty verdict against the three white men on trial for the black man Ahmaud Arbery was shot to death in February 2020 while jogging through their Braunschweig neighborhood.
Gregory and Travis McMichael, along with their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, are due to find out on January 7th whether the mandatory life sentences they will be serving for the murder of the 25-year-old are subject to parole.
The convictions mark the culmination of 18 months of pressure from the Arbery family to seek justice. Arbery’s murderers were spared arrest for weeks after police responded to the bloody gunfire in the street in the Satilla Shores neighborhood.
The racial makeup of the jury and the background of the prosecution of one of the defendants begs the question of whether the three white men can be tried in the deep south.
Months before the trial began, Georgia lawmakers largely overturned the Citizens Detention Act that local prosecutors originally used to justify Arbery’s death. His murder also sparked support for a state hate crime law in 2020.
In a federal trial scheduled for February 7th, the heavily endowed Justice Department arguments will boil down to whether Arbery was targeted for being black.
Georgia’s historic runoff election in the US Senate
Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock became Georgia’s newest US Senators, relinquishing control of the federal government in historic January 5 runoffs against incumbent GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
The high-stakes battles broke congressional election records, with campaign spending totaling more than $ 700 million. The races caught the nation’s attention as then-President Donald Trump and his most ardent supporters spread baseless tales of a stolen presidential election and likely drove GOP voters away from the January election.
Georgia’s new senators arrived in Washington DC as the Senate was about to launch a second round of impeachment hearings on allegations that Trump instigated a deadly riot in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
The victories of Ossoff and Warnock gave the Democrats a slim electoral head start in the Senate and helped President Joe Biden win with a large-scale infrastructure package.
Warnock is campaigning again with an election in November, a year after he returned to the pre-election period of Senator Johnny Isakson, who resigned in 2019 due to health complications, in an election in November. Isakson died in December.
Georgia’s controversial electoral law
When Georgia Republicans pushed through the controversial revision of Senate Law 202 in March, it sparked a wave of lawsuits from the US Department of Justice and others alleging that the law disenfranchised blacks and other marginalized groups.
Republicans have been criticized by more than two dozen constituencies for adding provisions that limit the number of postal ballot boxes, shorten the deadline for applying for postal ballots, add new postal ballot requirements, allow the state to run local election boards, and more Restrictions.
Democrats and proxies railed against the bill as an inadequate response to unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election following Trump’s embarrassing loss of the presidential election and Democrats who captured two seats in the U.S. Senate.
Republican state officials argue that reformulating electoral and electoral laws is important in restoring confidence in an electoral system that Trump has repeatedly said was rigged and criticized allegations of discrimination as exaggerated.
The vote of blacks became a key factor in determining the election result after a record 5 million Georgians were elected in the November 3 general election, including 1.3 million by postal vote.
The new bill had its first test run in local elections in November before turning into a busy 2022 election cycle spearheaded by races for the governor, secretary of state and the U.S. Senate.
Although the Heritage Foundation put its stamp on Georgia’s new electoral law, the impact among GOP members will continue to flow into the upcoming primary with former US Senator David Perdue at Trump’s urging against Governor Brian Kemp in the Republican primary.
And in the starting blocks, Democrat Stacey Abrams is waiting for the winner of what is certain to be a brutal GOP fight, who, as expected, announced that she will wear the standard of her party after narrowly losing to Kemp in 2018.
Rivian’s $ 5 billion investment in electric vehicle manufacturing
At the risk of skewing current developments, one of the biggest economic development announcements of all time for Georgia is the late entry into the most notable milestones of 2021.
Eastern Georgia is set to host an electric vehicle plant, part of a $ 5 billion investment that is expected to create 7,500 jobs over several years after the proposed severing of the ribbon in about two years.
The governor and other state officials describe the Rivian car factory as one of the largest single private investments in the state’s history. The plant will be built on 2,000 acres between Counties Morgan and Walton and is expected to produce 400,000 clean energy vehicles per year.
Georgia’s undisclosed tax incentive package was attractive enough to scoop a win over Fort Worth, Texas, which offered the start-up $ 440 million in tax breaks.
In a year tarnished by COVID spikes, bipartisan snipers, and struggles over basic democratic principles, the December news of a new auto plant bows to a, uh, unprecedented year.