Cordele Republican Carden Summers to wrap up busy election year on Nov. 3

CORDELE — If 2020 seems like one long election campaign for Georgia Sen. Carden Summers, that’s because it practically has been.

The Cordele Republican is gearing up for his fourth contest of the year. He first sought the District 13 Senate seat in a Feb. 4 three-way special election with a Democatic and Republican opponent to fill the unexpired term after the death of Sen. Greg Kirk in December 2019. He then won in the March 3 runoff election with 52 percent of the vote.

The district includes all or parts of Crisp, Dodge, Dooly, Lee, Sumter, Tift, Turner, Wilcox and Worth counties.

After a June Republican primary, he will now face Mary Egler, the Democratic candidate in the Feb. 4 primary contest, on Nov. 3. There also were other unusual circumstances for Summers, as he entered the legislature as COVID-19 struck and interrupted the session.

“That’s a state record,” he said of the four elections in a single year. “I was in the Senate three days when they sent us home.”

After learning he had sat next to a senator who tested positive for the novel coronavirus, Summers was at home for two weeks.

“I stayed in quarantine for a 14-day period,” he said. “I went and got tested. I tested negative for the virus.”

Despite those unusual circumstances, Summers said the legislature, Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan rose to the occasion. Kemp provided leadership and worked to make sure hospitals and nursing homes had the supplies they needed to fight the deadly disease, Summers said. The governor also helped keep the state’s economy on track.

The decline in tax revenues caused by the closing of businesses was one challenge as the legislature finished up the budget — its most important annual duty — when the session resumed later in the year.

“Most departments got cut 10 percent or less,” Summers said. “We fully funded education, fully funded everything.”

To make up for some of the shortfall, the state dipped into its “rainy day” fund of reserves, and restoring money to that account is a priority identified by Summers. The state’s economy is still shaky, and the Department of Labor is at the forefront.

“The Department of Labor is handling 4,000, 5,000 cases per day for unemployment,” he said. “We’re paying out $80 (million) to $100 million a day in unemployment. It’s starting to taper off.”

There are jobs to be had, he said, but generous federal unemployment payments made some people used to not working.

“The reality is people have to work, people have to go back to work,” he said. “You’ve got to get back into some semblance of normal. There has to be a balance.”

Despite the interrupted session, Summers said legislators were able to do some good work. He listed expansion of telemedicine as one accomplishment that will provide convenience and better access to health care for residents.

On the COVID front, legislators supported Kemp’s efforts.

“The governor set up hospital expansion, (distribution) of gloves, masks,” Summers said. “Within two weeks of us adjourning, we had everything flowing. Phoebe (Putney Memorial Hospital) has done an excellent job. The staff and the leadership at Phoebe is to be commended.”

Next year’s legislative priorities will be set during a December retreat of Republican leadership, Summers said, but looking to plug the $2 billion in reserve spending is one he thinks should be among those priorities.

“We’re going to try to do whatever we can do; first, to fund what’s going to support the citizens of Georgia,” he said. “It’s not going to be normal ever for a while. The new normal is not going to be normal. We’re doing everything we can.”

Summers’ local priorities include pushing for infrastructure such as roads and bridges in not just his district but all of rural Georgia, which he defined as most of the area below Macon. The importance of broadband also is evident and has been made more so by the pandemic and the need for children to receive instruction at home.

Other accomplishments of the 2020 session included a hate crimes bill, a hate crimes bill for law enforcement, and legislation that he said put nurse practitioners and physician assistants on the same playing field as doctors.

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