Georgia GOP follows Trump’s lead

Eager to show support, Republican lawmakers vote with president.

WASHINGTON — Georgia’s Republican lawmakers in Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of President Donald Trump’s legislative initiatives during the first six months of his administration.

In fact, the state’s 10 GOP representatives and two Republican senators have voted in lockstep with the president’s positions an average of 98.8 percent of the time since January.

That’s according to an online database compiled by the political analysis blog FiveThirtyE-ight. The outlet cross-referenced how every member of Congress voted on more than three dozen bills since January with Trump’s stated positions on the legislation.

The results provide a groundlevel look into how partisan politics continues to define the rhythms of an increasingly polarized Washington.

Seven of Georgia’s 10 Republicans in the U.S. House, for instance, voted with Trump 100 percent of the time.

Second-term U.S. Rep. Rick Allen was one of them. Trump won his Augusta-based district by more than 16 percentage points in November.

“I believe he’d win it by more than that today,” the Evans Republican said in an interview Thursday. “When I’m in the district, the big question I get is why don’t other members of Congress support this president and what he’s trying to do.”

The Georgia lawmakers are hardly alone.

Most Republicans in Congress voted with the president at least 90 percent of the time — not uncommon in the modern political era when the same party is in power on Capitol Hill and in the White House. Even Susan Collins of Maine, a centrist who voted with Trump the least among Senate Republicans, took the president’s position 86 percent of the time.

Georgia GOP Sens. David Perdue and Johnny Isakson, respectively, backed the commander in chief ’s positions on legislation 97.6 percent and 96.3 percent of the time.

Conversations with top aides to Georgia GOP lawmakers over the past few months reflect a delegation that is eager to show off its support for Trump. Some are downright terrified by any suggestion they differ from the president, even among the Republicans who had previously voiced major differences on issues such as trade and the travel ban.

That’s for strategic reasons, of course. Support for Trump, particularly among Georgia’s more rural voters, is strong. And those very Trump voters often constitute those Republican lawmakers’ own base, one they most certainly don’t want to alienate.

There appeared to be little difference in the voting behaviors between the Georgia Republicans from districts that Trump won overwhelmingly and the two Atlanta suburban districts that the president carried by less than 7 percentage points in November. U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall, whose Gwinnett County-based 7th Congressional District backed Trump by 6.3 points last year, backed all the president’s bills.

Democrats, meanwhile, voted an overwhelming majority of the time against the measures Trump supported. Georgia’s four Democrats voted with him a mere 15.4 percent of the time on average. There was a notable difference between the state’s two more moderate Democrats, especially U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop from the largely rural 2nd Congressional District in southwest Georgia, versus the two more liberal lawmakers, U.S. Reps. John Lewis of Atlanta and Hank Johnson of Lithonia.

Lewis, who drew Trump into a very public tiff back in January after saying the then-president-elect was not a “legitimate president,” was among the House’s top 10 dissenting Democrats, according to FiveThirtyEight’s data.

Worth noting is that with the exception of health care, neither chamber has taken up any legislation yet that has truly divided the GOP.

House lawmakers spent the bulk of their first few months in the new Congress voting on bills that rolled back regulations promoted by the Obama administration — hardly a contentious issue among Republicans — while the Senate also focused on confirming Trump’s Cabinet nominees.

Some true intraparty divisions could emerge in the months ahead as Congress is forced to grapple with fiscal issues such as the debt ceiling and government spending bills.

“This is the window we were all praying for,” Allen said of Republicans. “Now that we’ve got it we can really make a difference.”

‘When I’m in the district, the big question I get is why don’t other members of Congress support this president and what he’s trying to do.’ Rep. Rick Allen Georgia representative