Sen. Steve Gooch talks to a constituent prior to the State of the State address.

LUMPKIN COUNTY, Ga. – Featured speakers Sen. Steve Gooch and first-year State Representative Will Wade attracted a standing-room-only crowd at the Dahlonega-Lumpkin County Chamber of Commerce State of the State Luncheon Wednesday.

The senator addressed several topics, including the pandemic, the state budget, the post-pandemic business climate and the 1,000-pound elephant in the room – election reform.

“The last 12 months have been unprecedented, totally unscripted,” he began. “I could never have imagined a year and three months ago what Georgia and this world was facing with the pandemic. It really flipped state government upside down, just as it has most local governments.”

But, he said, the state’s recovery has been strong. “Our state government has grown by $1 billion in the last 12 months. Many states are still suffering from loss of revenue and some schools (in those states) are still shuttered but Georgia has reopened for business.”

Gooch credited business owners for their contribution to the recovery. “All the business owners in this room today, we owe you a great deal of thanks for your commitment to putting your employees back to work. He also took a swipe at the federal government, saying, “The federal government is competing with the private sector for the workforce. “They aren’t hiring your employees, they are simply paying them to stay at home. They feel like they can make more money to stay at home and draw unemployment and stimulus money than they could if they went back to work. We have to stop doing that.”

He then addressed Georgia’s new election law State Bill 202. “Election reform took up almost all the oxygen in the room,” he said. “There was 50 pieces of legislation that dealt with some aspect of elections. SB 202 was a 93-page bill. “We believe what we did will enhance transparency. It will enhance access to the ballot box and it will protect the integrity of every vote that is counted to be a legal vote. Not one thing in SB 202 takes away the right of any legal citizen in Georgia to cast a ballot. You will hear people like Stacey Abrams say this bill suppresses the vote. We say hogwash. That is not true.”

State Rep. Will Wade talks to constituents Wednesday prior to the State of the State presentation.

When it was Rep. Wade’s turn to speak, he took a good-natured jab at Gooch. One of the best things Kevin Tanner told me is one of the best things to do is follow your state senator (to speak) because he will make sure he covers everything.”

A banker by profession and former three-term Dawson County School Board member, Wade entered state government in the midst of the pandemic.

“For me, 2021 is the most challenging and exciting year of my adult life, he said. “I am in awe of what I deem as the most resilient communities that were able to persevere the last 12 months, whether you look at the K-12 setting, higher education or healthcare.”

He talked about how the state is funding education in all 181 school systems in Georgia. “We did fund 96 percent of quality basic education (QBE) for all the schools in the state,” he said. “And when you figure the federal government and the tax dollars we as Georgians sent to DC and they sent back $5.1 million that means we’re funding 118 percent of QBE.”

The lawmakers responded to questions. Wade was the first to weigh in on a question about vaccine passports. “We have the 10^th Amendment for a reason,” he said. “This is an attack on civil liberties, an attack on freedom. The State of Georgia needs to stand up for our citizens to ensure we don’t allow (federal government) overreach.”

Gooch said he is not supportive of passports. “I think the federal government is pushing its limits,” he commented.

In response to a question about the 2020 election, Wade said one of the things that concerned him most was that 20,000 votes were cast out of precinct. “The voting irregularities concerned me so much that as your representative, I voted for SB 202 to address all the known knowns we could assess.”

Gooch said, “I will probably always believe in the back of my mind there was fraud in this election not because my candidate lost the election just because of all the irregularities.”

He said he was at his desk in the state capitol with Rudy Giuliani and President Trump’s lawyers when the State Farm Arena video played the first time. That video showed that after poll workers were told to leave the room, four people remained behind and pulled suitcases filled with ballots from under a table.

“That should have triggered a deeper dive” into what happened. I believe there was enough coincidental evidence that should have triggered a forensic audit.”