U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11) said this month that many Atlanta business owners realized that controversy surrounded Georgia’s voter integrity law Senate Bill 202, but Major League Baseball’s ultimate reaction to it still astonished them.
MLB officials pulled their scheduled All-Star Game out of Atlanta.
Loudermilk conversed with those business owners and relayed their concerns to Washington Watch host Tony Perkins.
“They are incredibly disappointed. Just a week before they made the announcement, I had put together a little luncheon with some of the businesses that happened to be in the area of Truist Park. A lot of the business owners there are owners of businesses that support tourism or the convention industry, and they have been devastated by the COVID pandemic. They were really looking forward to the All-Star Game as that one event would catapult them back into the game, per se. They had lost so much money. This was the one thing that was going to put them back in business again, and, as we were talking about the issues of business and how they struggled and all that we have been trying to work together on, they said ‘At least we have the All-Star Game coming up,” Loudermilk said.
“One of the business owners said ‘We are hearing that they may move it over their take on the Georgia election law.’ And pretty much the consensus was ‘They’re not going to do this because, first of all, it doesn’t do what the left says it does and, second of all, Major League Baseball has been pretty apolitical.’ But just a couple of days later they made the announcement, which has been devastating to a lot of businesses there. They are already frustrated with the federal government because they can’t compete with the federal government paying people to stay at home more than they can have them afford to come to work. Then for Major League Baseball to stick its nose in something like this based on false information has significantly hurt a lot of businesses. Like I said, this was going to be the thing that put them back into business again after losing so much during COVID.”
Until recently, Loudermilk said most businesses “were mostly interested in tax policy and regulatory policy and trade.”
“That was it. That was where they engaged in politics,” Loudermilk said.
“But now we are seeing a growth in businesses getting involved in social issues, and they are following this woke movement and cancel culture and a lot of that is based on false information.”
Georgia’s new voter integrity law requires voter ID on all absentee ballots, increases oversight of local election boards that fail to follow state election law, and secures drop boxes around the clock.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Rep. Barry Loudermilk” by Rep Barry Loudermilk.
