The Ron Show

A month after securing the seat, new Georgia Democratic Party chair Charlie Bailey sat down with me today at Condesa Coffee in Old Fourth Ward Atlanta to discuss the state of the party he inherited from Rep. Nikema Williams. I wanted to know what was 'right' about the party he took the reigns of on day one, the biggest glaring need for the party, then, too, and covered a lot of ground on c...

If you think the American evangelical fixation over Israel's well-being is simply about "doing the right thing," my hunch is you'd be wrong. As a southern-born kid who grew up in the baptist faith, there's a lot I came away with despite that fact I'm now a 51-year old atheist. i'm not saying I didn't come away with some good values from that exposure to organized...

Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King (R) is already looking to distinguish himself in the GOP Senate primary field by taking aim at Democratic Georgia Senators John Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock. The issue: communication with he and his staff in the run-up to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The problem? He left out some key details - like his own office's praise for the communicati...

Retired Marine sergeant and Army Brigadier General, Northwest Georgia cattle farmer Shawn Harris made a go at Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2024, outpacing the Harris/Walz campaign by 12% in Georgia's 14th Congressional district. It wasn't enough to win but it does show that Democrats focusing on local races by being where voters are can sway elections up the ballot. Well today, Shawn joined m...

The White House won't be recognizing Pride Month in 2025 (and we imagine the next three years as well), but there's also a lot of corporate hesitance to go "all out" this month with rainbow-adorned logos and dramatic proclamations on social media backing diversity, equity and inclusion, too. Because under the Trump regime, embracing D.E.I. could land you under investigation. Tota...

Former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ended all the speculation and announced her campaign for Georgia's governor's office early today. Greg Bluestein from the Atlanta Journal Constitution had a prolonged Q & A with Bottoms and it was somewhat revealing, actually. I'm still only lukewarm to the prospects of her being the Democratic party's nominee, but it's hard to igno...

Atlanta's WXIA-TV, 11 Alive, broke the story late last week : a Georgia woman, brain-dead since February, has been kept alive for more than 90 days because Emory Hospital lawyers advised the hospital against ending life support because of an early pregnancy. Now, her family's gripped in perpetual mourning while also awaiting the birth of what could likely be a child with immense medial woes of its...

Kennesaw State University students and their supporters took to Atlanta - some 30 minutes (by car) south of their campus - Wednesday to protest KSU's announcement that they're eliminating black studies & philosophy majors outside the Georgia Board of Regents' offices. NAACP Georgia chapter president Gerald Griggs joined me to provide background & tell me what's next in the process & co...

When a prominent politician does a town hall in Iowa, it sort of defines the unofficial start to the upcoming presidential cycle and their campaign in earnest to win the office. That's just ... tradition. So when former South Bend, Indiana mayor and U.S. Transportation Pete Buttigieg hosted a town hall with VoteVets Wednesday night, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a full 1,272 days before Election Day,...

The book Washington insiders have been tongue-wagging about for days now - "Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again" - was leaked . It'll be a best-seller and have pundits and conservative snipers taking aim at a perceived "conspiracy" or "cover-up" in the Biden White House, but how much meat is even on this bo...

On the surface, you'd think yesterday was a banner day for the second Donald Trump administration: his staff negotiated an end to the trade war he launched, he signed an executive order to mandate steep price cuts for prescription drug prices in the U.S., and who wouldn't have a good if they were given a $400 million luxury plane? Jon Stewart at 'The Daily Show' even confessed to h...

It dawned on me yesterday, while showing a house in Kennesaw for a mom sending her kids off to college not far away, that Georgia's political inhibitions towards rail transit continues to cost families like this one thousands per month for years, and unnecessarily. It's that sort of lack of vision - at the city level in Atlanta, the metro region, and of course, the state, that puts an undo...

I've followed Ethan Embry on Twitter/X (he's on Bluesky now ) for years now, and have always been fascinated with how well-versed he is on political and social issues. Today, I finally got to sit down with the Atlanta-based California transplant best known for his acting in cult favorites like 'Empire Records,' 'That Thing You Do,' 'Can't Hardly Wait,' 'Swee...

Were it not for reporting by Ross Williams at the Georgia Recorder, none of us might've even known a 'Third Way'-backed centrist Democrat 'Ideas Summit' even took place in Atlanta earlier this week . State Senator Jason Esteves - the lone notable Democratic gubernatorial candidate (sorry, Keisha; until you announce 'for sure,' that's how it is ...) along with Senato...

State Senator Josh McLaurin put his name in the hat to succeed outgoing GOP Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, announcing his candidacy at a Savannah port terminal Monday. He and I caught up today so I could ask him why he's the guy for the job, what he may have gleaned from watch Jones in the role all this time and why he made it his mission to inform the state Senate what the Trump presidency w...

Last week we learned Georgia voters only seem to have an appetite for 'change' in the US Senate if it comes via Governor Brian Kemp unseating Senator Jon Ossoff . Well, unfortunately for the Georgia GOP, Kemp's decided he, nor "Marty and the girls" are up for it. Why? Georgia Recorder op/ed writer Jay Bookman has a few ideas, and he joined me to explain how he correctly predi...

Protests in Atlanta and elsewhere "May Day" Thursday were but another chapter in a growing saga of organic "distress signals" from activists deeply concerned about federal workforce and entitlement cuts and an executive branch showing disregard for the other two, and the rule of law. Joining me to give some background on the organic, unaffiliated nature of the ' 50501'...

With Rev. Senator Raphael Warnock preparing to host his own town hall Sunday in Fulton County , and with the fresh memory of dissatisfaction at Senator Jon Ossoff's hall last week, coupled with Georgia polling that shows how unpopular Democrats are right now, it bears asking: are voters aware that they voted for this mess and left Democrats with too-few tools to do anything about it? Laughably...

First, a follow-up to yesterday's show as both Cobb Democrats won their special elections to serve on that county's commission, putting Democrats (again) in control of that county's governance (despite all the efforts at the state GOP level to undo the will of the majority). Also, after having a grousing parent removed from a school board hearing a little more than a week ago for bendi...

First came the gerrymander, as Georgia's state GOP legislators redrew a majority liberal county's commission map to better favor Republicans . Then came the court battle to unseat the commissioner elected to serve , but drawn out of her district by said gerrymander. Today, with both the map and the vacancy now adjudicated (poorly, I might add), many Cobb County voters head to the polls tod...

The "last minute" of last night's '60 Minutes' was worth the wait, as CBS News' Scott Pelley laid waste to his network's parent company's adding 'extra supervision' to the news magazine's content. I mean, it's not all that different from what I had to deal with as editor of my high school newspaper - except that it's already established that sc...

Senator Jon Ossoff met with hundreds of constituents in Marietta at the Cobb County Civic Center Friday morning, with designs on pointing out the disparity in approaches on healthcare access and reproductive rights. Those in attendance - many recently fired (or "RIF'ed") CDC employees, others frazzled voters seething for impeachment - had questions completely divergent from the topic...

With Senator Jason Esteves' announcement that he's officially in the 2026 race to be Georgia's next governor comes open speculation; where are the other Democrats for the field? The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's chief political reporter, Greg Bluestein, is notably fixated on whether Stacey Abrams wants in . ------ Senator Jon Ossoff, with the 2026 cycle on his radar for obvious re...

Remember that 2020 pandemic "fresh air" vibe, that summer? How crisper, clearer and cleaner the air over Atlanta seemed? Well since then we've of course regressed; that's according to new American Lung Association report cards . Atlanta, in particular, slipped from C to F. On to discuss the results and speculate as to what could be done to reverse the trend, along with some distu...

It's easy to grouse about "NIMBYism" in situations where organized neighbors push back against "progress," but in the case of Atlanta's Amsterdam Walk, the neighbors weren't against sensible development of a nearby commercial lot; in fact, they supported zoned usage. Instead, they were steamrolled by city council (with the mayor's blessing) and Portman Holdings,...