But Now You Have to Govern

Andrew Heaton (0:07)

Hello, and welcome to The Political Orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers. I'm your host, Andrew Heaton, and my dog Wallace is obsessed with cats. I'm not sure where he learned the word, but he definitely knows the word cat, and springs to attention when I say it. When we go on walks, if he sees a cat, he gets very excited. If that cat sprints away, Wallace wants to chase it more than anything in the world. He wants to chase that cat.

Though it's not clear to me, and I do not think it is clear to Wallace, what would actually happen if he caught that cat? Perhaps he'd eat it. Possibly, he would become friends with it. He might have to adopt that cat. Small chance he'd try to mate with it. And there's a decent probability that if the cat swatted him in the face, he would panic and hide under a car. My point is this. Wallace desperately wants to chase that cat, but he's never really considered what would happen if he caught it.

Which is the position quite a few freshly purple or blue states find themselves in, or at least the state legislatures that were surprised to discover they are going to be in the majority in what were previously safe Republican states. So what do you do when you wake up and you discover you're no longer in the minority and doomed to remain there? You aren't in a position to lob verbal hand grenades and try to sneak in amendments. You actually have to govern. What is that like? To find out, I track down a state representative about to go from the minority to a committee chair. Enjoy!

My guest today is Representative Scott Holcomb. He is a member of the Georgia Legislature and about to be a member of the majority in the Georgia Legislature after, I believe, nine years serving in your state in the minority? Sixteen years!

Scott Holcomb (2:17)

Yes.

Andrew Heaton (2:17)

Wow, Scott, this is going to be fun and probably exhausting for you. You're going to have to wield government now.

Scott Holcomb (2:23)

It's going to be an incredible shift, and I am very, very ready for it.

Andrew Heaton (2:28)

Okay, this is a stupid question, but I feel like there are a lot of people that can get elected and just hold office by saying stuff they really care about for years. They can be a kind of minority gadfly.

For them, I feel like it would almost be worse to be in the majority because you actually have to get things done. I don't get that impression from you. I think you actually want to get things done.

Scott Holcomb (2:52)

I do.

There's a lot. And I'll start by saying that I was able to pass quite a bit when I was in the minority, which was a function of really building relationships, and a lot of that work I intend to build upon. And namely, one of my first really significant legislative successes was passing a bill to eliminate the backlog of untested sexual assault kits, which was a problem across the country, and it was also a problem in our state. And I partnered with our then Speaker of the House. We did it in a bipartisan way, which I'm still very proud of. And the passage of that legislation has led to dozens of cold cases that were solved because we finally tested the DNA. And so those victims got justice. And so now that I'm in the majority, it will be much easier for me to get my bills before committee, and I'd like to think it will be somewhat easier to get them to pass. And one of my main focus areas is going to be on additional criminal justice reform, and I'm really excited about that.

Andrew Heaton (4:12)

Great. Hey, that's a big thing for me as well. I wish you luck with that.

Scott Holcomb (4:16)

Thank you.

Andrew Heaton (4:17)

How much of your job in the minority over the last 16 years was having to persuade Republicans to come over to you? And how much was being referee for other Democrats? And how does that change?

Scott Holcomb (4:35)

It was very, very rare to have Republicans come over to me. Instead, what I typically did on my legislative initiatives was I deliberately tried to pick issues that were by design nonpartisan, like the testing of sexual assault kits nonpartisan, or at least it should be.

I also worked on compensating the wrongfully convicted, and that was a bipartisan measure. Georgia was one of the few states that didn't have a process to compensate people who are innocent and then spend decades of their lives behind bars.