ATLANTA — Bob Johnson used nearly every question put to him in a televised debate taped Sunday to attack opponent Buddy Carter.
The two are locked in a runoff for the Republican nomination in the First District congressional seat left open by Jack Kingston’s run for the Senate. The winner will face whoever comes out on top when the votes are counted July 22 in the Democrats’ runoff between Amy Tavio and Brian Reese. They were also scheduled to debate, but Reese had a prior conflict and didn’t attend, leaving the entire TV screen to Tavio.
The debates were organized by the Atlanta Press Club and will be aired at 7 p.m. Wednesday statewide on Georgia Public Broadcasting.
Johnson, a political newcomer and Savannah surgeon, responded to Carter’s question of why he hasn’t endorsed Kingston’s Senate bid by accusing Carter of opportunism.
“You didn’t endorse Jack Kingston until you saw he was leading in the polls,” Johnson said. “I think that’s cowardly, quite honestly.”
Johnson said he lives 100 yards from Kingston, who he said had strayed from conservative principles when he voted for pork-barrel spending five to eight years ago before becoming more conservative recently.
Then he questioned Carter, a Savannah pharmacist and state legislator, about not opposing the Affordable Care Act until seeing voters objected to it. Carter acknowledged that parts of the law, like covering pre-existing conditions and allowing children to remain on their parents’ policies until age 26, were positive.
“It’s important to understand where this question came from,” Carter said. “This is an example of the untruths and partial truths that my opponent from Chicago has been practicing throughout this campaign.
Carter restated an attack in his campaign ads of Johnson for belonging to a pair of professional medical associations that support Obamacare and the expansion of Medicaid. Johnson said he’s trying to provide a conservative counterforce inside those organizations and that he had attended anti-Obamacare rallies before it became law.
He also said Carter voted “like a liberal” in support of big spending bills in the Georgia General Assembly, a charge the legislator called “ludicrous.”
The two did differ on policy matters. When a reporter raised the issue about climate change and how it could impact residents along the coast, Johnson said predicting the weather two days in the future is difficult and 20 years into the future is nearly impossible.
“I don’t think it’s a concern,” he said.
Carter said he didn’t want to ignore the possibility they might be at least partly correct.
“Certainly we have to pay attention to it. There’s no doubt about that,” he said. “But I do have reservations about how real it is.”
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