The Other McCain

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The Thing That Never Happens Has Somehow Happened Once Again

Posted on | June 8, 2025 | Comments Off on The Thing That Never Happens Has Somehow Happened Once Again

All the experts have assured us that election fraud is impossible. No election is ever “rigged” or “stolen” in America, and anyone who says otherwise is emphatically denounced as a crypto-fascist threat to Democracy. Meanwhile, in south Georgia . . .

The mayor of a small southwest Georgia city and two former election officials are now free on bond after being indicted on multiple counts of election interference and conspiring to shut down a special election in November.
Camilla Mayor Kelvin Owens has been released on a bond of $6,000; City Clerk Cheryl Ford is free on a $10,000 bond; and former Election Superintendent Rhunette Williford posted a $7,000 bond, an official from the Mitchell County (Ga.) Sheriff’s Office told The Federalist Monday afternoon. The public officers face a combined 13 counts, including felony election interference charges, after being indicted by a Mitchell County grand jury last Wednesday.
The scandal, stemming from the attempted cancelation of a special city council election in which Owens’ political ally was disqualified from running has stunned the community of 5,000 people, located about 60 miles north of Tallahassee. Only the special election, held on Election Day, was interrupted; the Nov. 5 general election, including the presidential election, went on unmolested.
Owens, who is black, has blamed racial politics for the legal scuffles that led to the misconduct allegations. So have black community members and activists who see “systemic voter suppression” in the indictments. . . .

You can read the rest of that at The Federalist, and I wish to commend their senior elections correspondent Matt Kittle for attempting to make sense of this story, which still makes no sense at all. When I saw the first Associated Press version of the story last weekend, I immediately texted my friend Dianna Deeley, who lives in Valdosta, about 70 miles east of Camilla: “What the heck is going on in Camilla?”

Just a few choice bits from that AP story:

Chaos roiled special elections for a pair of city council seats in Camilla last November amid a long-running legal battle over local politics in the town, a farming community of about 5,000 people in rural southwest Georgia.
The case revolved around Venterra Pollard, a city council member removed from office last summer after a judge ruled he wasn’t a Camilla resident. Pollard ran to regain the position in the fall special election. Another judge ordered Pollard disqualified and ruled that votes for him should be discarded. In addition, the city was ordered to post signs saying votes for Pollard wouldn’t be counted.
On Nov. 4, the day before Election Day, both Williford and Ford quit as the city’s two top elections officials. Their joint resignation letter blamed “mental duress, stress and coercion experienced by recent court decisions regarding our role in elections.” . . .
The Georgia NAACP said in a statement on Facebook that it was “deeply alarmed” by the allegations of election interference as well as the arrests of Owens and the two former election officials, all of whom are Black.
“We were shocked that there were indictments,” said Gerald Griggs, president of the Georgia NAACP. “We are still in a fact-finding mode to see what actually happened.”

All this uproar, including a lawsuit that was appealed all the way to the state Supreme Court, over a city council seat in a podunk town? I was as confused as Joe Biden in a national security briefing, and so I’ve spent hours digging into this story over the past few days. Pour another cup of coffee and grab a seat, folks, because it’s a long story.

Mitchell County, Georgia, may not be exactly in the middle of nowhere, but it’s not far away from it. The whole county’s population is 27,755. Pecans are a major crop in southwest Georgia, and driving through the region you’ll see many beautiful groves of pecan trees. Other agricultural products include soybeans, peanuts, cotton and cattle, and my brother Kirby — a truck driver who did a lot of hauling in our native Georgia — informs me that there’s also lots of tomato farming down that way.

There are two high schools in the county, Pelham High and Mitchell County High, each of which has fewer than 400 students. Folks live and die for football in Georgia, and the Mitchell County Eagles had an outstanding season last year, going 8-2 and qualifying for the state playoffs, where they beat Hancock Central 47-12 in the first round before falling to Lincoln County, 49-7, in the second round, to finish with 9-3 record. Meanwhile, the Pelham Hornets endured a miserable 3-8 season, including a 52-34 loss to Mitchell County. Football would have been on everybody’s mind in Mitchell County last November, had it not been for the election. Donald Trump carried Mitchell County by a 16-point margin, with 58% to 42% for Kamala Harris. And that would have been it, except for what the latest episode in what the Albany (Ga.) Herald called the “Kerfuffle in Camilla.” The story really began in October 2017:

A recent college graduate in Camilla was running for a position on the city council, but the election superintendent said his residency disqualifies him.
Corey Morgan, 22, went before the election superintendent last week to answer questions about the status of his residency.
A councilwoman accused him of not living in the city during the year leading up to the election.
During the hearing, it was revealed Morgan had switched his voter [registration] to Troup County, where he was a student at LaGrange College.
Monday, officials determined that since Morgan had not been living in Mitchell County for the required one-year period leading up to the election, he was unqualified to run during this year’s election cycle.

That’s understandable, right? But two years later, Morgan qualified to run and, at age 24, won election to the city council in Camilla.

Did I mention that folks in Georgia are crazy about football? Because it so happens that Corey Morgan played football for LaGrange College, as a defensive lineman. And his roster page informs us that in high school, Morgan played at Pelham High. Wait a minute — if Corey Morgan is from Camilla, which is where Mitchell County High School is located, why did he attend high school in Pelham, 10 miles down the road? Never mind. We’ll get to that later, meanwhile, in 2017, Venterra Pollard was elected to the Camilla City Council, and it was the attempt to elect Pollard again in 2024 that resulted in the current charges against Mayor Owens and his two co-defendants who suffered such “mental duress” during the election.

Venterra Pollard (left) and Corey Morgan (right)

What was Venterra Pollard’s occupation before he got elected to the city council? Good luck finding an answer to that question, because I wasted an hour trying to turn up an answer with Google searches, to no avail.

By the way, what do they pay city council members in Camilla? A town of barely 5,000 residents probably wouldn’t have a lot of money to pay elected officials, and this is part of the mystery underlying this whole saga — why such a big fight over municipal offices in this tiny town, given the fact that the salaries for these positions aren’t really lucrative?

In January 2024, after a judge ordered them removed from office, Morgan and Pollard described themselves as members of “a progressive majority that believes in equity, inclusion, and diversity both socially and economically.” Also, maybe there was some money to be made? But now we’re getting ahead of the story. It was Joe Bostick, chairman of the Mitchell County Development Authority (MCDA) board, and MCDA board member David Cooper, who in 2022 filed a lawsuit accusing Morgan and Pollard of violating the residency requirement.

MCDA Chairman Joe Bostick

As the lawsuit demonstrated, Bostick and Cooper had done their homework, hiring a private investigator to conduct surveillance:

During the investigation, a private investigator performed 75 days of video surveillance of the 70 Dogwood St. residence in Camilla where Pollard has claimed to reside and the 74 Sunset Circle residence where Morgan has claimed he lives, Cohilas said. During that time neither council member spent a night in Camilla.
According to court documents, Pollard was served with the lawsuit at that Albany residence and threw the paperwork on the ground. Morgan was not served at the Camilla address but picked up his copy of the lawsuit at City Hall in Camilla.
Both also have been surveilled driving to and from Camilla for council meetings, in Pollard’s case to and from Westover Place apartments in Albany, and for Morgan a Pelham residence, according to court filings. Neither has a lease for a Camila residence or pays property tax on residential property in the city.

In fact, the apartment in Albany where Pollard was living offers Secton 8 subsidized rent. Pollard claimed to be living at his sister’s house in Camilla, while Morgan claimed to be living with his grandmother there, but were unable to provide evidence substantiating these arrangements.

The judge ordered both Morgan and Pollard removed from the city council, but they continued to attend meetings and vote while appealing the verdict. When the state court of appeals upheld the verdict in December 2023, the attorney for Cooper and Bostick, Chris Cohilas, called the ruling a “tremendous victory” for the residents of Camilla, “who have lived under the tyranny of a pattern of corrupt decisions.” Indeed, these men were voting on how taxpayer money was spent while they themselves didn’t pay a nickel of taxes in Camilla, where neither of them resided. Despite this, Owens and two city election officials tried to claim Pollard had “requalified” for the council and tried to put him back on the ballot in a 2024 special election. Cohilas said in October 2024: “This is exactly what happens whenever you have corruption in government, is that the first thing you try, the first thing that a corrupt government will always try to manipulate is the election.” But . . . why?

That’s the big mystery here. My friend Dianna Deeley took a look at the Camilla City budget and, incredible as it may seem, this town of 5,000 people had $13 million in revenue during the fiscal year 2024. According to Dianna, much of that revenue came from the city’s airport and I’m sure many readers are saying the same thing I said: “What? The city owns an airport? That generates millions of dollars of revenue annually?”

Yes, it’s true: Camilla-Mitchell County Airport has a 5,000-foot runway, which means it’s big enough to handle small private jets, and here’s an interesting detail:

Prominent area businesses generate a significant amount of corporate air traffic throughout the year. Considered a hunting destination, Camilla-Mitchell County is home to some of the finest, world renowned quail hunting plantations in southwest Georgia. Hunters from across the nation fly in to the Camilla-Mitchell County Airport to enjoy quality hunting experiences, relaxed and refined accommodations, and Southern hospitality at its best.

“World renowned quail hunting plantations”? Never would have guessed that corporate jets were flying in hunters “from across the nation” to hunt quail in Mitchell County. Five such plantations are listed on the county’s web site, including CoveyRise:

CoveyRise Plantation is located on the banks of the Flint River in game rich Southwest Georgia. We are a family run, full service lodge dedicated to bringing you “The ultimate quail hunting experience”. We hunt where the quail are plentiful and where every possible preparation is made to ensure an enjoyable stay and a successful hunt.

How much do hunters pay for that experience? Lots. And guess what? It’s good for the environment, because the owners maintaining quality habitat for quail are the only reason these thousands of acres aren’t being farmed by some gigantic agribusiness conglomerate.

Well, quail hunting probably has nothing to do with this mess in Camilla, except for the fact that the city owns the airport, and might we suspect that the council’s “progressive majority that believes in equity, inclusion, and diversity,” also believes in getting a slice of the action?

Mind you, I have seen no evidence of any kind of graft or kickbacks involving the Camilla City Council, but doesn’t it seem suspicious that Mayor Owens and his allies are so determined to control the council that they would bring in a couple of non-residents to put them on the council, if there was no financial benefit to them? After examining the city budget, Dianna Deeley says roughly a third of municipal revenue comes from the airport, so if there’s any financial corruption in Camilla — which again, I have no evidence of such — it probably involves the airport.

As might be expected, accusations of racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — have ensued since Mayor Owens and his two alleged accomplices were indicted, but I think this story is actually much more complex. It seems to me that citizens of Camilla ought to ask the state Attorney General’s office to investigate the city finances, just to be on the safe side. Experts might dismiss my suspicion as a “conspiracy theory,” but then again, the experts said there was no such thing as election fraud, and how’d that turn out?

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! As I explained a couple of weeks ago, this is the time of year when I’m all about buying fireworks for Fourth of July, and support from the readers certainly helps. So please remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

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Category: Corruption, Election, Georgia, Scandal

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