Georgia election official accused of driving into Latina activist and blaming it on Black peer
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A county elections board member in Georgia is accused of stooping beyond low on Tuesday when she allegedly drove into a Latina activist at a get-out-the-vote event, left the scene of the accident, and blamed the attack on a Black fellow board member, according to the Savannah Business Journal. Lou Phelps, the publisher of the Savannah Business Journal‘s parent company, was able to link Republican Debbie Rauers to the incident through a news tip and interview she conducted with the longtime Chatham County official before knowing about the encounter.
Phelps interviewed Rauer at about 8:30 PM to ask her what she had observed at the polls during the state’s Senate runoff, and Rauers told the publisher she wasn’t at the Board of Elections. “I decided not to go down … I’m just so sick of young Black kids shoving their phones in my face,” she reportedly said. “I’m just so sick of these young Black kids.” Phelps didn’t know what Rauers was talking about until receiving the news tip minutes later and confirming in an interview with injured activist Christina Magaña, the Savannah Business Journal reported.
Magaña told Phelps the incident happened at a Party at the Polls event with Black Lives Matter. She learned after the event that Rauer was the driver in the attack and had lied about being named Malinda Hodge, Magaña told Phelps.
The injurious encounter started when Rauers allegedly tried to scare Magaña out of a parking spot she had a permit to use for a food truck at the Savannah Civic Center. “Just as the food truck was pulling up – I had cleared the space for them – this lady pulls up into the spot, and she stops and parks and takes the space,” Magaña told Phelps. “I wasn’t sure if she was not aware of what was going on in her surroundings. I asked her if she would you mind if we trade spots … there was one next to her. Her response was, ‘Who are you, and do you have permits?’”
Magaña told the woman yes and named the Civic Center manager who could vouch for her, but Rauer allegedly wouldn’t let it go. “I stood in the front of car in the spot, because it seemed like she was just set on not allowing us to have the food truck there, but I need this spot,” Magaña told the Phelps. “So then she finally turns on her car and she starts to go forward. I take two steps back, and she yells, ‘Get your butt out of the way. Do you want me to run you over?’ And she then hit me with her car. When she hit me, I yelled at her, ‘You just hit me with your car!’” She didn’t stop though, Magaña said.
Hodge said in a statement emailed to Daily Kos Wednesday that if the events occurred as reported, she is “deeply disturbed and disheartened that someone would falsely represent” her.” “Particularly, in the capacity of my elected official duties to my community,” she said. “I was not there. I was not involved. The person described as having done this, does not, in any way, match my physical description. I have been in contact with the local authorities.
“If these allegations prove to be factual, I will be devastated. For anyone to misrepresent me under such circumstances is absolutely egregious. I have every expectation that the police will fully investigate this matter and take the appropriate action.”
The Chatham County Board of Elections voted back in August to censure Rauer for what the board deemed “part of a pattern of interference with elections workers in the course of elections work,” Savannah Morning News reported. She was accused of harassing an election worker on Nov. 5, 2019 and intimidating a poll worker who allowed a mother to help her disabled child to vote on Nov. 8, 2016.
Rauers also waited until the first day of early voting in October to call into question a Democratic board nominee’s 1995 drug-related felony while having allegedly coached his Republican challenger on campaign strategy, Savannah Morning News reported.
Hodge alluded to Rauer‘s unscrupulousness then in a letter to the Chatham County Board of Elections that the newspaper obtained. “It appears to have been an alleged intent to manipulate the timeline of events. This possible manipulation has led to initiating a challenge at a point that could prove to be advantageous to the opposing party,” Hodge said.
She later added:
“If there is merit to this accusation, it is my belief that Deborah Rauers should have [at the very least] recused herself from voting on the motion to challenge the candidate’s eligibility.” She did not and the candidate, Tony Riley, was ultimately disqualified with Rauer’s candidate of choice, Larry “Gator” Rivers winning, technically.