New Georgia Freedom Caucus seeks right turn in state policy

A group of Georgia Republican lawmakers announced the launch Tuesday of a Freedom Caucus in the state’s General Assembly, vowing to move outcomes to the political right even as the majority GOP-legislature girds for an election-year session that could be dominated by appeals to Republican primary voters.

Eight Republicans introduced themselves as members of the first-ever state level Freedom Caucus, although a national group promised the Georgia affiliate would be the first of many. Lawmakers from more than a dozen other states gathered Tuesday in Atlanta to discuss forming their own state-level groups. All would be modeled on the House Freedom Caucus in Congress, a group that has often found Republican House leadership to be insufficiently conservative for its tastes.

“The state Freedom Caucus will work in each state and among the states to secure rights, to defend liberty, to protect each state’s sovereignty,” said the group’s chairman, Sen. Greg Dolezal of Cumming. “The Biden administration is determined to change seemingly every aspect of the American way of life. We need a local and statewide effort to fight back.”