He was my guest in The Meetinghouse last week, recently retired from ten years as state senator from Brunswick to the Georgia State Assembly. A prominent lawyer whom I had consulted on more than one occasion. The son of the most influential minister in our community a generation or two ago. William Ligon.
We talked about the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and the spotlight it shone on the criminal justice culture in Glynn County. He described the state legislation he helped craft and promote in response to these matters; and he explained to me and our listeners the relative roles of the city police, the county police, and the sheriff in all this.
Then we talked about the election in our county, the one that displaced a long-serving District Attorney, the one that voted for Joseph Biden as president, the one that forced a January runoff for two U S Senate seats. And Ligon described his role in hosting hearing on what he called “fraud” and “irregularities” in the voting.
That’s when I asked him the question: “Do you think Joe Biden won fair and square?” What he said in reply caught me off guard.
“I don’t!” He said, then called into question the legitimacy of the senatorial runoff on January 3.
I was surprised; but that only confirms my life-long naivete.
Georgia has been an epicenter of resistance to the election of Biden. It was to Georgia that then President Trump placed a personal call, imploring our Secretary of State to “find” enough votes to change the outcome of the election in Georgia. That effort to manipulate an election is now under investigation; and rightly so.
“But didn’t our Republican Secretary of State announce that Georgia has the largest, safest election in its history?” That was my question to Mr. Ligon.
Mr. Ligon’s response was to denigrate the reliability of that report and, later, to accuse the Director of Elections of compromising his professional objectivity by being under contract with the company that supplied the voting machines in Georgia.
“What do you think about the post-election recount now going on in Arizona?” I asked, sure he would distance himself from that godawful fiasco. But no: he said without emotion or anger, “we need to know what happened … but when [election officials] sit there and hide and resist and make it difficult [for the state senate] to see what happened. that raises questions and more suspicions …”
His thorough-going endorsement of the Arizona recount helped explain why, a few days later, there surfaced in the national news the prospects of just such a “recount” right here in Georgia.
I was so taken back by the matter-of-fact manner of his statements. It was the first time I have had a rational conversation with a man apparently in full control of his wits opine that the election was a farce.
My time with William Ligon was over. I thanked him for his public service and suggested we might talk again in The Meetinghouse. He was cordial and kind; so much so that when a few days later I wrote to ask for a few more minutes of his time, he quickly agreed and called me.
What I was puzzled about were the same two questions my audience raised within seconds of the show closing. From Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and the mountains of North Carolina people wanted to know: What was that all about? and, Why was he on your show? and Here are a couple of questions you should have asked him!!
So, I did, when he called the following Monday night.
“If Joe Biden’s election to office is illegitimate and tainted with fraud, does that cast a shadow on everybody else who was on the ballot, including our new District Attorney, new city commissioners, U S Representations from all over Georgia, even the runoff for the two Senate seats?”
“No, he explained, because the irregularities were largely limited to certain precincts in the metro Atlanta area.”
He didn’t say and I did not ask: you mean the black districts or the Democrat districts? But I am sure that is what he meant.
He went on (and here I paraphrase): “If you heard the reports we heard in our Senate investigation you would also be alarmed.”
Maybe not, I thought but did not say. When I ask about the judges: “What evidence did your state Senate committee have that the 45 judges who heard election challenges across the nation did not have?”
All he could say was this: “Most of those were tossed out without ever looking at the evidence. The judges cited ‘standing’ to bring a claim and declined to hear the cases.”
I don’t know about that; but I know this: my Meetinghouse guest caught me off guard. I was not adequately prepared for this turn of the conversation. That is one of the results of trying to do high quality (NPR-level) public conversation on religion and American life all alone. I needed some help at the time, some astute and educated executive producer to whisper into my earpiece a directive like, “Ask him about the judges!”
A call back was all I could manage; and it was better than nothing. But if I’d had a young communication intern, I would have set her to writing this article minutes about the show ended and passed it on to others with a bigger audience and more exposure.
But even with all that, it was a good day in The Meetinghouse, because we had civil conversation about matters of great public importance.
(May 2021)
