After Tuesday's primaries, Georgia's gubernatorial race is down to three candidates, each with their own unique platform and perspectives on how to run the state. What these three politicians do have in common, though, is having high-powered legal help behind them.

The Daily Report examined the campaign expenditure reports of Democratic candidate and former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams and Republican runoff candidates Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Secretary of State Brian Kemp to see which law firms their campaigns paid for legal services between Jan. 1, 2017, and the present. A caveat: Publicly available reports on candidate spending appear not to extend past March 31 of this year, so the list is likely not comprehensive.

The expenditure reports do not name specific lawyers or indicate the type of work performed, and in most cases the firms opted not to fill in the blanks for us. But there are numerous reasons candidates will want to hire attorneys during a statewide campaign, said Eric Tanenblatt, leader of Dentons' global public policy and regulation practice.

“Political campaigns require legal counsel on a variety of matters—everything from the establishment of the campaign organization to making sure it is complying with campaign contribution laws and regulations,” said Tanenblatt. He added that other possible reasons to hire legal help include ballot security and any alleged voter irregularities, plus financial disclosure and ethics issues.

Brian Kemp

Kemp has turned to Dentons—paying the global megafirm $30,000 in legal fees between April 2017 and February 2018, according to his campaign's publicly available expenditure reports.

To legal and political observers in Georgia, Dentons may not be a surprising choice. In 1980, Gordon Giffin, later a U.S. ambassador to Canada, founded the political law practice at Long Aldridge & Norman (its successor, McKenna Long & Aldridge, later became part of Dentons), making it one of the oldest practices of its kind in Atlanta.

The group at Dentons is composed of lawyers with deep expertise in campaign, election, lobbying and ethics law who have represented numerous federal and statewide candidates in both major political parties, including in gubernatorial races, in virtually every election cycle for many years, Tanenblatt said.

Until he left Dentons to become the Trump administration's deputy White House counsel for compliance and ethics in January 2017, Stefan Passantino headed the firm's political law, ethics and disclosure team.

Benjamin Keane, a Washington, D.C.-based partner, is now leading the firm's political law efforts and is legal counsel to the Kemp campaign, Tanenblatt said.

Keane served as outside deputy national campaign counsel to the presidential campaign committee of former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, according to his Dentons bio. He also was vice-chair of the Republican National Lawyers Association's Presidential Ballot Access Initiative, which coordinated and disseminated legal guidance on Republican Party ballot access obligations and procedures to all 2016 presidential candidates.

Keane could not be reached for comment about his work with the campaign or whether any other Dentons lawyers have joined him on the campaign.

Stacey Abrams

Abrams, who is the only lawyer among the remaining candidates, also turned to the nation's capital for some of her campaign legal work.

According to the online expenditure reports, Abrams' campaign paid $5,000 in legal and professional fees late last year to D.C.-based Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock, which bills itself as a “law firm focused on advising clients involved in the business of politics.”

A firm spokesperson could not be reached for comment about which of its dozen or so attorneys did campaign-related work for Abrams.

Daily Report affiliate, the National Law Journal, has described Joseph Sandler, one of the firm's founding members, as a “veteran election law expert” who, during the 2012 election season, signed on as general counsel to Democracy Partners, a 19-member political consulting firm. The NLJ reported that the consultancy's mission at the time, in the organization's own words, was to elect Democrats and “create issue campaigns that turn progressive principles into progressive policy.”

Sandler, who specializes in nonprofit and political law, lobbying regulations and government ethics, served from 1993 to 1998 as in-house GC of the Democratic National Committee and general counsel to the DNC through his law firm until 2008, the NLJ reported.

Casey Cagle

So far, Cagle seems to be keeping his legal team local and familiar.

His campaign paid for about $1,450 in legal services this past November to Atlanta firm Strickland Brockington Lewis, which has represented Cagle's campaigns since 2006, Anne Lewis, one of the firm's founding members, said in an email.

“I'm the lead attorney, but as in all firms, other firm attorneys assist when necessary,” she said. According to its website, Strickland Brockington Lewis has about a half-dozen lawyers.

The firm is no stranger to high-profile election and political legal work. Lewis and co-founding member Frank Strickland both have served as the state Republican Party's general counsel, a role Lewis still holds. The pair also won a U.S. Supreme Court case in 2004 against a Democratic-drawn redistricting plan.

According to online campaign expenditure reports, the other gubernatorial candidates who didn't make it through past primary day also paid legal fees to various firms and lawyers.

• Former state Sen. Hunter Hill, R-Smyrna, used litigation and political law boutique firm Chalmers Burch & Adams, based locally in Alpharetta and Johns Creek.
• Business executive Clay Tippins also used Chalmers Burch & Adams.
• State Sen. Michael Williams, R-Cumming, seemingly did not expend any campaign funds for legal purposes.
• Former state Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Smyrna, had two attorneys working on her campaign, though not necessarily in a legal capacity: Democratic strategist Jeff DiSantis and Adam Ney, a former capital transactions and real estate attorney at King & Spalding.