Congressman Buddy Carter advocated for spaceport near $2 million property he bought

https://www.savannahnow.com/news/20200502/congressman-buddy-carter-advocated-for-spaceport-near-2-million-property-he-bought

Congressman Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-GA) bought a large undeveloped piece of land down the road from a proposed spaceport in Camden County in May of 2018. A month later he led the U.S. House of Representatives Georgia delegation in urging the Federal Aviation Administration to move the project forward.

The Spaceport project is still pending and Carter still owns the property.

He said recently he bought it for hunting and fishing, not as an investment. As such, he did not need to disclose the purchase to the FAA, other Congressmen or to constituents through his Congressional financial disclosure forms, he said.

Fishing spot

A deed dated May 8, 2018 names Earl L. Carter as the buyer of a 471-acre tract of land from Florida-based Challenged Investments LLC. Camden County tax records indicate the purchase price was $2,050,000.

In a phone interview April 24, Carter confirmed the property is his. It’s not an investment to be developed, he said, but a place for him and his wife to hunt and fish. Their main residence is in Pooler.

“In fact, my wife and I went down there I guess probably about a month ago and actually tried to fish,” he said. “It was not very successful, but we tried to anyway.”

A month after Carter bought the Camden acreage in 2018, he sent a letter to the FAA in support of the Spaceport Camden Project, which is proposed for a former industrial site less than 10 miles from Carter’s property. Carter’s is the first signature on the June 20, 2018 letter that he recruited all 14 Georgia house members, both Democrats and Republicans, to sign as well. The letter does not indicate Carter owns nearby property….

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