There are many factors that will have an impact on next year’s U.S. Senate race: the quality of the candidates, the strategies developed by their consultants, the amount of money they raise.

There is one person, however, who could have an even bigger impact on that race.

That would be Judge Steve C. Jones, formerly a Clarke County jurist who was appointed to the U.S. District Court bench in 2011.

Jones is presiding over a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against Georgia and Secretary of State Brian Kemp in his capacity as the state’s chief elections officer.

Until last week, Georgia had been one of only three remaining states that put absolutely no limits on how much money lobbyists could spend to influence the passage or defeat of legislation in a General Assembly session.

Gov. Nathan Deal removed Georgia from that list when he signed the ethics revision bill into law.

It’s easy to criticize legislators for their reluctance to derail this lobbyist gravy train that so many of them have ridden over the years, but in fairness, there are some commendable aspects to the new law.

The dedication of George W. Bush’s presidential library last week reminded me of one of the former president’s more memorable public comments.

During a speech on education reform, Bush once remarked: “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”

All too often, the answer to that question has been that Georgia’s kids aren’t learning very much.

There are many reasons why student and teacher performance is so disappointing, but I would argue that much of the fault lies in the people who have been elected to set policy for our public schools.

Georgia’s senators were caught in a political crossfire last week over their vote on a gun control bill currently being considered in the U.S. Senate.

Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson were not voting for passage of the bill, which would expand the system of background checks to try to keep firearms away from convicted felons and the mentally deranged.

They were merely taking a procedural vote to stop a filibuster so that senators could at least talk about the gun control bill during floor debate.