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December 2006
The musical chairs move our way
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The latest estimate of which states will gain and lose congressional seats in the next decade is out, and Georgia is still in line to pick up one new congressional seat, which would be the 14th. But the game of political musical chairs has gotten more interesting, and the state still has a shot at a 15th seat.
Based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 population estimates, a total of 13 seats would shift in the next redistricting process after 2010, an increase of 2 seats from last year’s calculation.
“The key factor in this year’s numbers versus last year’s is Katrina,” said Clark Bensen, who analysed the new Census Bureau data for an outfit called Polidata.
Because it lost population, Louisiana, along with New Jersey, has been added to the list of states that could lose a seat, with Oregon and Washington joining those that would gain one. Last year Texas and Florida were in line to pick up three seats each, but the storm tilted the advantage toward Texas, which now stands to gain four while Florida picks up two.
Uncertainty over whether these storm-related population shifts will be permanent puts more at play in terms of what the next congressional map will look like, Bensen said. He said the two states most likely to pick up a seat if another shook loose would be Georgia or South Carolina.
Georgia would need to gain another 100,000 by the end of the decade over its currently estimated population, while South Carolina would have to gain 50,000 to 60,000. But Georgia probably has the advantage, Bensen said, because its larger size makes it proportionally easier to reach that goal.
We’ll have four years to find out what the real numbers are going to be, but this has tons of implications. The first being this: Can a Republican legislature create new districts without shooting itself in the foot, as the Democrats have over the past two decades?
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Experience with natural gas will be a plus
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
House Speaker Glenn Richardson has hired a veteran of U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s shop to be his new chief of staff.
Chris Cummiskey, an Atlanta native who currently is Isakson’s state director, has been tapped to replace Jay Walker, who resigned recently to go into private business. Cummiskey also served as political director for Isakson’s Senate campaign.
It’s possible to read too much into these things, but this hire is being read by some as a signal Richardson and House Republicans – perhaps looking around at what happened in other states this year – could be looking for a way to take a more moderate, middle-of-the-road tack. We’ll know for sure if Richardson starts showing up in a tweedy sport coat like those Isakson used to wear when he was in the legislature.
“Chris is honest, direct and a hard worker, and I have no doubt he will be respected by both sides of the aisle,” Richarson said in a release.
For whatever else it may signal, Cummiskey put in about nine years in the energy bidness before going to work for Isakson. He was an energy trader for Mirant Corp., Mieco Inc., and R.W.E. Energy.
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It’s not what you take the oath on, it’s whether you mean it
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While we were away, there was a furor over the comments by Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) objecting to newly elected Rep. Keith Ellison’s intention to use the Koran for his swearing-in ceremony. Ellison is the first Muslim ever elected to Congress.
All this got us to wondering what Hank Johnson, the newly elected congressman from the 4th District, was going to take his oath on.
Although it has received a lot less attention, Johnson and a Democrat from Hawaii, Mazie Hirono, this year became the nation’s first Buddhists to be elected to Congress.
“Hank won’t talk about his religion. He never has. He considers it a private matter,” his press secretary, Deb Speights, said.
But Speights did tell us that Johnson plans to use a traditional Bible to take his oath of office.
Actually, the members don’t put their hands on anything for their formal oath, which they do in a group, Speights said. But they use Bibles – and Ellison will use the Koran – for the photos they use to record the momentous occasion.
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Recharging the batteries
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a long year, and we’re bushed. No pun intended.
We’re going to lay back and sip a little eggnog until the new year rolls around.
Many thanks for your support in 2006, especially to those of you who participate in this blog and keep us on the straight and narrow.
If something big pops, we’ll be back in a heartbeat. In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves under this template.
About what? Here’s something:
Cherokee County has decided that landlords should determine whether their renters are U.S. citizens or not.
And yet the Republican-backed state Legislature this year determined that businesses should not be held to that particular standard. That employers couldn’t possibly be held accountable for determining whether a Social Security card or drivers license was valid.
What’s going on here? Is Cherokee being over-aggressive? Were state lawmakers too timid? What’s the deal?
Notes from Iowa: Phil Gingrey, you’re no Larry McDonald
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Des Moines, Iowa — U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey has been among the most critical of Georgia’s Republican delegation when it comes to the Iraq report by the Baker-Hamilton team.
“I am deeply troubled by many parts of the report, most prominently its recommendation for consultation with Iran and Syria. Neither of these regimes support a free and democratic Iraq, and both would demand a steep and dangerous price for any assistance they provide,” says Gingrey, on and off camera.
Gingrey holds the congressional district once conquered by Larry McDonald, the Democratic arch-conservative who was killed in 1983 when a Russian MIG shot down the South Korean airliner the Georgia congressman was aboard.
By comparison, Gingrey is downright moderate. No, we’d have to say that McDonald’s current ideological successor is U.S. Rep. Steve King, a Republican from west Iowa. This was his statement on the report:
“The commanders in the field know that the most treacherous terrain in their battle is American public opinion. Every day the mainstream media seeks to shift American public opinion against this war, and since the leaks of their apparent sympathizers within the Iraq Study Group were published last week, they have seized upon the findings of this unelected unaccountable and autonomous committee to usher in a full-scale retreat from Iraq and from the front lines of the war on terror.”
This according to the Des Moines Register.
South Carolina: Where the action will be
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Charleston, S.C. – While the junior half of this operation has been trekking across the Iowa plains, we’ve been sampling opinions in the Palmetto State. Chances are we’ll be back soon.
The South Carolina Republican Party has already scheduled a presidential primary debate for May 15. It’s going to be a very high-profile event in the early part of the upcoming GOP contest.
Not to be outdone, state Democratic Party chairman Joe Erwin announced this week that the Dems have scheduled a presidential debate timed with the state convention and Jefferson-Jackson dinner on April 27.
Will Hillary be there? Will Barack Obama? It’s going to be an interesting early test of commitment.
Once more into the breach: Newt and the First Amendment, again
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Newt Gingrich, the non-candidate for president in ‘08, confesses that his remarks of last week, suggesting limits on free speech to curb talk among terrorists, “must have hit a nerve.”
On Wednesday, the Union-Leader of New Hampshire, where Gingrich made his speech (during an event celebrating the First Amendment, no less), published an op-ed piece by the former House speaker, on the same topic.
Some excerpts:
We need a serious dialogue — not knee-jerk hysteria — about the 1st Amendment, what it protects and what it should not protect. Here are a few baseline principles to consider:
We should be allowed to close down Web sites that recruit suicide bombers and provide instructions to indiscriminately kill civilians by suicide or other means, or advocate killing people from the West or the destruction of Western civilization;
We should propose a Geneva-like convention for fighting terrorism that makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous. A subset of this convention should define the international rules of engagement on what activities will not be protected by free speech claims; and
We need an expeditious review of current domestic law to see what changes can be made within the protections of the 1st Amendment to ensure that free speech protection claims are not used to protect the advocacy of terrorism, violent conduct or the killing of innocents.
Can’t wait for Bob Barr to weigh in on this.
A new and different gig for Nigut
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former WSB-TV political reporter Bill Nigut, who left journalism three years ago for high-browed culture, has a new job.
He’ll be director of the Southern regional office of the Anti-Defamation League in Atlanta. The ADL focuses on fighting anti-Semitism and racism. Nigut’s territory will be Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Nigut, a 20-year veteran of local TV, most recently served as head of the Metro Atlanta Arts and Culture Coalition, a public-private partnership aimed at bringing a little joy into our humdrum lives.
The dread five-day Congressional week
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The news that Democratic U.S. House leaders are about to impose a five-day work week may seem like very inside-the-beltway news. Guess again. It’s going to affect civic club speech schedules across the country, and even have an effect on traffic patterns at Hartsfield-Jackson.
The House has been adjourning every Thursday and reconvening every Tuesday afternoon. That may seem like a pretty light work week, but the reality is that most members hurry back home every week to a flurry of local meetings and political events. In election terms, the four days at home often means more than anything the members do in Washington.
For many Southern members, that means changing planes twice a week in Atlanta, with a spur flight to their districts and hundreds of miles of driving to get to those Rotary Clubs and party fish fries. The new schedule announced Tuesday won’t allow that kind of time.
Rep. Jack Kingston had a different take on the news.
“Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer,” the Savannah Republican told the Washington Post. “The Democrats care less about families — that’s what this says.”
Of course, the members could always move their families to D.C.
Iowa notes: Transfats, Hillary, and that Illinois fellow
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Des Moines, Iowa — A few notes drawn from the this morning’s Des Moines Register and elsewhere:
— You’d think the New York City decision to ban transfats from restaurants would spark outrage here on the grounds that the American stomach is sovereign. Not so.
Iowa farmers are a bit giddy. Soy beans are a prime source for “trans-free” food oil. To paraphrase Mr. Twain’s observation on “corn pone” positions: Show us where a man sells his soybean futures, and we’ll tell you what his opinion is.
— Hillary Clinton has a strong constituency here, particularly in the eastern, pro-union portion of the state. On Monday, she began calling prominent Democrats here, presumably to reserve key supporters in the ’08 race for president.
She’s invited a handful of Iowans to her Washington D.C. house for a dinner next Tuesday.
— The most fascinating conversation we had with a voter on Tuesday came in Newton, Iowa, a small town — as they all are here — thrown into turmoil by the closing of the local Maytag plant.
Betty Mae Smith, 82, is a cashier at the Middletown Café, which serves the same chicken noodle soup — for $2.35 —they dish out in heaven. Smith is white. Iowa has a miniscule African-American population.
But asked who she liked for president, Smith replied, “That colored gentleman from Illinois.”
She’s already read Barak Obama’s book. “I think he’s very intelligent. What dirt can they bring up on him?”
And Hillary? “I don’t think that we’re really ready for a woman,” Smith said.
As for George W. Bush? The elderly woman sputtered, rolled her eyes, slapped the table and shouted, “Jesus God!” The president is not popular in Newton.
— Tom Vilsack, the exiting Iowa governor and only announced Democrat for the ’08 presidential nomination, met with newspaper editors on Tuesday, and called for a decrease in farm subsidies, and an increase in federal money for conservation.
That sounds like a brave position for a man who will depend heavily on the farm vote in the January 2008 caucuses. But Iowa State University economist Chad Hart explained.
Because of the strong prices corn and soybeans now bring, farmers will be getting very little in the way of subsidies. Any federal money for conservation would be an increase — not a trade off.
Cleland’s out, but that may not have been the news
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last week, Max Cleland declared himself unavailable for an ‘08 rematch with Republican Saxby Chambliss, who grabbed Cleland’s U.S. Senate seat in 2002.
This was not so much news as a confirmation of the status quo. Cleland had long told friends that he was through with elected politics — except to help other Democrats, which he did to great success this year.
The real news may be on the other side of the coin. Chambliss has long been viewed as a shoo-in for a vice presidential slot in 2008. His Georgia roots could serve as a regional balance to any ticket-leader from the North or Midwest. He’s telegenic, and he’s got a commanding view of international affairs from his seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
All that may have changed in November, one of our well-read Republican friends pointed out this morning. If Republicans are to have any chance — slim though it may be — of taking back the Senate in two years, Chambliss may obliged to keep his seat.
As red as Georgia may be, an open Senate seat is still a gamble — and would drain valuable GOP resources.
On the road in Iowa: Bayh on Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Des Moines, Iowa— One of us, the one with only slightly less seniority, has been been sent here on the specious theory that journalists, like peas, travel best when frozen.
Iowa is not Georgia, nor vice versa.
For one, Iowa has a better class of roadkill. Possums here have been superceded by unfortunate pheasants, blown by icy winds from their hiding places in decimated cornfields into the line of traffic.
Seventy-mile-an-hour truckers on I-80 discourage those who would harvest birds lining the shoulders of the interstate.
Another, more important difference can be found in this newborn political season, the embryonic days of the ’08 presidential race.
In Georgia, few Republicans have openly parted ways with President Bush on Iraq. Even Democrats speak about the war in the Middle East with studied circumlocution.
People are not so kind in Iowa. It is a topic of fervent conversation among Democrats. The most loyal Republicans shake their heads.
Keep in mind that Iowa has a history of isolationism, and was an early source of opposition to the Vietnam War.
Evan Bayh, the U.S. senator from Indiana with ’08 ambitions, was here on Monday, talking to a small group of business leaders. It was Bayh’s ninth trip here in the last year, and followed the formal entry of Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack into the race by only a few days.
Nothing rivals the intimacy of presidential politics in Iowa and its sister harbinger, New Hampshire.
The Bayh event consisted of four tables, each seating eight, surrounded by five TV cameras, two still photographers, and yet another taking pictures with a cell phone. (The latter was a TV reporter who wanted to give his station a leg up on his station’s web site.)
Bayh spoke of education, energy dependency, bipartisanship, and the federal deficit. Bayh is not a passionate fellow — he is, after all, selling Midwestern restraint.
What ardor Bahy had, he reserved for Iraq. His money lines:
— “We can be both tough and smart. We tried tough alone. That’s not good enough.”
— On what Bush should be saying: “I’m not in the business, as President of the United States, of asking our brave boys and girls, to die for people who are unable or unwilling to get their own act together…I’m not going to ask people to die to prevent the inevitable.”
Here and here are two Iraq sound bites from his speech. Pardon the pen-scratching. It’s the sound of a reporter at work.
Newt Gingrich, freely speaking on free speech
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You’ve no doubt heard about the stir that former House speaker Newt Gingrich, in the midst of a non-campaign for the ‘08 GOP nomination for president, has caused with his New Hampshire comments suggesting that free speech may have to be curtailed in order to fight terrorism.
Said Gingrich last week: “Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people.”
Many liberals have expressed outrage. Then there’s the web site that says Gingrich “proposes to turn the U.S. into a police state.”
Not so leftish, that one. It belongs to the John Birch Society.
A tightening race? Too, too soon to tell
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As evidence that the Republican presidential nomination race is wide open at this early stage, a South Carolina Republican we know told us the other day that he’d just received a call from Rep. Duncan Hunter, who was in the state to make a speech in Charleston.
When a San Diego congressman most South Carolina Republicans have never heard of is testing the waters and calling up pols in an early primary state, it does argue that a lot still has to be thrashed out before the ’08 nomination race reaches any clarity.
Still, we long for clarity. Republican strategist and former Newt Gingrich message-shaper Rich Galen was quoted last week as saying the Republican race has become a two-way contest between Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. McCain has had “frontrunner” branded on his brow for some time now, but the week before last, Mitt Romney wasn’t even the frontrunner among Republicans from the Northeast.
Romney has been making big strides lately, notably in the South. He’s signed on Sally Bradshaw, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s chief of staff, and South Carolina GOP strategist Warren Tompkins. The list of Georgians who joined his finance team last week looks like the host committee for a Bush fundraiser at the Reynolds Plantation.
In the chess game of money and influence that the nomination process has become, these early conversions trump any poll numbers that show former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at the head of the GOP pack. And coming on the heels of Sen. George Allen’s defeat in the Virginia Senate race and Sen. Bill Frist’s announcement that he won’t be making a presidential bid after all, Romney’s big moves in the South seem particularly well timed.
It’s tough to scare off the competition, however, when you’re a Mormon governor of Massachusetts attempting to position yourself as the choice of Southern conservatives, and the primaries are more than a year away. So chances are when the Republican presidential candidates have their first South Carolina debate in Columbia next May, McCain and Romney will have plenty of company on stage.
The two-way race for the Democratic nomination was supposed to be between Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and former Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, who bears some comparison with Romney, when you think about it. But that ray of clarity shattered when Warner dropped out of the race in October.
Since then, state Sen. Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta) said last week, “I’ve been just lost. I haven’t even gotten off the ground yet.” But Reed also said he was tremendously impressed with Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who’ll be making the South Carolina leg of his announcement tour Monday, and has been hearing good things about Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana.
Former U.S. Rep. Buddy Darden and former state Sen. Sam Zamarippa are working for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Darden served with in the House before the Republican avalanche of ’94, and Zamarippa is evidence of the appeal Richardson has to Hispanics, perhaps not a huge factor in Georgia but one that could make a difference nationally.
This former two-way race appears headed toward a free-for-all, or you could say, a free-for-all and Hillary.
Sam the Zam sides with the guy from New Mexico
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We’re picking up that state Sen. Sam Zamarripa (D-Atlanta), who’s exiting the state Legislature, will keep his hand in the game by working here for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who’s expected to make an ‘08 bid for the White House.
The two share a deep interest in immigration issues.
While Democratic candidates are dropping in and out of the presidential contest like houseflies — just as Republicans are doing — don’t be surprised if more Georgians make the same choice that Zamarripa has.
The pols won’t change, but their staffs will
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
‘Tis the season for staff changes.
Gov. Sonny Perdue announced the departure of his chief of staff and press secretary last week. On Friday, House Speaker Glenn Richardson announced that his chief of staff, Jay Walker, is departing to take a private sector job.
Walker will continue to work as a consultant until a new CoS is named, according to a press release.
Pick your poison: A statewide sales tax increase, or a regional one
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of the biggest fights of next year’s legislative session began taking shape today, in the posh confines of the Reynolds Plantation in Greensboro, Ga.
We’re told that top legislative leaders — House Speaker Glenn Richardson, Lt. Gov.-elect Casey Cagle, various committee chairmen, state DOT officials, plus U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Sharpsburg) — were there listening to a pitch from Georgians For Better Transportation, the road-building interest group headed by Mike Kenn.
Two competing proposals for addressing the state’s transportation woes have surfaced. GBT is pushing a statewide, one-cent increase in the state sales tax. We’re told they’ve committed to raising millions for a campaign, should the issue come to a referendum.
The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, is behind a regional SPLOST for roads and other transportation needs.
Full story is here.
Says Butler: Let’s make it safe for Democrats to exit the closet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In anticipation of upcoming elections within the state Democratic party, Columbus attorney Jim Butler has sent out a letter to state committee letters warning that it’s make-or-break time for the party — that unless certain, unnamed people get serious, certain other unnamed people may get tired of playing Sisyphus.
“If Democrats can win in Montana, Democrats can win anywhere, including in Georgia,” begins Butler, who has spent much effort and treasure on party causes. January will see an election for a new party chairman, but Butler says he’s not angling for the job.
The entire letter can be found at blogfordemocracy.org, but here’s the gist of it:
The truth is that in most suburban and rural areas, it is ‘socially unacceptable’ to profess oneself as a Democrat. In most PTAs and Sunday schools in this state, folks won’t admit they are Democrats, even if they are.
In most deer hunting camps, bass fishing tournaments, and NASCAR races, admitted Democrats are rare as hen’s teeth. For a clear majority of Georgians, voting Democratic is something they mostly keep quiet about, if they do it at all.
That’s the truth. That’s our problem. Everything we do should be calculated to solve that problem. We cannot afford any longer to let the Republicans choose the battlefields and define the terms of engagement. We have to reach out, and by so doing, empower ourselves to ‘rebrand’ ourselves.
Now is the time to do some dramatic things, some symbolic things, to prove to all Georgians that the Republican caricature of Georgia Democrats is false.
I am not a candidate for party chair and will neither run nor serve. But I do know we need change. All i can do as a Democrat is urge you not to vote for anyone who fails to address the core problem confronting us but who, instead, ignores it. If the state committee continues the course of the past, you will lose a lot of people who want to help in the future.
We confront a great opportunity. Mostly what we have to do is quit helping the Republicans characterize what Democrats are all about and are for. The ‘flip side’ of that great opportunity is this: If we choose to ignore the chance, a lot of folks who have worked hard feeling they were pushing a heavy weight uphill may give up.
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