Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2007 > January > 19
Friday, January 19, 2007
Quick, Mr. Mondale, duck!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In Athens to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Jimmy Carter administration, former veep Walter Mondale had some harsh words today for current Vice President Dick Cheney.
“If I had done as vice president what this vice president has done, Carter would have thrown me out of there,” Mondale said.
Little did Mondale know that Cheney was nearby. Not exactly within shotgun range, but within a short ‘copter hop.
Cheney staffers confirmed that their boss was hunting in Georgia today. They didn’t narrow it down, but we’re told the vice president was at a spread near Albany owned by Atlanta businessman Virgil Williams.
The race for Democratic chairman breaks into the open
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columbus attorney Jim Butler has churned out another letter on the race to replace Bobby Kahn as chairman of the state Democratic party.
Butler doesn’t name names, but it sounds like he’s dissing one of the candidates — Michael Berlon, the current chairman of the Gwinnett Democratic organization, who has the support of some of the state’s top labor leaders.
Go to the jump for the entire letter.
Subject: The main thing Georgia Democrats have to fear is … Georgia Democrats
Demographic and political trends strongly suggest that Democrats should be able to return to power by the 2010 elections, if not before.
Certainly it appears that Bushism may relegate the Republicans to Hoover days, and Americans’ revulsion about the Bushist mismanagement of foreign policy, domestic policy, fiscal policy, and trade policy will eventually percolate in to Georgians’ views.
Perdue’s legacy of inaction and negative actions won’t be much better, if any.
I can’t see much standing in the way of a brighter future for Democrats and all Georgia citizens other than Democrats’ own failure to seize the opportunities to broaden the appeal of the Georgia Democratic Party and its candidates.
One of the candidates for Party Chair has advocated separating the Party from elected Democratic officials. That’s very unwise and counter-productive, in my view.
It reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of past Democratic history in Georgia (when the relationship between the Party and elected officials was based upon the fact Democrats controlled the state and the fact there was no really organized Democratic party, nor much need for one).
It also reflects a failure to understand fundamental truths about fundraising. Such a Party organization will simply not be able to raise money effectively. Money isn’t everything in politics, as we all know and have been reminded in recent years, but it is nonetheless important.
In the first place, who knows more about how to get Democrats elected to office than someone who has managed to get elected to office in Georgia as a Democrat? Not many of the rest of us, that’s for sure.
More importantly, it is clear beyond doubt that most county party organizations need to be reconstituted, and the obvious most logical place to start is with elected Democratic officials in each county.
State Party officials should go to them and enlist their help in reconstituting the County party. The goal should be to make being a Democrat in that county socially acceptable to a broad cross section of the community.
What are we missing in most counties? Everyone knows the answer to that. Elected Sheriffs, County Commissioners, Tax Commissioners, and Clerks can, if they will, encourage and enlist local business folk and others widely respected in the community to become the local ‘face of the party’.
The experience of Democrats in western states should show us the way. Pick the target groups who have not been willing to consider voting for Democrats. Become acceptable to them, and you cobble together a majority of the votes.
In much of Georgia, many voters today will simply not even contemplate voting for someone with “Democrat” beside their name. THAT is the main issue. That is what Georgia Democrats must overcome. I hope the State Committee will elect as State Officers folks with whom a broader cross section of Georgians can readily identify.
Jim Butler
Columbus GA
How to create demand for a constitutional amendment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Let’s talk about what could be the underlying, cold-blooded politics behind state Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson’s bill to permit disabled students to obtain state vouchers for use in other public schools, or private ones.
The Savannah lawmaker calls them scholarships, but let’s try to operate without the varnish. From what we hear, S.B. 10 has a good chance to pass first the Senate, then the House.
Cast your mind back to Gov. Sonny Perdue’s several efforts to pass his “faith-based initiative.” He says his proposed amendment to the state Constitution is necessary to protect the state’s current contracts with religious institutions that provide social services. Orphanages, half-way houses and such.
Time after time, Perdue’s attempts have failed to receive the mandatory two-thirds vote in both chambers.
Failure has come partly because the education lobby has persuaded enough lawmakers that the proposed amendment is really an effort to put state vouchers for religious schools on the table. As of now, the state Constitution won’t permit that.
But the measure has also failed because the governor hasn’t been able to demonstrate a pressing need for his faith-based initiative. Protecting an unthreatened status quo doesn’t stir the blood.
Now comes S.B. 10.
Suppose, as is likely, the bill passes and Perdue signs it. Very quickly, we’d have the test case of a disabled student who wants to attend a Catholic high school or a conservative Christian academy. State money would be going to a religious institution — with proselytizing a legitimate, perhaps unavoidable part of the curriculum.
Perhaps there’s a lawsuit, perhaps not. Either way, suddenly we’d have a law that’s at odds with the state Constitution.
And just as suddenly, there’s a real demand for Perdue’s faith-based initiative.
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A last word, and a last needle in the Bobby Kahn doll
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After the dismissal of the ethics complaint against House Speaker Richardson, Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) unleashed his vocabulary on state Democratic chairman Bobby Kahn, who filed the complaint.
Said Johnson: “The Joint Legislative Ethics Committee must not allow itself to be used for partisan political purposes. The fact that the Chairman of a political party makes vague accusations against a leader of the other party on the weekend before the inauguration and the opening day of the session clearly indicates the motivation behind the charge. It should insult the people of Georgia and embarrass those who take the political process seriously.”
But legislators shouldn’t take the process so seriously that they’re prohibited from making one last, nearly hidden jab at the Democratic provocateur.
The letter announcing the dismissal was addressed to Kahn, as “chairman, Democrat Party of Georgia.”
Not the Democratic Party of Georgia. It’s a slight that Republicans love to use.
Or maybe it was just a typo.
