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Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Sonny Perdue and the race to become vice president
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sonny Perdue, who makes an appearance before a U.S. Senate committee today, is running for vice president.
No, wait. That’s ridiculous. No one runs for vice president. Rather, the Georgia governor is displaying himself for vice president.
Perdue’s conversations with journalists have been spotty since his re-election three months ago, so the evidence is mostly circumstantial. But people around him privately tell us we’re on target.
First, look at the Republican side of the ‘08 presidential race. The three leaders — John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani — have two things in common. All are from outside the South. And none of them are likely to whip the GOP’s conservative Christian core into a frenzy of delight.
If the Republican party is to lurch toward the center next year, someone from the South, or with Southern appeal, will be needed to stoke the base. If the GOP nominee is to be McCain or Giuliani, both well-developed voices on international security, that would also argue for someone whose strength is in domestic policy.
Enter a Republican governor. Bob Riley in Alabama, Haley Barbour in Mississippi, Mark Sanford in South Carolina. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, now in the presidential hunt, might qualify. Jeb Bush, who just exited the office in Florida, is a scratch solely because of his last name.
And then there’s Perdue.
As we said, no one runs for vice president. The best one can do is strut down the runway, display the assets, and pray that the electoral vote strategy clicks with the geography and the resume.
Perdue “certainly has to be on anybody’s short list. He’d be on anybody’s list of 10, and he might make some people’s list of five,” said Alec Poitevint, friend of the governor and head of the state GOP.
Perdue has shown national instincts. Remember that he was one of the first Republican figures in the South to separate himself from President Bush after the Hurricane Katrina debacle.
The governor’s winning margin last November, particularly his performance among African-American voters, impressed many out-of-state Republicans.
In December, Perdue inherited the chairmanship of the Republican Governors Association, the largest GOP fund-raising operation outside the Republican National Committee. Two loyal strategists from Georgia now occupy the organization’s top posts.
The outcome of three governor’s races in 2007 — in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi — could say much about Perdue’s future as a running mate.
Skeptics might point to Perdue’s lightweight legislative priorities this year — the emphasis on bass fishing, for instance. And the way he entangled himself in the topic of Sunday sales of alcohol. Then there are the governor’s real estate dealings.
But the GOP nominee for vice president won’t be selected for another 17 months. That’s plenty of time for Perdue to resolve his Oaky Woods problem, or perhaps mitigate it, and still establish himself as a policy wonk.
Thursday’s appearance before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, on the all-important topic of children’s health insurance, is a chance for Perdue to earn national credentials on the topic.
(That sound you just heard was the sputtering of a former lieutenant governor. Mark Taylor based much of his Democratic campaign to oust Perdue on the trims the Republican governor made to PeachCare, Georgia’s health insurance program for kids.)
Last week, a wild rumor broke. The Georgia governor had been spotted in Iowa. It wasn’t true, but we had to pose the natural question.
Was Perdue running for president? The rational answer would have been as follows: “No. The governor’s wife would shoot him dead if he dragged her to Washington.”
Instead, Perdue’s communicator gave a well-rehearsed non-answer. “The governor is currently focused on governing in the state of Georgia,” says spokesman Dan McLagan.
That’s the language of courtship. By the subtle rules of the game, a fellow can’t be a vice-presidential contender if he rules out an interest in the presidency.
Talk about this amongst yourselves. We’ll pick out the best of the responses and highlight them in a separate posting Thursday afternoon.
The contracts keep on coming
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of the fun things about Newt-watching is that he sounds most presidential at just those times when he’s working hardest to deny any interest in a Pennsylvania Avenue address. That was the mode the former speaker was in Wednesday when he spoke to the Buckhead Coalition.
Gingrich told the annual gathering that he and former Zoo Atlanta director Terry Maple have a book coming out this fall titled “Contract With the Earth,” which will outline “an entrepreneurial, science and technology-based environmentalism.” Al Gore, call the office.
He was bubbling with ideas springing out of the Center for Health Transformation and a new project, American Solutions, which he described as an attempt to put a fresh new set of policy ideas into the hands of the nation’s 511,000 elected officials.
“I think that’s far more obscure and far more abstract than running for president, but I think it’s a lot more important,” Gingrich said.
Invigorating, as always. And delivered with just a little bit of wiggle room.
On Ralph Reed: Remember that he’s still got an IOU with Rudy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This tidbit is in today’s Hotline:
When we asked Team Romney about whether Ralph Reed was joining as an adviser, we received a denial. The Politico’s Jonathan Martin coaxed a more equivocal answer out of Kevin Madden (Romney’s mouthpiece): “He doesn’t have a formal role in our campaign organization.”
Most likely, what Reed does will depend on what Rudy Giuliani does. Remember that Reed, the former GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, enlisted the ex-mayor of New York in last year’s unsuccessful bid for office.
Then there’s that Giuliani memo showing Bernie Marcus, the Home Depot founder, as one of Rudy’s main guys.
Lobbyist alert: Nurses get ready to draw down on docs, again
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last year, we thought we had a settlement between doctors and nurses with advanced degrees — with the result that nurses were given authority to write prescriptions.
But the legislation gave the State Medical Board, dominated by physicians, the responsibility of writing the rules to say under what circumstances nurses should be able to write script.
In essence, doctors said in rules posted last year, those circumstances will be very, very narrow.
Nurses — and some legislators — declared the legislation had been gutted by Georgia’s medical bureaucracy.
Doctors say high standards are the issues. Nurses say this is an occupational fight. Physicians are afraid stand-alone clinics, heavily staffed with script-writing nurses, will steal away the easy business, they say.
Late Tuesday, state Rep. Debbie Buckner (D-Junction City) introduced a resolution pointing the finger of shame at the State Medical Board, for violating the spirit of the legislation.
She has Republican co-sponsors, including Mickey Channell of Greensboro, who gave Community Health Commissioner Rhonda Medows what-for over the issue during budget hearings this month.
The medical board meets Thursday and Friday of this week. If no settlement results, Georgia’s medical community goes to the mattresses. Again.
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