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Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Vernon Jones at Manuel’s Tavern: Establishing his conservative creds
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Vernon Jones, perhaps a candidate for the U.S. Senate next year, filled the backroom of Manuel’s Tavern on Tuesday evening. It’s hard to say why.
The event was billed as a campaign kick-off. But Jones is still in his “exploratory” mode.
“I am not officially announced. But I tell you what. There’s a man coming, and his name is Vernon Jones,” the non-candidate said.
Much of the night’s dialogue was dedicated to the conservative philosophy of the CEO of DeKalb County. Yet the bar, a Democratic stronghold, wasn’t exactly the ideal venue for an African-American trying to establish his street creds with the white bourgeois belly of Georgia’s political middle.
Jones was introduced by Shelley Wynter, the conservative WAOK radio talk show host who offered DeKalb County’s AAA bond rating as proof of Jones’ familiarity with the right side of the aisle. Wynter stood on a chair to rise above the crowd.
“I don’t care what any pundits say. I don’t care what the little guy says. The money follows DeKalb County,” Wynter said.
Jones followed, with an extemporaneous speech that touched on family, the military, energy and the people outside — African-American demonstrators who called themselves Women Against Vernon’s Violence.
Jones had apparently entered by the tavern’s back door, avoiding the picket line. Even so, he acknowledged the protesters. “That’s what makes this country great,” Jones said. “Now, they’re wrong….”
Jones painted himself as a friend of the Georgia farmer, drawing upon his family’s farm in North Carolina. His father was a World War II vet, mistreated upon his return home. Jones’ brothers also served.
The non-candidate’s message on Iraq was mixed. “They were not given a clear-cut strategy,” Jones said of the troops. “The mission was not accomplished.”
Even so, Jones said, he does not support reducing funding for the war effort.
“Now, that’s being conservative,” the DeKalb CEO said of himself.
‘Wrong place, wrong time, and in the wrong numbers’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just before 10 a.m., we got a call from James Marlow, the new Democratic candidate for the 10th District congressional race in east Georgia.
He’d just finished breaking the news of his candidacy to the hometowners in Lincolton at the steps of the county courthouse. He counted nearly 60 witnesses, which in a town with four stoplights constitutes a throng.
“I just feel a calling to serve. I know that sounds a little corny,” Marlow said.
He’s a 46-year-old native, whose father served as mayor of Lincolnton. The son rode the Internet. You might remember the younger Marlow as the founder of AnythingSouthern.com, which was to be a way to get information on, well, anything Southern — food, religion, entertainment, the works.
The site was one of the many dot-com bubbles that popped.
Most recently, Marlow was a sales director for Yahoo Inc. He’s now a full-time candidate.
He’s eager to talk about health care, education, and the creation of good jobs. “Iraq is obviously an issue,” he said.
As we said yesterday, it’s clear that Democrats think it’s to their advantage to talk about the Middle East in this race.
Marlow says he’s an eager defender of America, but is also a defender of American troops. In the latter category, he places decent treatment for wounded soldiers and armor for those in battle.
It also means — and this may become his catch phrase — “not putting troops in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong numbers.” Competency, in other words.
As for those who think the Tenth too Republican to elect him, Marlow points out that Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin, Attorney General Thurbert Baker, and Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond all carried the district. All, of course, were Democrats.
They were incumbents, too. But give the guy a chance to make his own case.
In many campaigns, the candidate — or those behind him — have a Plan B. We’re not saying this is the case, but Marlow does fit a certain profile. Suppose the first-time candidate doesn’t win — but does well enough in a tough race to raise eyebrows. Then one would have to consider him a possibility in next year’s U.S. Senate race.
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Wait a minute. Go back to that part about George Bush
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a phoner with Tim Bryant of WGAU in Athens, U.S. Johnny Isakson declared himself no fan of the movement toward an early presidential primary that could settle Democratic and Republican hash by early February.
Bryant was kind enough to send us the sound, which you can get here.
In summary, Isakson said:
“Personally, I don’t think it’s good to put them all so early and have the nominee determined nine or ten months before the election. Just think back to recent presidential primaries.
“The implosion of Howard Dean, George — if you had an early primary, George Bush probably wouldn’t be president today. If you had an early primary, Howard Dean probably would have been the [Democratic] nominee. It’s kind of a winner-take-all, one-day national lottery,” Isakson said.
“I think having a protracted period of time, in the past it’s been six months, January through June, where the nation went and had primaries every couple of weeks around the country, it really was a good test of the candidates that aired out all the issues,” he said.
“That is a lot better pace and that is a lot better process than having two candidates isolated and exposed for 10 months when anything could happen.”
And Linder dashes the dreams of Republicans clinging to the rungs below him
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After the rally in downtown Atlanta on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. John Linder said he and radio guru Neal Boortz are working on a paperback sequel to their wildly successful “The Fair Tax Book.”
There’s no publication date yet, but Linder said he didn’t think it would take long to pull the necessary information together.
He described the next book as one that will “take the most urgent questions [about the FairTax idea] and answer them.” It’s a response, he said, to some of the misinformation that has been put out on the issue.
There have also been some faint rumblings that Linder might call it quits in Congress. He’ll have served 16 years in 2008. So we asked Linder if he plans to run for another term.
His answer, in a clipped, Linderesque tone, was “yes.”
That wind you just felt was the collective sigh of a dozen or so state lawmakers with ambitions of their own.
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Fair Tax language changes to fit new, Democratic realities
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The fervor is still there, the goals are still the same, but was interested to note the little shifts in emphasis at the Fair Tax rally at the Depot in downtown Atlanta on Tuesday morning.
For starters, while the Fair Tax movement is still primarily a Republican thing — Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Reps. John Linder and Tom Price, and radio host Herman Cain spoke — the rally had a more bipartisan tone than similar events in the past.
“If there’s one issue that can heal the divisions between the right and left, it’s the Fair Tax. It is good for all,” said Ken Hoagland, communications director for FairTax.org, the national umbrella organization.
Linder even allowed as how Democrat Charlie Rangel, chairman of the House ways and means committee, had remarked that if those who want to replace income taxes with a national sales tax could show that it wouldn’t affect the poor, he’d be for it.
An open-ended commitment, sure, but the fact it was worth mentioning indicates the recognition that with the Democrats now in the majority in Congress, the Fair Tax idea has to be couched in terms that appeal to both sides.
Cain told supporters this was “a movement that only a few of our elected officials have made the commitment to get out in front of,” but it’s clear supporters would like for a few more Democrats to be included in that number.
Of course, it hasn’t been that way in the past. Democrats in races in South Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere have bashed Republicans for supporting what they call a huge tax increase.
But Hoagland said if that happens again, the Fair Tax forces would defend themselves without the benefit of any special tax category organizations to fund their efforts.
Fair Tax “will not go down the road of political action committees or 527s, because they divide the public,” he said.
Chambliss showed another shift in emphasis when he spoke of how the country was “in the throes of a real economic crisis.” He spoke of the positive impact the Fair Tax would have on the trade deficit. There’s a tax cost of 22 percent built into the cost of American goods going to China, he said.
The plan he has introduced in the Senate would bring that down significantly, the senator said.
On the bright side, there’s that carrot-and-cottage cheese diet to look forward to
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The House is putting out official word, through his family, that state Rep. John Lunsford (R-McDonough) underwent cardiac catheterization on Monday, after experiencing chest pains, but is doing well.
Word from the family is that they found a 40 percent blockage in one artery. Lunsford was expected to be discharged at noon today.
No immediate word on the length of his at-home recuperation.
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Fitch says it doesn’t like TABOR-like legislation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dick Pettys and InsiderAdvantage report that a Senate measure passed last month, calling for a constitutionally mandated spending cap, has raised the eyebrows of one of the financial rating agencies that helps determine the interest rate on state-issued bonds.
Pettys says Fitch Financial recently hosted a conference call with state money managers. One participant said the firm warned that the Taxpayer Protection Act wouldn’t immediately threaten the state’s AAA bond rating, but that it might in the future.
It’s not likely that House GOP leaders will move the measure toward the necessary two-thirds vote on the floor. Speaker Glenn Richardson jealously guards his chamber’s current constitutional advantage when it comes to budget matters.
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We knew this place had lost that South Dakota feeling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Associated Press has done everyone a favor today by putting into perspective last month’s decision by the state House to bar reporters from the chamber floor.
Georgia joined Kansas this year in adding restrictions, after several years in which few - if any - legislative leaders moved to restrict access, according to the AP report by Greg Bluestein.
In Georgia, House leaders said decorum was the issue. But the restrictions came amidst increasingly critical news coverage of several influential members of the chamber.
Legislative leaders in at least 38 states have restricted reporters from accessing lawmakers on the floors of at least one chamber during a floor session.
Says the AP:
There’s only a handful of legislative chambers where reporters are allowed to walk on the floor and freely speak with lawmakers while they’re in session. They include Nebraska’s one-of-a-kind single-chamber legislature and both chambers of the legislative bodies in Delaware, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota.
Many of the states that do allow journalists on the floor limit them while they’re there.
In Connecticut, reporters are allowed on the Senate floor but can’t pass a brass rail. At the North Carolina statehouse, reporters are barred from speaking with legislators during debate, but they’re restricted to a cordoned-off area on one side of the chamber where lawmakers sometimes come to visit. And in the Missouri House, reporters aren’t allowed to walk along the desks, but they can access a side area and interview legislators there.
Often, the restrictions have led to peculiar tactics. Journalists in Alaska are allowed on the floor of both chambers but they cannot address legislators and can only respond to them, leading to a strange sort of dance as reporters wander around to try to land interviews.
“The vast majority of legislative chambers, movement by anyone is usually controlled,” said Brenda Erickson, a researcher for the National Conference of State Legislatures who has studied the procedures. “It’s not uncommon at all.”
Some states have adopted stricter policies. In the South Carolina Senate, where journalists sit on benches at the back of the chamber, a sergeant of arms will reprimand reporters for nodding at legislators or subtly trying to gain their attention.
Reporters covering the Pennsylvania House have been banned from the floor since 1996, prompting most reporters to monitor the debate through closed-circuit TVs. In a 2001 letter asking legislative leaders to revoke the policy, the press corps lamented: “As a practical matter, there is no longer a House press gallery.”
The Kansas move was announced in a memo distributed to reporters by the speaker’s chief of staff, but it was never voted on. Enforcement has somewhat varied, although doormen have been instructed to ban reporters from accessing lawmakers while in session.
Chambliss, Jones show themselves to friends and foes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two candidates for the U.S. Senate make appearances in Atlanta today. Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss participates in a 10:30 a.m. rally at the Georgia Freight Depot, where he and U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-Roswell) will swear fealty to the fair tax.
On the Democratic side, DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones holds a 6 p.m. campaign kick-off at Manuel’s Tavern. We hear a group calling themselves Women Against Vernon’s Violence will be holding a protest outside, to draw attention to Jones’ alleged mistreatment of the opposite sex.
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