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Saturday, April 14, 2007
And by the way — when is Hillary coming to town?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Crowd-size estimates are notoriously imprecise. But by just about any count, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s Saturday rally at Georgia Tech was unprecedented. And it gives you as good an indication as any we’ve seen of just how front-loaded the next presidential election is going to be.
Georgia Tech Fire Marshall Michael Hodgson - who had the benefit of a good vantage point - gave the official estimate of 20,000. Some who were there estimated the crowd size as considerably less.
But a crowd of even half that size would be comparable to the biggest presidential rallies this city has seen, unless you count Michael Dukakis’s 1988 acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
According to newspaper files, Jesse Jackson drew an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 at a rally in February of that year. Bill Clinton drew an estimated 10,000 at an Oct. 25, 1996 rally. And while we can’t find a crowd estimate, we recall his Nov. 1, 1992 appearance at Decatur High School Stadium as being that big also.
But bear in mind that two of those events were held during the height of the general election campaign, and Jackson’s rally was in the early stages of the 1988 primary season.
What makes Saturday’s turnout remarkable is the timing. We’re more than nine months away from the Georgia presidential primary, assuming it’s moved up to Feb. 5, and a whopping year and a half from the general election.
There’s some danger in this. Campaigns can burn out early. And we note that Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin was not among a group of some 75 elected officials who met with Obama before the rally.
But you can bet that any other candidate in either party would give away a significant portion of their warchest for this kind of public enthusiasm.
Notes from the Dome: Bills dear to the Religious Right still live
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cleaning up on a few items from Friday’s session of the Legislature:
— State Sen. David Shafer’s adult stem cell bill looked like it had hit a wall this week when it didn’t get a vote at the committee level. We spoke with House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons Island), who said the stall is merely temporary.
“We should get that bill out,” Keen predicted. Shafer’s bill would encourage the construction of a cord-blood bank
S.B. 148 would require all state hospitals by June 30, 2009, to inform pregnant women that they can donate placenta, umbilical cords and amniotic fluid to either public or private banks for medical research. Georgians who contribute to “non-destructive” stem cell research would be eligible for a state tax break.
The biomedical industry has opposed the bill — they say its language takes an unfair swipe at embryonic stem cell research. Keen said all sides are working on that issue.
— H.B. 147, which dwells on the issue of sonograms for women seeking abortions, is headed for a conference committee after the House disagreed to changes in the bill made by the Senate.
State Rep. James Mills (R-Gainesville) said the Senate had inserted language to make the sonograms more cumpulsory, and thus less constitutional.
— Also, the House gave final passage to H.R. 102, the measure that gives Robert Clark a $1.2 million annuity to compensate him for the 23 years he spent in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
The House had to approve a minor change made by the Senate. The measure now goes to the governor.
