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Sunday, July 22, 2007
Second thoughts on Vernon Jones and the race for the U.S. Senate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There are strategists who theorize that certain elected positions, however powerful, have glass ceilings.
The measures that an individual must take to hold onto the office — the arm-twisting, the rug-pulling, the ruthless enforcement of will — create resentments that sabotage any attempt at higher office.
House Speaker Glenn Richardson may be learning this lesson. Less and less is the Republican mentioned as a candidate for governor in 2010.
We may be about to find out whether the same rule also applies to the chief executive officer of DeKalb County government.
For seven stormy years, Vernon Jones has held the upper hand in DeKalb, a political cauldron bubbling in perpetual conflict between black and white, urban and suburban, north and south, Republican and Democrat.
Describing the Democrat’s reign as controversial is like saying Michael Vick demands a winning attitude from his canine squad. It doesn’t quite capture the sense of things.
Vernon Jones isn’t the first opinionated CEO of DeKalb County, a 22-year-old position with immense latitude. That honor forever belongs to a crusty bar-keep, Manuel Maloof.
But on Saturday morning, Jones became the first DeKalb County CEO to make a Democratic run for the U.S. Senate.
On the Marietta Square, Shan Clark, a teacher at Tucker High School, introduced Jones as a “credentialed, Ivy League public administration prodigy.” But he also made a backhand acknowledgement that the dynamics of DeKalb politics are likely to bleed into the statewide race.
“Some say he’s heavy-handed,” Clark said. “Well, I’m sorry. But the Georgia [General] Assembly and Manuel Maloof made the DeKalb County CEO a very powerful office in an attempt to solve mayor-city council management problems. [Jones] sets the monthly agenda. He takes a large role in appointments and project bids, and we have benefited.”
Politics is the continuation of warfare by other means. Two figures who have clashed with Jones, former DeKalb County police chief Eddie Moody and ex-DeKalb prosecutor J. Tom Morgan, have given cash to one of Jones’ opponent, former TV journalist Dale Cardwell. (A third candidate, ecologist Rand Knight, has also declared himself in the race for the Democratic nomination.)
Given the importance of both DeKalb and African-American women in the state Democratic primary — and the fact that he’s the only Democrat in the race with a lengthy political resume — it’s inevitable that particular aspects of Jones’ official and personal behavior will become a topic of much debate.
This first, Democratic phase of the race for U.S. Senate could, in fact, become a kind of third-term re-election bid by Jones.
Isakson: ‘It was all kinds of perfect theater’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Today’s Washington Post includes a nuanced snapshot of last week’s all-night debate in the U.S. Senate over the Iraq war, with Johnny Isakson as its focus:
When Isakson’s turn came, at about 1 a.m., he rubbed his eyes and cleared his throat, and held in his hand a copy of a Georgia newspaper article. It included an interview with Lucy Harris, mother of Noah Harris, a University of Georgia cheerleader who signed up for ROTC after Sept. 11, 2001. He died in Iraq two years ago.
“We’re talking about boots on the ground, real people,” Lucy Harris said in the article, her words recounted on the floor by Isakson. “When I think about my son, who could have done anything with his life … I just don’t want it to be in vain.”
Isakson entered the article into the record, lingered for a little while longer, then left the floor and walked home in the darkness.
