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Saturday, August 4, 2007
The candidate who wins South Carolina gets the drumstick
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I can’t pretend to have made it down to the Democratic state committee meeting down in Macon today, but I can tell you one bit of major news coming out of it:
State Democrats have laid plans to hold a juiced-up, massive Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner timed to go off a week before the Feb. 5 tsunami of presidential primaries in Georgia and 22 other states.
It’s a delicately timed thing. The dinner will be Jan. 30, one day after the South Carolina (and Florida?) primary. “So people should be in the neighborhood,” said communications director Martin Matheny.
At the same time, it’s also seven days out from Feb. 5. In terms of delegates, Georgia can’t compete with California, New York, and Texas. The candidates left in the contest will want to spend their last days there. But early in the week, perhaps they can spare an hour or so for at least one more state in the Deep South.
Presidential candidates won’t debate, but will be asked to speak. As if you could stop them.
The chief object of the dinner has always been to raise money for the Democratic party’s annual budget. Last May, tickets to the dinner were $200.
But Matheny said they’d like next year’s event to be something of a turn-out contest among whatever campaigns have survived Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Party officials want to pack a large hall, and so will drop the ticket price to $100, possibly lower.
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