Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2007 > September > 24
Monday, September 24, 2007
A Grady deal is on…..
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority is to be meeting at this hour, and here’s what we’re told will come out of it:
An 11-member committee will be assigned the task of planning the transition of Grady Memorial Hospital to an institution ruled by a non-profit management corporation. They’ll give themselves a 60-day deadline.
Fulton County will assign two members, DeKalb County will appoint another two. The business community gets two. And the Grady community gets a pair as well. House Speaker Glenn Richardson, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, and Gov. Sonny Perdue name one representative each.
The involvement of the three state officials is important — not just the fact that they’ll have a seat at the table, but that the speaker, the governor and the lieutenant governor all have separate seats.
Perhaps it’s recognition that House Speaker Glenn Richardson was the first in the state Capitol to go public on the issue. We’re also informed by reliable people that he doesn’t always agree with the governor, or the lieutenant governor, but this is just a rumor.
‘The piano, it sounds like a carnival, and the microphone smells like a beer’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Travis Fain of the Macon Telegraph’s Lucid Idiocy has posted a snippet of Gov. Sonny Perdue tapping his inner Billy Joel while at the keyboard of a player piano.
The video is from last week’s fund-raiser for Rick Goddard, the retired Air Force general who’s running for U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall’s seat. The governor gave a fulsome endorsement of Goddard, ignoring the fact that Mac Collins is also in the GOP primary.
Begala: Hillary and Mitt in the final chase, and Zell is still the best
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Democratic political consultant Paul Begala, who partnered with James Carville to make a governor out of Zell Miller and a president out of Bill Clinton, is teaching a course at the University of Georgia law school this semester.
Over the weekend, Athens radio talk show host Tim Bryant of WGAU (1340AM) sent us this sound clip of Begala’s thoughts on the ’08 presidential race. Hillary Clinton’s a sure thing on the Democratic side, Mitt Romney (who knew?) has the edge among Republicans.
And Zell is the best governor Georgia ever had. That came right out of the fellow’s mouth.
The Chambliss comics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) continues to take flak for a TV campaign ad he ran in 2002 against Democratic incumbent and Vietnam vet Max Cleland. But this time it’s funny. Or, at least, in the funny papers.
The Chambliss ad was mentioned in the Sunday edition of Doonesbury, written by Garry Trudeau, that featured White House aides discussing which political opponent most successfully smeared by former White House political guru Karl Rove - including two former military men who were portrayed as dishonorable and cowardly.
When President Bush first ran for governor of Texas, a rumor was spread that his opponent, Democrat Anne Richards, was a lesbian. Then there were 2000 presidential campaign rumors in South Carolina about the private life of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). And, of course, there’s the “swiftboating” of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a Vietnam vet, during the 2004 race.
One comic aide agrees these were all pretty good. But, he adds, they were “not as purely Rovian as the Max Cleland smear! Who but Karl could redefine a disabled war hero as a sniveling defeatist?”
Umm. That would be the Chambliss campaign. Chambliss and his former campaign aides all say Rove had nothing to do with the ad that showed pictures of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Cleland. The campaign came up with the idea.
