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Monday, October 15, 2007
‘Irregularities’ and ‘chaos’ require new election of Fulton County GOP chairman, says report
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A report handed to the state committee of the Georgia GOP recommends that last spring’s re-election of the Fulton County Republican chairman Mike Dvorscak be invalidated.
The entire report can be found here. Copies have been sent to members of the state committee, with the requirement that they cast by Oct. 27 — via e-mail, snail mail or fax — their votes on whether to accept the finding or not.
Remember that Fulton is the only county GOP organization with a $2 million endowment.
This is the gist of the report:
“As a result of …significant irregularities and because of the extreme chaos during balloting, the Committee unanimously concludes that to insure the integrity of the election of the chairman of the Fulton County Republican party, another election be conducted.”
On why we’re at a loss for words
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Next weekend, a special subset of the Republican Governors Association, convened by chairman Sonny Perdue, will gather at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge at Reynolds Plantation in Greensboro, Ga.
This is part of Perdue’s effort to wrest control of the GOP’s image-reformulation process from national types.
Zell Miller will be there. Newt Gingrich will lead a discussion on health care. The recently unemployed Karl Rove might show up for Sunday lunch.
Four governors from the South and its borders will be there: Perdue of Georgia; Mark Sanford of South Carolina; Charlie Crist of Florida; and Matt Blunt of Missouri.
But alas and alack, we won’t be there. The Georgia press has been barred. The gathering is of no interest to local political reporters, RGA spokesman Chris Schrimpf assured us.
Only a single journalist, from the hallowed and Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, will be admitted, Schrimpf said. And even this reporter will be restricted to the sessions on health care.
No Zell and no Karl for him.
Now, you’d think that this lost opportunity to spend a weekend on the links in east Georgia would upset your working press. We polled the crew here at the Capitol, and it does not. They understand.
A discussion of major national affairs by major national figures requires major national journalists. It can’t be done otherwise.
You see, we don’t just have a water shortage in Georgia. We have a word shortage — and we journalists are on strict rations.
This is why so many articles in this newspaper and other Georgia publications carry the names of two people. Double bylines conserve words — much like showering together saves water.
Now, before you panic, Georgia has a reasonable supply of ordinary, everyday nouns and verbs suitable for describing a bank heist or a pennant race or foot-tapping in a men’s room. As long as we’re careful, there should be plenty to go around.
But Perdue and the RGA understand that what this state lacks are the big, sizable, Sunday-go-to-church words — and the resulting phrases — necessary to discuss important topics such as health care. (Scientists blame soil depletion and the lack of crop rotation. Decades later, we still suffer from the excesses of King Cotton.)
As usual, Newt will bring his well-exercised vocabulary from the suburbs of Washington. Serious words have become so thick around Gingrich’s house that local hunters are set upon them, to thin the ranks. Sonny Perdue has gone to Japan this week, and will come back with cartons of imported dictionaries, just for the occasion.
And that Wall Street Journal reporter? If Delta doesn’t lose them, he’ll bring his supply of big words from New York, checked in three alligator-hide valises with polished brass fittings. He’s promised to drop off any leftovers, as a favor to his less fortunate Georgia cousins.
Buford Dam as the next Fort Sumter
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On the radio this morning, Neal Boortz is urging Gov. Sonny Perdue to seize control of Lake Lanier from the U.S. Corps of Engineers, to keep the federalists from sending more water downriver.
We think he is speaking tongue-in-cheek.
But if he’s serious, Perdue may not be the right fellow for that particular job — aside from the fact that the governor’s in Japan on a trade mission. Open revolt sounds more like the bailiwick of Ray McBerry, who ran against Perdue in the 2006 Republican primary.
McBerry received 48,498 votes, or 11.6 percent.
In Chattanooga earlier this month, McBerry was a Georgia delegate to the Second North American Secession Convention.
Among the convention’s findings: “The States of the American union are and of right ought to be, free and self-governing.”
Yes, a seccessionist can still get nearly 50,000 votes in Georgia. Which gives some context to the John Lewis post just below.
‘America is readier to elect a white woman than it is a black man’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
No doubt you saw the other shoe that dropped after Hillary Clinton left town with John Lewis on Friday.
The next day, the pair went to Alabama, where the Alabama Democratic Conference — an assembly of African-Americans within the party — also endorsed Clinton in the race for the White House.
We’ve had others tell us before that, among black voters, the contest between Clinton and Barack Obama pits an African-American’s optimism against his or her sense of realism.
Joe Reed, the long-time chairman of the ADC, as much as confirmed it.
Here’s his take, as noted by the Birmingham News:
Reed… said he urged the organization to support Clinton over Obama. The ADC was founded in part to champion the election of more blacks to public office.
“We’re hungry for victory, and by we, I mean Democrats, black ones and white ones,” Reed said. “I think Hillary has the best chance at victory.”
Pressed to say why he thought a white woman had a better chance at the White House than a black man, Reed snickered.
“You just said it. She’s white. I think America is readier to elect a white woman than it is a black man.”
That was much the same reason Reed gave in 1988 when ADC endorsed Walter Mondale over the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination.
Reed said that while Alabama and America have come a long way in race relations since that time, it hasn’t come far enough to elect Obama.
On the same topic, the New York Times had a weekend piece datelined from South Carolina, focusing specifically on black women and their role in that state’s presidential primary. It focuses specifically on the thoughts of beautician Clara Vereen:
“I’ve got enough black in me to want somebody black to be our president,” she said in her tiny beauty shop, an extension of her home, after a visit from an Obama organizer. “I would love that, but I want to be real, too.”
Part of being real, said Ms. Vereen, whom everyone calls Miss Clara, is worrying that a black president would not be safe.
“I fear that they just would kill him, that he wouldn’t even have a chance,” she said as she styled a customer’s hair with a curling iron. One way to protect him, she suggested, would be not to vote for him.
