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DEL.ICIO.USLanier joins race against Chambliss
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There’s another Democrat in the race to unseat Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss this fall.
Josh Lanier of Statesboro, a Vietnam vet and former staffer to Georgia political icon Sen. Herman Talmadge, said Friday that he’s joining the Democratic primary race in hopes of taking on Chambliss in the fall.
Lanier said in an interview that he wouldn’t formally announce his candidacy until after Georgia’s Feb. 5 presidential primary.
“I figured that if I don’t do this now, I’ll regret it,” said Lanier, who has had an exploratory out scouting the political terrain over the past three months.
Lanier spent about 30 years working in Washington, first for the Army, then Talmadge’s office. He worked for several associations and then as a private consultant before he helped found LightStream Technologies, which developed water and air cleaning technologies.
Lanier faces at least three other candidates in the July 15 Democratic primary: DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones, former TV reporter Dale Cardwell and environmental scientist Rand Knight.
At a time when voters are expressing frustration bordering on contempt for Congress - and Washington in general - Lanier will bill his campaign as a referendum on the corrupting influence of money on politics, particularly campaign finance reform.
“We’re going to lead by example,” he said. “There’ll be some very unique and unusual things we’re going to be doing in this campaign.”
One of the key decisions Lanier made about his campaign is that, unlike any other contenders, he will raise money according to restrictive campaign-finance proposal that, because Congress hasn’t passed it yet, no other candidates will held to.
“What we want to do is make Georgia ground zero for campaign finance reform,” he said. I won’t play the money game. I have spent exactly zero hours dialing for dollars.”
The proposed law, the Fair Elections Now Act, would require Lanier to test his support by generating $5 contributions, first from 500 people and then 4,000 statewide. His largest contributions would limited to $100.
Meanwhile, Chambliss has $4 million in the bank as of last September, the latest campaign-finance documents available.
“I may have to have a sign on the back my car that says, ‘Will campaign for gas money,’” Lanier said.
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Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Craig
January 25, 2008 6:24 PM | Link to this
Sign me up, Josh. A chance to vote for a true war hero.
By snd
January 25, 2008 8:21 PM | Link to this
www.friendsofjoshlanier.com
By GiG
January 25, 2008 9:10 PM | Link to this
Sign me up too!! Josh Lanier is a true statesman and the best choice for US Senate.
And wouldn’t it be awesome to show the rest of the US that campaign finance reform can work!
Go Josh!!
By FrmrRepub
January 25, 2008 9:39 PM | Link to this
Thank heavens! I’ve been hoping this would happen. I am a happy camper. Yes indeed - Go Josh!!
By RJ
January 26, 2008 12:07 AM | Link to this
Some unsolicited advice. All candidates opposing Chambliss need to focus on his failed performance rather than what’s personally important to them, e.g., campaign finance reform. People in Georgia are hurting as a result of the policies he has pushed and supported. A good portion of the faith-based community is utterly disappointed and will do more picking and choosing this time around. The socio-religious motives that propelled the historical Republican upsets the last election are not present today because of the current state of things.
Candidates seek, hear, and shape your message to answer the cries and hopes of the people!
By Galoco_lee
January 26, 2008 10:15 AM | Link to this
Remember in 2003 Chambliss was the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Protection and in that position he was well positioned to be a major contributor to the illegal immigrant mess we find ourselves in today. He has to go!!
By Talon News
January 26, 2008 3:31 PM | Link to this
I just read in the ajc that Lanier is up 8 since January 1st.
Wow, he’s rising quickly.
By Political Foreskin
January 26, 2008 6:22 PM | Link to this
Sherri Jefferson. I have a unique perspective about juvenile crime. It’s not a new perspective, but I’m in a position to observe the how the why and the who. Can you dumb down, (way down), your goals concerning juvenile justice so that everyone can get involved? Pretend I’m a monkey and simplify your case. I think you are doing a great job, it’s just that few people actually understand what you’re saying.
By fulldawg
January 26, 2008 8:20 PM | Link to this
This a positive thing. Saxby, if nothing else has been arrogant toward the people of Georgia.
Time to move along Mr. Shameless….
By Will Jones
January 26, 2008 11:12 PM | Link to this
His willingness to serve during Vietnam gives him a leg up on any opponents without time in. Chambliss has to go…with the rest of the fakers and hypocrites who support the treason in the White House. If Lanier is a man of the people of Georgia he has my support.
P.S. Congressman Wexler (D-FL) is calling for hearings to impeach Cheney. The Nixon Tapes didn’t surface until the Watergate hearings. These traitors must be brought to justice and those without the grace or integrity to know them for what they are must go as well.
Let’s “get the ball rolling” and take back Our Country. Things don’t get better without some effort…and prayer.
By Churchill
January 26, 2008 11:20 PM | Link to this
HEY WILL, Pope, Bush, 911, Rome, booga, booga, booga
By Ron Paul Supporter
January 27, 2008 6:58 AM | Link to this
Does Chambliss support the NAU/CFR?
The challengers? Do they EVEN know about it? Does Chambliss?
Do you want your Senator helping to sell out America?
By Craig
January 27, 2008 6:59 AM | Link to this
Churchill - No.
By James
January 27, 2008 8:38 AM | Link to this
Yet another loser who needs something to waste his time on for the next ten months.
By Young Republican
January 27, 2008 9:39 AM | Link to this
Yes how dare he. We prefer one candidate elections. Why is he wasting time on something as trivial as democracy?
By Political Foreskin
January 27, 2008 10:00 AM | Link to this
y-y-yeah! Why is he w-w-wasting time on something as tr-tr-trivial as d-d-democracy?
We d-d-dont want the v-v-vote!
Everybody shout it out your w-w-window: “WE D-D-DONT WANT THE V-V-VOTE!”
(we do want the veto, however)
notice how vote becomes veto in word play and in politics? It’s one of those amazing coincidences that define the irony that rules the universe of der verld. (z-z-zeig…h-h-heil)
By Will Jones
January 27, 2008 1:22 PM | Link to this
We have decent, right-minded people all over Georgia. With the best climate of the Original Thirteen why shouldn’t we have the best political environment as well?
George Bush has been found out: Not only is he a draft-dodging hypocrite who conned his way into office by telling us Jesus was his favorite political philosopher, he lied us into war defiling our nation’s honor, getting thousands of us dead in uniform, shedding much other innocent blood, breaking the Treasury, and regardless of whatever more proof is shown of his committing 9-11, his pals in Dubai, who thank G-d, as hard as Bush tried he couldn’t get away with giving six of our seaports, are the largest transhipment point for the Afghan heroin flowing into our streets, which was almost non-existent before Bush showed up.
Perhaps as important, he has been demonstrated to consort with a $200 an hour homosexual prostitute named Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, whose latter alias shows up numerous times on the Secret Service’s logbook for the Social Entrance of the White House for overnight “visits.” Combine this information with the almost weekly visits of Ted Haggard, the “outed” evangelical minister/closet-queen, and with Mark Foley, the pervert/pedophile, now-ex-Congressman from Florida, and Bush, whose Yale nickname was “Lips” when he engaged in homosexual rituals to enter the super-secret Skull & Bones/CIA network/fraternity, has to be seen by every single Citizen of Georgia as not only a liar and a hypocrite but a full-blown pervert as well.
Who really are his good-buddies who brought him to the “dance?”
So where does this leave draft-dodger, Bush-pal and rubberstamp Saxby Chambliss? Is Georgia being well-served by one more Mammon-worshipper turning a blind-eye toward, if not actually joining in with, the perversion and corruption in the Bush White House and on Capitol Hill? I look forward to named, fellow members of Georgia’s Electorate speaking of Josh Lanier’s family and integrity.
I’m voting for Barack Obama, a man of obvious grace and proven integrity, in the primary, and I hope, this November. We can lessen the trouble either way by putting someone other than a Republican lapdog - draft-dodger Chambiss - back into the Senate.
…and speaking of Republicon lapdogs, check out Karen Handel’s interview with Monica on WSB-TV. Seeded here by the Republicans, she hails from Roman Catholic-basecamp Maryland and includes none of her family information on the internet. Who is she? Who are her people? Dollars to doughnuts says she’s Roman Catholic, and with no kids, born or adopted, is just an operative of the fascist plutocracy’s political buffer caste, who “just can’t see a problem” with the proven corruption of Diebold counting, and can’t manage to come up with a paper trail to ensure vote integrity. She, Chambliss, and any Republican or Democrat failing to break from Bush/Cheney and the bi-partisn false-elite now killing our soldiers and Marines and bankrupting us in false war must be identified and flushed out of office…never to return. They are Tories and the Liberty Bell must return to its original purpose as a tocsin - an alarm bell for defense of, and war for Our Liberty by The People, for these ravening wolves have no other target in sight than the destruction of the eighty percent working class that Rockefeller and Rome can restore to power the “thousands upon thousands of years of despotism arrested for a time” by Our Founding Fathers and the Revolution.