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Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Bo, say it ain’t so
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Political blogs are at the moment aflame with the news:
Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential front-runner and decorated Vietnam veteran, just hired Bo Harmon as national political director for McCain’s Republican front-runner campaign.
Harmon, Georgia politicos will remember, was managing Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ 2002 campaign when it put up a now notorious television ad criticizing another Vietnam vet, Democratic Sen. Max Cleland.
The ad, which featured pictures of Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam, along with those of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, instantly outraged Democrats across the country and upset McCain to the point that he denounced his fellow Republican senator’s action as “worse than disgraceful.”
It’s a juicy story. Or at least it would be if it were true.
“That report is inaccurate,” Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said Wednesday night.
Harmon does work for McCain’s campaign. But he’s not national political director. He was hired as an independent contractor to run the phone operation used to contact voters. And he wasn’t just hired. He’s been on the job for six to eight months.
And, yes, the McCain campaign is aware of Harmon’s pedigree, but didn’t fuss over it given that Harmon isn’t working in any decision-making capacity.
Moreover, Harmon had nothing to do with the Cleland ad that has haunted him on other campaigns he’s worked, according to the man who created it, Tom Perdue.
“He had nothing to do with our media,” Perdue said. “His job was to greet visitors who came into the campaign headquarters.”
Harmon did have the title of campaign manager, Perdue said, but “he was not involved in strategy”
Harmon couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday night.
And so it goes. If it sounds too juicy to be true….
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Smith: Regents bill intended to restore Talmadge-era reform
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In Athens this morning on WGAU (1340AM), radio host Tim Bryant asked state Rep. Bob Smith (R-Watkinsville) why his bill to remake the Board of Regents shouldn’t be viewed as a power grab by the Legislature.
Listen to a two-minute sound bite here.
Currently, the governor appoints members of the board, which oversees the state university system, to seven-year terms.
Under H.B. 1156, the majority of appointments would go to the Legislature.
Smith says this would remove the governor from dominating the picture — as was intended, six decades ago.
In 1941, Gov. Eugene Talmadge persecuted two academics — one at the University of Georgia and another at what is now Georgia Southern — for their alleged advocacy of race-mixing.
The interference led to a loss of academic accreditation — upsetting voting parents greatly. To avoid any repetition, the Board of Regents was established. Their lengthy, seven-year terms would prevent any governor — who was limited to a single four-year term — from dominating the board.
But in the 1970s, the state constitution was changed to permit governors to serve two consecutive terms — a total of eight years.
“This legislation brings us back to square one,” Smith said.
McKinney recovers, wins the Green vote in D.C.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Looks like former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has recovered from her thumping in California.
On Feb. 5, McKinney lost to Ralph Nader in the Green Party presidential primary in that state, 41 to 26 percent.
But on Tuesday, McKinney won the Statehood Green Presidential Preference race in the District of Columbia.
She won 202 of the 487 votes cast, or 41 percent. Nader wasn’t on the ballot.
To be frank, we don’t know how this impacts her Green Party fortunes.
In the D.C. Democratic primary, Barack Obama did pretty well himself, with 85,534 votes, or 75 percent.
Sign up for war! See Rock City!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s border war against Tennesee now has its own Facebook locale, called “35 or Fight.”
The digital militia’s leader is Lt. Col. Jason Shepherd, a local Young Republican. He lists his address as “Chattanooga, Ga.”
In reply, Tennessee has set up its own Facebook defensive force, with the more pedestrian but accurate name of “No Georgia, You Can’t Have Our Water, or Part of Tennessee.”
The provocation in all this, of course, is S.R. 822 filed by state Sen. David Shafer, which claims that the current Tennessee-Georgia border doesn’t follow the 35th parallel as it ought, but runs south of that.
By pushing north, Georgia forces can grab a bend in the Tennessee River and solve north Georgia’s water crisis.
You have to be a Facebook member to choose a side. You can be a friend, or fight. Or both. There’s no safer place for hand-to-hand combat than the Internet.
Hat tip to Blog for Democracy for this one.
Speaker’s divorce draws an ethics complaint
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Updated at 3:45 p.m.:
The effort by House Speaker Glenn Richardson to obtain a speedy divorce and quickly seal the documents has prompted a complaint to be filed to the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee.
Read the document in its entirety here. The author of the complaint is George Anderson, a self-appointed government watchdog.
The complaint says that Richardson used his influence ”to obtain favoritism, unlawful/illegal gain, and control of the judicial system of the state of Georgia….”
“Richardson has had the audacity to have his friend/former law partner, James Osborne, preside over his personal divorce case, in private/closed chambers [and] seal the records of the civil divorce case, immediately,” the complaint reads.
The document is wide-ranging, and often vague — clearly not written by a legal professional. Included in the complaint is the speaker’s decision to deprive four House Republicans of their leadership assignments in retaliation for their failure to toe the line on the election of members of the state transportation board.
Updated material: Some mentioned in the report say Anderson is well off-base in many of the facts he posits. For instance, Anderson accuses Richardson and House Rules Chairman Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs) of using a plane owned by a title loan company executive for a trip to Las Vegas.
“It’s garbage,” Ehrhart said. “I’ve never been to Las Vegas.” The rules chairman said he did use the executive’s plane once, to attend a conference in Washington D.C., but Ehrhart said the private jet was headed in that direction anyway — and that he reimbursed the company for the expense.
Anderson has also filed a complaint with the Judicial Qualifications Commission against Judge Osborne. See it here.
A Mac Collins sighting
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On Tuesday, who should walk out of the state Capitol but the long lost Mac Collins, the former trucker and Georgia congressman — who has yet to concede his ‘06 defeat at the hands U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall of Macon.
The immediate question, of course, is whether the Republican will run again, despite the fact that Rick Goddard, a retired Air Force major general, has already jumped into the GOP primary.
Will he join the race? “The race hasn’t started yet,” said Collins. Technically, he’s right. Qualifying is this spring.
Will he join the contest then? “Never say never,” Collins said.
But casket tags for Gator fans will require a $60,000 up-front fee and approval by the Legislature
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Walter Jones at Insider Advantage says the state Board of Regents today is expected to eliminate a 26-year prohibition on decorating one’s casket with with bulldogs, yellow jackets, eagles — any of the logos of Georgia’s 34 colleges and universities.
Jones writes:
The prohibition appears on a list of forbidden uses for University System of Georgia trademarks approved by the regents in 1982. Ironically, the list was never incorporated into the regents’ policy manual.
“It’s sort of a procedural limbo here because it wasn’t a policy,” said Chancellor Erroll Davis.
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