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May 2008
What to do with Florida, Michigan delegates: ‘Profiles in Truthiness’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Democrats are in Washington at this very moment, seeking a compromise to the disputed convention delegates from Florida and Michigan.
Drew Westen, the Emory University professor of psychiatry turned Democratic political consultant, has been watching the drama on C-Span.
Westen sends this note:
Watching the Democrats try to sell their various positions on television today is like watching exactly what we saw in the brain scans of committed partisan Democrats and Republicans in the 2004 election: The facts are completely irrelevant.
Virtually all those who have spoken seem earnestly to have convinced themselves, and are trying to convince the committee (who themselves generally have strong feelings on who they want to be the nominee and are thus uninfluenced by data) that the constellation of facts that best fits their desired outcomes is the “correct” one.
It’s like arguing to the Supreme Court in 2000 whether we should count or not count ballots:
Partisan minds (whether committed to a party or candidate) simply find the arguments that lead them to feel good and reject those that would lead to emotionally inconvenient truths, and then find the rationalizations for their feelings. They should rename these proceedings, “Profiles in Truthiness.”
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Ron Paul on Bob Barr: ‘He’s called me a couple times recently’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Newsweek has a Q&A with Republican presidential slogger, Ron Paul, who has refused to concede the race to John McCain. Here are a few of the points:
What are your feelings toward [Libertarian nominee] Bob Barr?
We’re pretty friendly. We’re allies, he’s a good friend. He has called me a couple times recently, so it’s very cordial.
Even though he has been targeting your supporters?
I can’t blame him. I’m sure that’s his goal. [Laughs]
What’s your relationship like with McCain?
It pretty much doesn’t exist. He has his beliefs and I have mine, and they just don’t come together very well.
Most of your supporters are libertarian. Why are you still a Republican?
It affords me opportunities to talk about the Constitution. If I had not been in one of the major parties, I wouldn’t have been in the debates. If I hadn’t been in the debates, no one would have ever heard of me.
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The Georgia AFL-CIO endorses Rand Knight in Democratic race for U.S. Senate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If it isn’t there already, the Democratic race for U.S. Senate is about to be thrown into a cocked hat.
Richard Ray, president of the Georgia AFL-CIO, says his labor organization will endorse Rand Knight, a little-known ecologist from Atlanta, in the primary contest.
The AFL-CIO, the most influential labor group in the state, is to make the announcement today.
“I’m sure it will be a surprise to a lot of people that the young man has come out of nowhere,” Ray said this morning. “Rand is a very passionate young man, very much in tune with the issues that the labor unions have on their agenda, such as health care for everyone.”
Ray also said that his membership was looking for something different. Knight, 36, has little money — as of March 30, he had $17,971 in cash on hand, and a debt that topped $45,000. This is his first political contest. But Ray said union members were impressed by Knight’s grass-roots efforts to meet people throughout the state.
Several Democratic candidates, including Atlanta attorney Jim Martin and former TV journalist Dale Cardwell competed for the endorsement. The AFL-CIO provides only a limited amount of campaign funding, but its networking system has served as the skeleton for many statewide races.
The endorsement of Knight is a blow to the Martin campaign, which has now raised the most money in the Democratic race, and good news to DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones.
Martin, 62, has the longest pedigree of any Democrat in the race — having served as a state lawmaker and commissioner of the state Department of Human Resources under both Govs. Roy Barnes and Sonny Perdue. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor in 2006.
Martin entered the race only in March, at the urging of Democratic activists here and in Washington — who are worried about the impact the nomination of Jones might have on the rest of the ticket.
Union workers and African-Americans are two of the most important constituencies in a Democratic primary. Strategists were already worried about the Martin campaign’s ability to attract the endorsements of African-American political leaders in the state.
Fallout from the Obama-Clinton fight at the national level has caused many black Democratic leaders to stay on the sideline in the U.S. Senate contest.
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Roy Barnes hired to block Dunwoody legislation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Dunwoody Crier, published by “Georgia Gang” host Dick Williams, is reporting that former Gov. Roy Barnes was hired by DeKalb County to contest state legislation allowing a referendum on a city of Dunwoody.
Says the Crier, quoting documents obtained through the state Open Records Act:
Barnes, now a trial lawyer in Marietta, was hired last year by the county attorney, William Linkous III.
“You will assist us,” Linkous wrote to Barnes on April 27, 2007, “in determining the impact that the City of Dunwoody legislation will have on DeKalb County and with follow up litigation opposing HB 264.”
…..Barnes will bill the county at a rate of $473.33 per hour. His associates will be billed at $233.33 per hour, with paralegals, law clerks and other researchers to be billed at their regular rate, but not more than $95.00 per hour.
….Last month, DeKalb’s chief executive, Vernon Jones, took the Board of Commissioners into executive session to discuss litigation. Barnes was at the meeting.
A referendum vote is scheduled for July 15.
WSB-TV has quoted DeKalb County Commissioner Elaine Boyer as saying the DeKalb commission wasn’t informed of the Barnes hiring.
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Cagle on an aviation school, the CRCT mess, and transportation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle talked to the Marietta Kiwanis Club on Thursday — the most politically connected civic group in Cobb County. Judges, city council members, mayors, future and current candidates for office filled the room.
Two years ago, in the very same room, Cagle made one of his first campaign appearances in his race against Ralph Reed.
In 2006, the candidate’s topic was what he’d do if elected. This time, Cagle was asked about what Republicans haven’t done. Uncomfortable questions for someone likely to enter the 2010 race for governor later this year.
The lieutenant governor was questioned about Gov. Sonny Perdue’s veto — for the second time — of an $8 million expenditure to build a charter school connected to a planned aviation museum near the Lockheed Martin plant and Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta.
Cagle supported the expenditure as a means of increasing the state’s supply of science and math students.
“I’m disappointed that we’ve tried twice to get it done, and yet the governor has vetoed it. I am very committed to making it happen, and I’ve told everyone involved. We fought hard, and we came up short,” Cagle said. He talked of using “other avenues” to find funding for the project.
One audience member also quizzed Cagle about last week’s debacle with the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test — tossed out by School Superintendent Kathy Cox. Educators had plenty of warning that a large majority of students would fail the social studies test. Even so, school officials maintained their disastrous course.
The questioner put it bluntly: Something is aromatic in Denmark.
Said Cagle:
“Your point’s very well taken. What I’ll say to you is the system’s broke. What we have today in education, truly, is a bureaucratic maze that micro-manages the entire process.
“We’ve gotten away from allowing teachers to truly teach. That doesn’t exist. We’ve tied the hands of teachers. We’ve allowed a funding formula to drive everything that goes on in the classroom. That’s the problem.”
Note that in each of the above cases, Cagle tried to separate himself from the governor and the school superintendent. In neither case did he throw them under the bus.
Cagle has received the most criticism for his handling this month of a transportation bill that failed on the final day of this year’s legislative session.
The lieutenant governor says he’ll pitch a new package within two months. Cagle’s first priority — matching one espoused by the governor — will be reinventing the state Department of Transportation.
Secondly, he wants to look at private-public partnerships when it comes to construction.
But thirdly, and most important to Georgia’s business community, Cagle said it would “focus on new revenue streams that are going to assist our communities, particularly in a regional capacity.”
That’s as specific as Cagle got about new tax money to address congestion — and even state lawmakers in the audience weren’t sure exactly what the lieutenant governor meant.
Photo credit: John Spink/AJC
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Talk of Nunn as veep is unnerving some gay Democrats
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the vice presidential sweepstakes, Sam Nunn has become a kind of default setting for those mulling Barack Obama’s choices.
David Brooks of the New York Times is the latest in the mainstream media to note that the former Georgia senator would compliment Obama’s lack of experience:
”Sam Nunn and Tom Daschle seem to fit the bill. Nunn is one of those senior Democrats (like David Boren and Bob Kerrey) who left the Senate lamenting the dumbed-down nature of modern politics. Daschle was more partisan as majority leader, but he is still widely trusted and universally liked. As experienced legislators, both could take Obama’s lofty hopes and translate them into nitty-gritty action.”
Again, Nunn says it’s highly improbable that Obama would reach out to him as a running mate. Even so, the speculation has unnerved some sectors of the traditional Democratic vote.
On his blog, gay activist Wayne Besen portrays Nunn as the “crass” force behind the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy established in the 1990s:
”For those who don’t remember, candidate Bill Clinton promised to repeal the ban on openly gay service members. As president, he tried to follow through and a national uproar ensued. The opposition from conservative Republicans was to be expected, but Nunn’s fingerprints were all over the bloody knife that protruded from Clinton’s back….
“When it comes to the idea of Sam as Veep, I’m having Nunn of it. Beyond his DADT disaster, the senator’s weakening of Clinton helped enable and propel the Gingrich revolution in 1994 - a huge setback for gay and lesbian equality…..
“[I]t is crucial that Obama’s gay staff members make it clear to the candidate how unacceptable Nunn would be. The campaign shouldn’t even float his name unless it is attached to a runaway blimp drifting towards outer space.”
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Casey Cagle: ‘I’m staying out of this DOT board race’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Gainesville Times reports that Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle — and the governor, and the House speaker — will stay out of today’s election for a north Georgia member of the state Department of Transportation board.
The Times today quotes Cagle as saying that that “he risked a considerable amount of political capital in the last race for the State Transportation Board” and so will keep to the sidelines.
The article doesn’t contain any promises from Gov. Sonny Perdue or House Speaker Glenn Richardson — just Cagle’s statement that there is a neutrality agreement among the three.
Says the Times:
“I don’t know that there’s a consensus candidate,” Cagle said. “There’s still several in the race, and they are all very, very good candidates. I don’t see a real consensus.”
Cagle and House Speaker Glenn Richardson, R-Hiram, became entangled in a high stakes battle when Evans stood for re-election in February. Two months later, after winning a second term, Evans resigned after informing the board of a budding romance with Department of Transportation Commissioner Gena Abraham, now his fiancee.
“I have elected to stay out along with the speaker and the governor and let the legislature express their views,” he said.
The vote is schedule for 3 p.m. this afternoon. The vote will be made by state House and Senate members contained within the 9th Congressional District.
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Mark Taylor speaks up for Dale Cardwell: ‘He’ll never sell us out’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You already know that former lieutenant governor Mark Taylor has written checks to Dale Cardwell, the former TV reporter who is now a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.
This evening, a written endorsement by Taylor has appeared on Cardwell’s campaign web site. Keep in mind that Jim Martin, a Cardwell rival in the current contest, was Taylor’s running mate in ’06.
Cardwell’s experience as an investigative journalist for WSB-TV “makes him the right candidate,” Taylor writes.
He continues:
“Remember the majority of voters who voted GOP in 2004 and who voted Democratic in 2006 switched because of corruption, scandal issues. (Per Karl Rove ABC This Week 5/25/08) To win this November we’ve got to give voters a real reason to switch and the data shows that the reason is honesty and ethics.
“Dale will get things done for us in DC and will never sell us out for a campaign donation. The lies, the broken promises, the hypocrisy of politics [have] got to stop.”
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Gingrich: Barr will make Obama’s job ‘marginally easier’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bob Barr will be up in New York next week, making his Libertarian case on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” and “The Glenn Beck Program” on Headline News.
(Note to campaign manager: Make sure candidate has laminated copy of Ten Commandments in shirt pocket.)
So far, Republicans are aware of Barr and his presidential bid — but aren’t hyperventilating.
“Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, quoted on a Newsweek blog.
The “one big reason” that Republicans aren’t terribly worried, according to author Andrew Romano:
”Ron Paul. With his cult-hero bid for the White House, Paul has done more this year than any of his predecessors to popularize Libertarian ideas—no foreign interventions, minimal government, a return to the gold standard.
“But the trouble is, he ran (and is still running) as a Republican, and shows no signs of abandoning his party. If Paul continues his campaign through the GOP convention, as he’s already promised, he’ll monopolize much of the newly-unleashed Libertarian energy — the record-breaking donations, the clever online organizing, the passionate activism — at least through September.”
So, according to this theory, these GOP activists who want Paul to concede to Republican presumptive John McCain are actually working against McCain’s best interests. Keep Paulistas busy trying to crack the doors to the GOP convention, and you keep them out of Barr’s campaign.
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Isakson on staying in Washington
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Johnny Isakson talked a little more this morning about his decision to stay in the U.S. Senate rather than run for governor in 2010.
Click here to hear what he told host Tim Bryant on WGAU (1340AM) in Athens.
In essence, Isakson said the next eight years “probably are going to be the most challenging years in the modern history of our country.” Solutions will have to be found for the unrest in the Middle East, the war on terror and the availability of petroleum.
“I want to be a part of that,” he said.
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On Bob Barr: Reining in the disappointed left, renouncing the Defense of Marriage Act, and the YouTube video
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr — how strange it feels to write that — continues to churn on the Internet, as leaders try to rein in the disappointed Libertarian left.
Last night, on Third Party Watch, a web site now owned by former GOP direct mail titan Richard Viguerie, one of the candidates that Barr beat on Sunday urged his people to stay on board.
Wrote Steve Kubby, whose platform was largely based on easing marijuana laws:
“After their victory, the Barr campaign could have told their opponents not to let the door hit them in the ass on their way out and saved themselves a lot of future grief. Instead, we have seen a concerted effort by Barr and [Wayne] Root to unify the party.
Jim Ostrowski of Buffalo, N.Y., is already handing out strategy tips on Political Class Dismissed:
“First, Barr needs to get the endorsement of Ron Paul and try to get the Revolution behind him. Can he do this? I don’t know, but if they are anything like me, they’d like to continue the movement and this year, not four years from now….
“Step two is to convince conservatives and Republicans of the obvious fact that McCain is a dead man walking…
“Consider that if Barr can pass McCain in just one state — Georgia — McCain’s chances of winning an electoral college majority virtually disintegrate. He would then need to hold every one of about ten swing states. That’s highly unlikely because Barr would be chipping away at his support there too. Clearly, Barr needs to focus on Georgia first and aggressively. Georgia is the lever that can move the world.”
Outright Libertarian, a gay group, is focused on a video clip of Barr’s post-election disavowal of the Defense of Marriage Act — legislation the former Georgia congressman once pointed to with pride, when in front of Republican audiences.
Said Barr:
”Let me tell you — I have made mistakes. But the only way you make mistakes, the only way you get things done, is by getting out there, in the arena….
“As I mentioned to you all last night, and I reiterate here today — standing before you, looking you in the eye —the Defense of Marriage Act, insofar as it provided the federal government a club to club down the rights of law-abiding, American citizens, has been abused, misused and should be repealed. And I will work to repeal that.”
In the mainstream media, Tim Lee on The Atlantic magazine blog assesses Barr’s platform:
“It’s incredibly thin—a dozen or so bullet points in total—and one of the four categories is “secure our borders,” which suggests Barr may harbor the same kind of borderline xenophobia that has infected both the [Ron] Paul campaign and much of the modern conservative movement. That’s not the impression I want voters to get of libertarianism.
“Ultimately, I wish the LP would just go away. The structure of American elections dooms third parties to perpetual failure and obscurity, and that, in turn, creates a vicious cycle where the most talented activists and potential candidates go elsewhere, causing the party to be even more out of touch and politically tone-deaf in the next election. But given that the party is going to nominate somebody, Barr was probably the best choice.”
Free Liberal comes to the candidate’s defense:
“In 2001, Barr was the lead figure in the GOP-controlled House in pushing back against the PATRIOT Act, and ultimately suceeded in deleteing some text and forcing sunset clauses on the bill’s worst provisions.”
And, of course, every presidential candidate needs his own YouTube song. This one is more than a tad strange and not terribly flattering, but it’s still early — the Obama Girl could still come to Barr’s rescue:
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The GOP right suggests some gumbo to spice up McCain’s ticket
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a youthful 36, is earning plaudits from the GOP’s rightward side as a running mate for Republican presidential presumptive John McCain.
Cybercast News Service, a creation of the conservative Media Research Council chairman Brent Bozell, gives Jindal a plug today, with endorsements from Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed.
According to CNS:
“Bobby Jindal is a great American,” Grover Norquist, president of the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), told Cybercast News Service. “He is great on guns, great on taxes, a Roman Catholic, a Southerner and an Indian-American. Bobby Jindal would be great for the GOP and perfect for McCain.”
“Bobby Jindal is one of the more outstanding shining lights of the Republican Party,” said Bill Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League. “Everything we have learned about him so far is very positive.”
“Bobby Jindal is a rising star in the Republican Party — he is an outstanding governor,” stated Ralph Reed, a political strategist and former president of the conservative Christian Coalition. “He has moved swiftly to recover from [Hurricane] Katrina and also usher in a new era of ethics and standards in Louisiana.”
Jindal was sworn in only this January.
The article argues that Jindal’s youth would offset questions about McCain’s age. Jindal would be the second youngest vice president if he’s selected and if the ticket wins.
Apparently, Jindal-mania has been brewing since Febuary, since radio guru Rush Limbaugh compared the new Louisiana governor to Ronald Reagan.
Photo credit: Associated Press
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Reading other people’s mail: Lisa Borders warns against cheap shots at Shirley Franklin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lisa Borders, president of the Atlanta City Council, has sent out a letter to her colleagues, urging them to behave themselves when Mayor Shirley Franklin’s people show up to talk about an out-of-whack budget.
Read the entire letter here, but this is the best part:
”We must ask tough questions, but we have the higher obligation to do so with decorum, civility and respect. The City Council sits as the representatives of our constituents, and we do them no service when we replace thoughtful inquiry with hostility or probing analysis with ad hominem attack. We owe our citizens more.
“As the President of the Atlanta City Council, I am responsible for preserving order and maintaining control of the Council chambers and offices. I hold this mandate with honor. Today and in the coming days, I call upon each of us to conduct ourselves with the dignity befitting our posts. We have invited the members of the Executive Branch to come before us and present their budgets. As guests in our chambers, we are honor-bound to show them the due respect owed to colleagues in the public’s service. Any less is unconscionable.”
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Jim Martin: ‘We’re pleased to have the endorsements we’ve got.’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So far as anyone made apparent, Atlanta attorney Jim Martin, accompanied by his wife Joan, was the only Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate at this weekend’s state committee meeting.
Martin’s campaign, which presents itself as the party’s alternative to DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones, hasn’t been seen much since his announcement in March.
Martin, who served as commissioner of the state Department of Human Resources under both governors Roy Barnes and Sonny Perdue, said he’s been busy raising money and expanding his “traditional family approach” to campaigning to include national strategists as well.
His operation, Martin said, is aimed at tackling Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss in November.
Martin said he’s hired Steve Murphy, a media political consultant used by U.S. Reps. John Barrow of Savannah and Jim Marshall of Macon, with recent experience in both Louisiana and Mississippi.
He’s hired a young campaign manager with experience in the same states.
Recent polls have shown him behind both Jones and former TV journalist Dale Cardwell, but Martin said those surveys simply display the large number of undecided voters still at play.
I asked Martin specifically about the fact that African-American leaders in the Democratic party, cognizant of the way that U.S. Rep. John Lewis was skewered by black voters for supporting Hillary Clinton, have been extremely hesitant about stepping into the U.S. Senate race on Martin’s behalf.
Said Martin:
“I’ve got a lot of support. I’ve got Hattie Dorsey, I’ve got Bob Holmes, I’ve got Governor (Roy) Barnes, I’ve got (House Minority Leader) DuBose Porter. We’ve got a number of people who support this campaign. We can’t worry about that. It’s early in the campaign, we’re reaching out to folks.
“We’re pleased to have the endorsements we’ve got.”
Bob Holmes is an African-American state lawmaker — well respected, but not known throughout Georgia. Hattie Dorsey is an Atlanta party activist sometimes backed by Mayor Shirley Franklin — but Franklin herself was at the Saturday meeting of Democrats, and went nowhere near Martin. Franklin endorsed Martin for lieutenant governor in 2006.
Martin said his campaign will start stirring this week — beginning with the candidate’s web page.
Is Martin ready to go challenge Jones for the all-important black vote in the July primary?
Said Martin:
“The problem is [Jones] is running a candidacy based on the fact that he voted twice for President Bush, and I don’t think that’s a winning message in the Democratic primary.”
Martin quoted Chambliss, the Republican incumbent, at this month’s state GOP convention. “He said, if a Democrat is elected, America will be a different place I think that’s exactly what the people want,” Martin said.
Photo credit: Rich Addicks/AJC
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Going home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dad, now 84, left high school early for the Army, five months before Pearl Harbor.
Four of the seven Galloway brothers would scatter themselves across the globe during World War II. But Dad, an airplane mechanic, was the only one to carry a sketchbook. The cartoonist Bill Mauldin was something of a hero.
Lined notebook paper would do in a pinch. Above is a rescued drawing from Dad’s return trip in ‘45. That mountainous lump in the background is the Rock of Gibraltar.
In the upper right hand corner are traces of a laundry list written on the other side — a brief catalog of one young warrior’s requirements for conquering the world: Four undershirts, four shorts, two handkerchiefs, two dress shirts, four pairs of socks, and two coveralls.
Have a thoughtful Memorial Day.
Illustration by Jim Galloway
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Sam Olens and business’ disenchantment with the state Capitol
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the six weeks since the Legislature imploded and departed Atlanta, Georgia’s business community has moved from denial to anger to outright depression.
A cynic, or a Democrat, might say members of the state’s economic elite have contracted a virulent case of buyer’s remorse.
This fresh Republican administration, a governorship and two legislative chambers, had advertised itself as a best friend to commerce, but has been unable to deliver what commerce needs most — a strategy for breaking through metro Atlanta’s traffic congestion so that goods and people can move from one side of Georgia to the other.
Other issues scream for attention, too, but transportation remains the chafing point.
One reaction by business types had been to place calls to U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, to beg him and his air of competency to join the 2010 race for governor. Isakson declined early this month.
Ever since, Georgia’s corporate phone trees have scoured the landscape for another, next governor — perhaps an outsider who might be able to raise the state Capitol up from the frat house basement it’s fallen into.
Jimmy Blanchard of Columbus, the retiring CEO of Synovus? Kessel Stelling, head of the Bank of North Georgia? Their names, and those of a handful of other business executives, have surfaced.
So has this one: Sam Olens, the seven-year chairman of the Cobb County Commission. Olens, who has a reputation as a concensus-builder, confirmed last week that he is indeed thinking about a Republican run for governor.
You might call Olens an angry optimist. His current chairmanship of the Atlanta Regional Commission has given him an appreciation of the state’s strong points — including a thriving airport in Atlanta and an expanding port in Savannah.
But Olens also has the stats that show him what’s missing. Big-salaried jobs are no longer coming to the region. State tax credits for new jobs are a “worthless” tangle of bureaucratic tape.
Road money is spent poorly, and not enough cash goes into education. “Asphalt doesn’t bring jobs. Diplomas bring jobs,” he said.
Then there’s the “absolute lunacy” of the attitude owned by many in the state Capitol, who think that — if metro Atlanta is allowed to choke on its own congestion — then jobs will flow to rural areas.
“There’s an economic development strategy for everyone. It doesn’t pit one section of the state against another,” Olens said. Bring corporate jobs to Atlanta, he said, and many of those same companies will move their plants to rural Georgia.
Olens wants more vision and fewer bad ideas coming out of the Capitol. “I spend more time killing bills than trying to get anything passed. Not even close,” Olens said. “There comes a point where the steam’s coming out. And I’m there.”
How real is this? Olens, who is unopposed for re-election this year, will give it more thought after November. No county commission chairman has ever made the leap to governor.
And there’s the question of whether business discontent is real, or a feint aimed at bringing ambitious Republicans in the Capitol — Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle foremost among them — back into line.
January should tell.
An online bonus: Earlier this month, Olens gave a speech to the Council for Quality Growth, outlining the above points and more. He’s handed over his talking points. See them on the jump.
The Future of our Region
Following another disappointing session of the Legislature, a concise analysis of Metro Atlanta’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is in order. We have much to be proud of, but we cannot rest on past laurels.
Strengths
Metro Atlanta is blessed with many outstanding attributes. Strengths include:
1) A highly educated work force, with great schools, technical colleges and universities;
2) A growing City of Atlanta, with exciting new venues such as the Georgia Aquarium and World of Coke;
3) Fantastic suburbs, with quality of life enhancements such as open heart surgery and other state of the art medical services, the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Gwinnett Arena, and the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park;
4) Outstanding non-profits and corporate leaders;
5) The world’s busiest airport and a fantastic port that help bring leading businesses to our region;
6) Regional leadership that is more mature and unified, emphasizing our interdependence and creative energy;
7) The embracement of diversity;
8) Significant leadership from the Natural Resources and Transportation Chairs (Jeff Mullis, Vance Smith, Ross Tolleson and Lynn Smith); and,
9) Quite simply, a great place to live, work and play.
Weaknesses
Our weaknesses include:
1) Excessive reliance on the car with insufficient transit choices;
2) Insufficient infrastructure funding, to expressly include water and transportation;
3) A myriad of transportation plans with inadequate construction to relieve traffic congestion and excessive reliance on local SPLOSTs to fund capital projects;
4) 19 years of water litigation, action/inaction of the Corps of Engineers and sprawl, have poorly served us; and,
5) The State’s incentives to encourage the expansion of existing businesses and the pursuit of new businesses are not linked to specific sectors or adequate metrics.
Threats
Instead of aggressively seeking to improve the State post-Olympics:
1) We are losing high salary jobs while our overall population grows;
2) Local government in general is under attack at the Capitol while the State insufficiently funds the criminal justice system, education, trauma care & mental health;
3) An anti-Atlanta mentality foolishly believes that a weak Atlanta serves the rest of the State well; and,
4) The funding of pork projects by the legislature before Public Safety and Education.
Opportunities
Thankfully, we have immense opportunities to include:
1) An emphasis on environmental sustainability, “green” initiatives and the acquisition of park land;
2) An aging region with priceless volunteers and mentors;
3) A new direction at GDOT with greater collaboration between GDOT, GRTA, ARC & MARTA;
4) Exciting new tourism destinations, to include the Center for Civil & Human Rights, Aquarium expansion, and Gwinnett Braves;
5) The ability to incentivize regional transportation and water solutions, to include financial encouragement for the consolidation of governments and school systems;
6) A redevelopment emphasis;
7) A renewed push on lower class size and proven school technology; and,
8) Reasonable tax reform, such as the elimination of the corporate income tax and property tax indexed to government inflation.
Having just returned from the Atlanta Regional Commission’s exploratory to Denver, our strengths and opportunities far surpass our threats and challenges. With a little help from the State and an appreciation of regional solutions, metro Atlanta will encounter boundless success. Yes, Denver has beautiful snow-capped mountains. But they like many other regions of our country can’t compete with us in regard to civic and corporate leadership, a can-do mentality and outstanding quality of life.
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Barr: Celebrate tonight, work tomorrow
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Newly crowned Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr told his fellow Libertarians to celebrate now, “because I’m sure we’ll all leave here with the strongest ticket in the history of the Libertarian Party.”
Barr spoke to the convention as its new nominee, after knocking off Mary Ruwart after six rounds of voting.
“Then I want everybody to remember we have only 163 days to win this election,” he said. “Do not wait one single day.”
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Barr claims Libertarian nomination
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Georgia’s Bob Barr has captured the 2008 Libertarian nomination as president after six rounds of voting at a heated national convention.
Barr, the former four-term Republican congressman from Cobb County, finally bested Mary Ruwart of Texas after third-place finisher Wayne Allyn Root endorsed Barr.
Root was eliminated after the fifth ballot.
Details to come.
*-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Root backs Barr
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Wayne Allyn Root just endorsed Bob Barr for the Libertarian presidential nomination, a move that could assure Root the vice presidential slot and Barr the top spot.
“It’s not over,” Root told the convention moments after meeting with Barr. “It’s just beginning. I’d like to be part of a Barr-Root ticket.”
The sixth ballot is straight ahead. It will be the last. If Root’s supporters honor his wishes, it’ll be a Barr victory.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Barr drops to second; one ballot left
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Bob Barr has dropped into second place after five rounds of voting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention.
The sixth and presumably final ballot for the party’s presidential nomination is coming next, a head-to-head match up between Barr and Mary Ruwart, who now leads 229 votes to 223 for Barr.
Wayne Allyn Root was third with 165 votes and was eliminated.
Members of the Georgia delegation hinted that Root and Barr were behind closed doors, possibly discussing a deal. That could not be immediately confirmed.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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The end is near
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - As we wait for the results of the fifth round of voting, it’s become clear that this will go no more than six rounds.
The party rules require that the candidate who receives the fewest votes be eliminated from the next ballot. There are three candidates left on the fifth ballot. One will be gone after, meaning there will only be two candidates on the sixth ballot.
It’s shaping up to be a fight between Bob Barr and Mary Ruwart.
After Mike Gravel was eliminated after the fourth ballot, he spoke briefly with reporters. He declined to endorse one of his former opponents.
“That’s not the way I play,” Gravel said. “We’ll let this thing play itself out.”
Gravel also said he would not seek the vice presidential nomination.
“I’ll be a Libertarian for the rest of my life,” he said.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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After four, still tied
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - We’ve been through four rounds of balloting and the results haven’t changed much. Bob Barr and Mary Ruwart remain tied, each getting 32 percent of the votes cast at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention.
The convention will proceed to a fifth ballot, but this time there will be only three candidates. Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel has been eliminated as he finished last in the fourth round.
Gravel received 76 votes for 12 percent of the total, but is still out. Where his support goes could determine the outcome of the nomination.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Barr falls into tie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Bob Barr and Mary Ruwart are tied for first in the Libertarian presidential sweepstakes after the third round of balloting.
Barr and Ruwart each received 186 votes. That’s a drop of two for Barr and a gain of 24 for Ruwart from the second round.
Wayne Allyn Root is third with 146.
George Phillies did not receive the necessary 5 percent to stay in the race and will be eliminated for the fourth ballot. Phillies received 31 votes.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Kubby endorses Ruwart
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Bob Barr’s candidacy just suffered a blow, minor though it might be, when Steve Kubby dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Mary Ruwart.
Kubby, whose platform was largely based on easing marijuana laws, did not receive the necessary 5 percent on the second ballot to remain in the race.
He urged the 32 Libertarians who voted for him to back Ruwart. If they did so, it would drop Barr from first place to second, trailing Ruwart 194 to 188.
State delegations are meeting now in advance of the third ballot.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Barr opens lead on second ballot
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Former Georgia congressman Bob Barr has extended his lead for the Libertarian presidential nomination on the second ballot, but remains far from a majority.
Barr now leads Mary Ruwart 188 votes to 162 votes, with Wayne Allyn Root still third with 138. The results mean Barr gained 35 votes from the first ballot. It takes 327 votes to win the Libertarian nomination. Mike Gravel is fourth with 73 votes.
Georgia’s delegation again went overwhelmingly for Barr, giving 33 of its 35 votes to the local boy.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Multiple ballots likely
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Russ Verney, Bob Barr’s campaign manager, just breathed a cautious sigh of relief.
Verney had said before voting began at the Libertarian National Convention that the best Barr could hope for on the first ballot was an even split among the top three candidates. He got that, plus a little more.
Barr finished the first ballot one vote ahead of Mary Ruwart and 30 ahead of Wayne Allyn Root. But Barr’s 153 votes is far below the 327 needed to win the nomination.
Verney predicted the second ballot would not change much, but movement would begin in earnest on the third.
One scenario floating around he exhibition hall is that after the second or third ballot Mike Gravel will drop out and endorse Barr. Gravel received 71 votes on the first ballot but then was endorsed by Michael Jingozian, who was eliminated after the first ballot, but did receive 23 votes.
The theory goes that Gravel would add his 94 votes to Barr’s tally, which would force Root to drop out and also back Barr in hopes of becoming the vice presidential nominee.
Of course, this theory was floated by Barr supporters. I’m sure Ruwart’s people have their own.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Barr leads after first ballot
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Bob Barr was the leader after the first round of voting at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention, but did not come close to receiving the necessary majority to win the nomination.
Barr lead all candidates with 153 votes, followed closely by Mary Ruwart with 152. Wayne Allyn Root was third with 123.
State delegations are now gathering again to consider the second ballot, which will feature two fewer candidates. Party rules say any candidate who doesn’t receive 5 percent is dropped.
The key now for Barr, and the concern, is whether candidates still in the race see that they can’t win and begin offering delegates to another.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Georgia boys
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - As we wait for the state-by-state vote to be announced (for the first ballot anyway), here’s quick photo of two of Georgia’s Libertarian delegates with their chosen candidate, Bob Barr.
On the left is attorney Richard Schrade Jr. of McDonough, Barr is in the center, and blogger and journalist Jason Pye is on the right. Check out Pye’s blog.
OK, they’re getting ready to call the vote.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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More on the competition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - The waiting game has begun as each state’s delegation is voting internally before casting their total lot with one candidate or another here at the Libertarian National Convention.
Ruwart
Word in the convention hall is that Georgia’s Bob Barr has two main opponents: Texas activist Mary Ruwart and Vegas oddsmaker Wayne Allyn Root.
Root
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Time to vote
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - The speeches are — finally — over and it’s time for the delegates to the Libertarian National Convention to vote.
It takes 327 delegates to win the nomination. Georgia gets 35, second only to Texas’ 37 and California’s 106.
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Barr brings the noise
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Bob Barr promised Libertarians to shock the world if he’s elected to be their presidential nominee.
In a rousing nominating speech to the 500-plus delegates in the convention hall, Barr praised the Libertarian delegates and urged them to let him carry their standard.
“We will send shock waves, not just across this country, not a seismic shift on Capitol Hill, but around the world,” Barr said, “because again, men, women, children and government leaders will once again look to America, not with fear in their eyes, but love in their heart.”
Barr, the former Republican congressman from Cobb County, said he’s learned a lot about Libertarians in just two years of being in the party.
“There has been more discussion of substantive, constitutional issues in the three days I’ve been here with you than in 30 years of working with that other party,” he said. “This the party of substance.”
But he also reiterated his regret for some of the policy decisions he made while serving as a Republican in Congress, especially his support of the Patriot Act and the Defense of Marriage Act.
But he left the podium on a high note, emphasizing the things he said he and the entire party have in common.
“We’ve never been afraid of leading,” he said. “The Libertarian Party knows no fear. Fear is not a part of our platform. It’s not part of our hard wiring. And it’s not part of mine either. Make me your nominee and I will make you proud.”
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Barr’s turn
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver It’s Bob Barr’s turn to be nominated at the Libertarian Convention.
So far, he’s had nominating speeches by Steve Dasbach, a former national party chairman, and Rob Kampia, of the Marijuana Policy Project.
“Bob Barr has done more to roll back the federal war on drugs than almost anyone I know in the country,” Kampia said. “I urge you to vote for Bob Barr for president.”
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Working the room
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - As the moment of truth approaches at the Libertarian convention, Bob Barr and his Georgia backers are working for votes.
Here, Barr lobbies a California delegate after speaking to the entire California delegation.
Meanwhile, Georgia delegates, decked out in the omnipresent black Barr cowboy hats, prepare to rally.
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Settle in for a long day
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - The nominating speeches have begun at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention, the first step in what promises to be a long day.
Eight candidates made the cut to get 16 minutes at the podium to make their case to the 500-plus delegates at the convention.
Vegas odds maker Wayne Allyn Root is up first and has set the tone by splitting his 16 minutes into increments. He first showed an endorsement video from a Chicago talk radio host and now his daughter his speaking. We can only assume each of the eight candidates is going to split their time, too.
Georgia’s Bob Barr has three people who will speak on his behalf before he takes the podium, his campaign said.
Once the speeches are finished, the balloting begins. Nobody expects this to be a one-ballot deal. We could be here a while, as each ballot will require a roll call of the states to declare their delegates’ support.
It takes 50 percent plus 1 vote to win the nomination.
-Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Consensus on gay marriage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - All seven candidates on the stage have found agreement on one key point of the Libertarian philosophy: Government should not be in the business of defining marriage.
All agreed that gays and lesbians should be free to marry. For Bob Barr, the issue is particularly important as he was the author in Congress of the Defense of Marriage Act, which sought to ban gay marriage.
Barr stood from his stool to answer the question for two reasons, he said.
“One, because my rear end is killing me,” he said, with a smile.
But he said he also was standing “to tell you, eye to eye, and face to face,” that he has wholeheartedly changed his position on the issue, after speaking to a group of gay Libertarians.
“As I promised them then and I promise you now, I will work to repeal that provision of law,” Barr said.
The best line on this question, however, again came from Steve Kubby.
“I’m actually perplexed by how it is that government feels it has the authority to look up skirts and trousers and decide who gets to get married and who doesn’t,” Kubby said.
Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Gravel calls judges ‘papists’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Mike Gravel, answering a questions about judges, said term limits should be implemented for federal judges, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
“They’re appointed for life,” Gravel said. “They’re papists. They’re papists.”
Aaron Gould Sheinin
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That didn’t take long
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - So maybe the gloves are coming off, after all.
The moderator just asked the candidates how they would deal with the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act, two major policy initiatives that are anathema to Libertarians.
Mary Ruwart indirectly hit Bob Barr on his support for the Patriot Act while in Congress. Barr now says he regrets that vote and opposes the Act. Steve Kubby, however, hit Barr square on over it.
Ruwart said “from day one” there were a few people who understood what the Patriot Act would do. “One was Ron Paul,” Ruwart said. “And one was myself. And most Libertarians.”
But Kubby made clear that Barr was supported the Patriot Act. “I’m not really clear what Bob Barr’s position is on the Patriot Act now and on Real ID,” Kubby said. “I know as Libertarians we recognize these are determined, rather cynical ways to track us and control us.”
When Barr’s turn came, however, he didn’t respond in kind. He said both bills are “another manifestation in Washington when fear becomes the driving force behind all public policy,” he said.
But he added that he’s spent the past five years working to overturn the Patriot Act.
He said he’s been “working to take the USA Patriot Act, drive a stake through its heart, burn it, shoot it, burn it again …”
Aaron Gould Sheinin
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A word about format
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - The format of this Libertarian debate is much different than those used in the televised debates of Democratic and Republican candidates.
For one, these questions are all about policy. There’s none of the silliness that sometimes pervades the major-party debates.
On one hand, that’s good, because it keeps the focus on policy and candidates’ positions. On the other, it limits a candidate’s ability to tee off on another in the hopes of weakening a stronger opponent or delivering a killing, albeit rhetorical, blow to a weaker candidate.
That said, at some point don’t be surprised if one candidate still takes a shot toward the top, and that’s most likely to be a shot at Bob Barr.
Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Barr, too: Bring ‘em home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Bob Barr, too, advocated for bringing American troops home from far flung bases around the world.
“We have a department of defense. We have a national defense policy. What’s missing is an emphasis on the word ‘defense,’” Barr said. “It is not a defensive policy. It is not defending the United States of America to do what candidate George Bush said we should not do, and that’s occupy foreign nations.”
Barr said U.S. troops should be removed from bases in Japan, Korea, Australia, “you name it.”
But, Barr said, woe unto those who bring the fight to America.
“Somebody attacks us, by go,d we go after them and we attack them, but we do not use those tax dollars offensively, because it is, offensive.”
Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Boots on the ground, in the U.S.A.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Mike Gravel, George Phillies and Mary Ruwart all advocate for bringing the troops home - all of the troops, not just those in Iraq. Gravel said he’d close down American bases overseas and bring those troops home.
Aaron Gould Sheinin
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The great debate has begun
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - The seven Libertarian candidates have taken the stage at the Sheraton Hotel here for the presidential debate. C-SPAN is in the house, carrying it live, if you’re inclined to watch.
You can also watch online at C-SPAN’s site or at Bob Barr’s site.
We’ll update periodically as the two-hour event goes on. Highlight so far: candidate Steve Kubby saying he his doctors say he has six months to live, because of cancer, but that they’ve been saying it for years.
Aaron Gould Sheinin
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A token conclusion
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - The tokens have all been collected and accounted for, and seven Libertarian candidates for president received enough to participate in tonight’s debate and to give nominating speeches on Sunday. Former Georgia congressman Bob Barr tied for the most tokens with 94. Also turning in 94 were Vegas odds maker Wayne Allyn Root and Texas business consultant Mary Ruwart. Joining those three in tonight’s debate will be: - Mike Gravel (67 tokens) - Mike Jingozian (63 tokens) - George Phillies (62 tokens) - and Steve Kubby (60 tokens).
Each of the more than 560 delegates to the convention were given a token, really a ticket, to award to one of the 14 candidates running for president. A candidate had to collect 10 percent, or 56, tokens to participate in the debate and 30 tokens to give a speech on Sunday.
* - Aaron Gould Sheinin*
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A token conclusion
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - The tokens have all been collected and accounted for, and seven Libertarian candidates for president received enough to participate in tonight’s debate and to give nominating speeches on Sunday. Former Georgia congressman Bob Barr tied for the most tokens with 94. Also turning in 94 were Vegas odds maker Wayne Allyn Root and Texas business consultant Mary Ruwart. Joining those three in tonight’s debate will be: - Mike Gravel (67 tokens) - Mike Jingozian (63 tokens) - George Phillies (62 tokens) - and Steve Kubby (60 tokens).
Each of the more than 560 delegates to the convention were given a token, really a ticket, to award to one of the 14 candidates running for president. A candidate had to collect 10 percent, or 56, tokens to participate in the debate and 30 tokens to give a speech on Sunday.
- Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Last Democratic delegates for Denver picked
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Democratic state committee on Saturday picked the final 32 Georgia delegates to the party’s national convention in Denver, most of them from a pre-approved list dictated by the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The “right of refusal” invoked by the presidential candidates resulted in the rejection of many Democratic activists eager to become part of the 102-member state delegation to the historic gathering in August.
The bulk of delegates were selected in April in elections by congressional districts. The Saturday vote added 21 Obama supporters and 11 Clinton backers.
“I know a lot of people are disappointed. And I’ve talked to most of them,” state Democratic party chairman Jane Kidd.
The party chairman attributed the decision by the Clinton and Obama campaigns to the fact that the contest remains undecided.
“[The two campaigns] felt like it was necessary to make sure that they knew who these delegates would be, that they were people who from the very beginning supported their candidate, whom they could trust to get to the convention — if [the unsettled contest] comes to the convention,” Kidd said.
“They wanted to make sure their delegates were true blue delegates committed to their candidates,” she said.
With the two slates already picked by the presidential campaigns, the only suspense was whether enough state committee members would show up on a Memorial Day weekend to form a quorum. In the end, 138 committee members showed up — 14 more than necessary.
Click here for the entire list of Denver delegates.
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Meet Starchild
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Pictured here is Starchild, a San Francisco masseur and icon of the California Libertarian Party.
Here he is made up as the Statue of Liberty. But Starchild’s sash reads, “I Miss America.”
Starchild has run for office as a Libertarian a number of times in San Francisco and is, according to Libertarian Party communications director Andrew Davis, “a brilliant and thoughtful Libertarian.”
- Aaron Gould Sheinin
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It’s all about the tokens
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - There is a twist to this year’s Libertarian National Convention that truly makes it stand out from other political conventions.
Each of the 500-plus delegates were given a token when they arrived at the Sheraton.
The tokens are, well, gold for the presidential candidates here. They’re not really gold, of course, and they’re not even really tokens. They’re more like tickets, or as a fellow reporter described them, “They’re like Willy Wonka tickets.”
But they are awfully important for the candidates. To participate in tonight’s debate, which will be carried live on C-SPAN from 9 to 11 p.m. back in Atlanta, a candidate must collect 10 percent of all tokens by noon local time today (that’s 2 p.m. back in Georgia).
Candidates can narrow the field for the debate by collecting more than 10 percent, thereby denying other candidates the ability to get 10 percent.
More importantly, they must collect at least 30 tokens to be allowed to give a nominating speech Sunday before the actual vote.
Georgia’s Bob Barr, who is seeking the LP nomination, won’t say whether he has enough tokens yet, but he and his advisers indicate they think they’ll make it.
— Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Breakfast with Barr
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - Georgia’s Bob Barr hosted reporters for coffee and pastry this morning in his suite at the Sheraton and said if he wins the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination on Sunday, he’ll fight for every vote he can get.
He particularly has his eyes on those Libertarians who thus far have been backing Ron Paul’s bid for the Republican nomination. Paul, the U.S. congressman from Texas, was the 1988 Libertarian Party nominee for president, and many of those voting for him in the GOP primaries can safely be described as Libertarian. As proof, many of the Georgians here this weekend as Libertarian delegates were campaigning for Paul in the Feb. 5 Georgia presidential primary.
Paul has already lost the Republican nomination to John McCain, but has refused to drop out and refused to endorse McCain. Barr believes Paul’s backers will come to him.
“The people he has realize, the many millions, I don’t think those people if there is a candidate out there, it’s highly likely they would be attracted to my candidacy,” Barr said.
— Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Big man at the convention
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver - At the 2008 Libertarian National Convention here, one man stands above the rest.
Glenn Jacobs is known among his fellow Libertarians as an intelligent, articulate supporter of the LP ideals. To millions of other Americans, he’s known as Kane, a professional wrestler in the WWE, the nation’s top pro wrestling circuit.
And when we say he stands above the rest, we’re serious. His official bio on the WWE site says he’s 7 feet tall and weighs 326 pounds. Check out his site here.
He spoke with reporters at the convention and emphasized his support for ending the war on drugs, a popular position for many Libertarians.
“I’m for ending the drug war,” Kane said, “but I’m not for drug use. Those are two different things.”
With the party’s nomination for president still up in the air, Jacobs said he’s yet to pick a candidate.
“I’m going to have to watch the debate (tonight). It will tell a lot about the direction the LP will go,” he said.
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The competition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver — Earlier we mentioned Russ Verney, who’s managing Bob Barr’s bid for the Libertarian nomination. Verney says that Barr’s top competition to win the party’s nod on Sunday are former Democratic U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska, Vegas odds maker Wayne Allyn Root and veteran Libertarian activist Mary Ruwart of Texas.
Gravel figures “that sounds about right.”
“I’m not sure if he’s our competition, or if we’re his,” Gravel said, from the exhibition hall of the 2008 Libertarian National Convention.
Gravel and Barr have a few things in common. They both are relatively new to the Libertarian Party. Barr joined in 2006 after serving as a Republican congressman for four terms. Gravel joined the party just this year after ending a long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination.
Gravel, like Verney, isn’t sure where the race stands at this point; who’s ahead and who’s trailing. He knows Barr came in with strong support and believes it will come down to multiple ballots on Sunday.
“We go into balloting and our voting starts, people will do their shifting,” Gravel said. “I don’t know. I don’t want to predict.”
— Aaron Gould Sheinin
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A quick word from Bob Barr
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver — Bob Barr is sitting in the back of the Georgia delegation section of the Libertarian Convention. He’s listening to his friend Richard Viguerie, a Libertarian and conservative stalwart, give the keynote address of the second day of the 2008 Libertarian National Convention.
Before Vigurie spoke, however, Barr said in a brief interview that there are many differences between this convention and the Republican conventions he was more familiar with as a four-term congressman from Georgia.
“Here, people want to talk about policy, and issues,” Barr said. “At Republican conventions anymore, it’s all about who has how much money. This is like what Republican conventions used to be like.”
Some aspects of political conventions are universal, however, as Barr will host a cocktail reception tonight at the hotel.
— Aaron Gould Sheinin
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Barr’s man on the ground
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Denver — Russell Verney is easy to spot at the 2008 Libertarian National Conventionr.
The veteran political operative is almost certainly the best-dressed, wearing the nicest suit and the swankiest tie.
His dress is a symbol, Verney said, one he hopes to bring to the Libertarian Party. Verney is Bob Barr’s campaign manager. Barr, of course, is the former Georgia congressman, the former Republican congressman, who is now seeking the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. That will be decided on Sunday. The party has a chance, Verney said, to join “the big leagues.”
“If Bob Barr is their candidate, this will be a credible, professional campaign,” said Verney, who worked on Ross Perot’s presidential campaign in 1992. “If he’s not, the Libertarian Party goes back into anonymity for another four years.”
— Aaron Gould Sheinin
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In Denver, not everyone’s throwing out the welcome mat for Bob Barr
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Reasononline has this interesting take by David Weigel on the first hours of the Libertarian Party convention in Denver and the reception that Bob Barr’s getting.
Here’s a snippet that includes some good background on the LP’s internal dynamics:
It would be a bit much, right now, to call the 2008 Libertarian nomination fight “heated” or “bitter.” The delegates trickling in to Denver, ever-aware that this city hosted the embryonic stirrings of the party 36 years ago, are happy to see each other. They’re gorging on free food, face-to-face conversations with people they’ve known only online, and brainy discussions that aren’t so easy to come by back home.
Still, there’s a battle gearing up, and not just over the headline fight over who will win the nomination. Two years ago, the self-described “reform caucus” of the party took over a convention in Portland and shaved the platform from 61 planks to a pocket-sized 15. The non-aggression principle in the party’s declaration survived, but only narrowly. Even before Bob Barr entered this race, radicals, who estimate they have one-third of conventioneers firmly on their side, were planning to use Denver to “Restore ‘04” and resurrect the older, more far-reaching platform.
The specter of a recent Republican transplant leading the LP has cranked up this platform fight to 11. A flyer labeled “CALL TO ACTION: The Libertarian Party—Not For Sale!” is being distributed around the Sheraton, spelling out a six-point theory of the right-wing takeover strategy. “The Barr campaign’s principals are veteran ‘partyjackers,’” says the flyer. Smoking gun? The appearance at the convention of conservative direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie, who is filling a speaking slot that was once going to go to radio host Neal Boortz. “If [Barr and Viguerie are] successful, the Libertarian Party will become just one more mouthpiece for malcontent Republicans.”
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Cagle helps to oust a House Republican incumbent
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dick Pettys at InsiderAdvantage has come across evidence of further deterioration in the relationship between Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Speaker Glenn Richardson’s crowd over in the House.
Cagle, it seems, “is taking sides in the Republican primary against a House incumbent, Rep. Amos Amerson of Dahlonega,” Pettys reports. “Amerson is one of only a handful of House incumbents with primary opposition. Cagle has agreed to host a fundraiser for Amerson’s challenger, Steve Gooch, chairman of the Lumpkin County Commission.”
Amerson is chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee.
Cagle’s spokeswoman, Jaillene Hunter, says Gooch is a close friend of the lieutenant governor, and that Cagle intends no further poaching on House land.
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Why John McCain should book a room in Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
No doubt you’ve seen the reports that Republican John McCain, like Democrat Barack Obama, has quietly begun searching for a running mate.
McCain is hosting at least three Republicans mentioned as potential running mates at his home this weekend — Govs. Charlie Crist of Florida and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.
McCain could save time and plane fare just by coming to Atlanta in fewer than two weeks. The Republican Governors Association is to gather here June 3-4.
Two attendees, Crist and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, are routinely in the top tier of vice presidential possibilities. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and host Sonny Perdue of Georgia have also been mentioned — though their names have surfaced less lately.
Barbour’s stock may have dropped as a result of the loss of that congressional seat last week in Mississippi. The governor, while widely recognized for his competency during the Hurricane Katrina recovery, actively campaigned for the defeated Republican in the race.
Other governors headed this way: Mark Sanford of South Carolina, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Jim Douglas of Vermont, and Donald Carcieri of Rhode Island. The topic of the meeting? How to be pro-business and environmentally effective at the same time.
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Alabama governor’s conviction gets Justice Department scrutiny
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The U.S. Justice Department says it is investigating whether former Alabama governor Don Siegelman was the target of a selective, politically motivated prosecution.
Click here to read the letter from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, released this afternoon by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.).
Most media outlets are focusing on the subpoena issued to Karl Rove, the former Bush advisor, by the House committee. But the Justice Department letter may be more important, an indication that Attorney General Michael Mukasey is taking seriously the allegations surrounding the Siegelman case.
In June 2006, the former Alabama governor, a Democrat, was convicted by a federal jury of taking $500,000 from Richard Scrushy, former chief executive of HealthSouth Corp. The trade-off alleged by prosecutors was an appointment for Scrushy to the Alabama hospital licensing board.
The money was to retire a debt from Siegelman’s campaign for a state lottery to pay for schools. Siegelman’s lawyers have characterized the cash as a routine political contribution, and point out Scrushy had served on the same board under three previous governors.
With his case under appeal, Siegelman was released from prison this spring. The former governor has maintained that Rove played a role in his prosecution, to sabotage Siegelman’s re-election bid and keep the governorship in Republican hands. Rove denies any involvement.
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A Republican memo: ‘The deepest GOP hole since the Great Depression’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two Republican strategists, David Johnson of Strategic Vision in Atlanta and Holly Robichaud of Tuesday Associates in Boston, have penned an unsolicited memo of advice for Republicans in the U.S. House, in which they say that the GOP is in the deepest hole it’s seen since the Great Depression.
The core of the problem, they say, is the inability of congressional Republicans to escape the shadow of George W. Bush.
Johnson’s Strategic Vision is a Republican-oriented public affairs firm that does regular polling in Georgia. Robichaud’s firm does similar work in Massachusetts — and she blogs on politics for the Boston Herald as the “Lone Republican.”
Read the entire memo on the jump. But here are a few excerpts:
The Republican brand and identity with voters is at its lowest point since 1932 during the depth of the Great Depression. To compare the Party’s standing even to the depth of Watergate or the debacle of 1964 is to understate the situation….
The reason that the Party has not rebounded even marginally from 2006 is that it continues to be identified with George W. Bush. This invokes the comparison to 1932 and the midterm elections of 1934 and general election of 1936.
Democrats were able to exploit the Great Depression to become the majority Party in America for the first time since the Civil War by identifying the Republican Party with Herbert Hoover in the minds and hearts of Americans.
They were successfully able to equate Republicans with Hoover very much as Democrats are tying Republicans at all levels with George W. Bush. Indeed invoking Ronald Reagan, as is being done today, has echoes of Republicans in the 1930’s invoking Calvin Coolidge rather than mention Herbert Hoover.
Invoking Ronald Reagan now will do more for Republicans than invoking Calvin Coolidge did Alf Landon and Republicans in 1934 and 1936….
In a corporation, after losses such as the Party suffered, at the very least there would be public apologies to the stockholders and a massive public relations campaign designed to show the change and put the company on offense, at the most extreme there would be a complete housecleaning of leadership.
Again, the entire memo can be found on the jump.
To: House Republican Leadership
From: David E. Johnson, Strategic Vision, LLC and Holly Robichaud, Tuesday Associates
Re: Rebuilding The Republican Brand and Surviving The 2008 Election Date: May 22, 2008
The Republican brand and identity with voters is at its lowest point since 1932 during the depth of the Great Depression. To compare the Party’s standing even to the depth of Watergate or the debacle of 1964 is to understate the situation.
In 1974, following the resignation of Richard Nixon, while the Republican Party was demoralized and the Democrats made key gains, the voting public was angry at Richard Nixon and his subordinates and sought to punish Republicans for Nixon’s misdeeds. By 1976, however Republicans and Nixon were not synonymous and the seeds for a Republican revival had been planted.
In 1964, despite attempts by George Romney, Nelson Rockefeller, and William Scranton to disassociate the Republican brand from Barry Goldwater, who had been unfairly painted as an extremist by his primary competitors and Lyndon Johnson, voters equated Republicans with extremism and racism in regards to the issue of war and peace and civil rights. Yet by 1966, the Republican image had rebounded due to Democratic missteps and stray Republicans and Republican leaning voters returning to the Party.
That is not the case in 2008. The Republican image has not rebounded and the Party continues to suffer not only among Independents but among core Republican constituencies. The devastating defeat in the Mississippi 1st District was not an aberration but rather an indicator of what could happen not merely in marginal districts but safe Republican districts.
The reason that the Party has not rebounded even marginally from 2006 is that it continues to be identified with George W. Bush. This invokes the comparison to 1932 and the midterm elections of 1934 and general election of 1936.
Democrats were able to exploit the Great Depression to become the majority Party in America for the first time since the Civil War by identifying the Republican Party with Herbert Hoover in the minds and hearts of Americans. They were successfully able to equate Republicans with Hoover very much as Democrats are tying Republicans at all levels with George W. Bush.
Indeed invoking Ronald Reagan, as is being done today, has echoes of Republicans in the 1930’s invoking Calvin Coolidge rather than mention Herbert Hoover. Invoking Ronald Reagan now will do more for Republicans than invoking Calvin Coolidge did Alf Landon and Republicans in 1934 and 1936. This is not to say that Republicans must run from conservative principles, rather they must re-embrace them and again to convince voters that Republicans are true conservatives.
The first step for Republican recovery must begin in distancing itself from President Bush. The Party has been viewed as the conservative Party since the advent of the New Deal. Indeed, part of President Bush’s initial appeal in 2000 was that he was a conservative in the tradition of Ronald Reagan. This view no longer holds among Republicans.
In key states that Strategic Vision, LLC has polled in, less than ten percent of Republicans view George W. Bush as a conservative and this has been steady for three years. As seen in the following from recent polling:
Do you view George W. Bush as a conservative in the mold of Ronald Reagan?
State Yes No Undecided
Florida 8% 78% 14%
Georgia 8% 80% 12%
Indiana 6% 76% 18%
Iowa 6% 73% 21%
Michigan 6% 75% 19%
Missouri 7% 79% 14%
New Jersey 8% 77% 15%
Pennsylvania 8% 81% 11%
Ohio 7% 76% 17%
Wisconsin 7% 79% 14%
Washington 6% 81% 13%
These responses show that even among strong Republican voters, President Bush is no longer seen as the conservative that he was billed as in 2000. More ominously for Republican candidates and incumbents these voters do not see a difference between the President and Republicans in Congress.
This parallels again Herbert Hoover and the Republican standing of the 1930’s rather than Watergate or 1964 when voters punished the Party because of an individual but rapidly returned the fold. These conservatives are not at this time returning to the Republican banner.
To recapture these voters and reinvigorate them, Republicans in Congress must disassociate themselves from the President on key conservative issues. They must demonstrate that the Republican Party is the true conservative Party rather than the Bush Party which it has been branded.
Even more alarming is that the Republican base continues to be demoralized. This low morale among Republicans which has been reflected in turnout in the primaries and fundraising reflects an even more disturbing analogy - that of the Tory Party in Great Britain following the election of Tony Blair and New Labour in 1997. To further this analogy, just as the Tories hopes that New Labour would become ‘Old Labour’ once elected so Republicans hoped that the Democrats would revert back to form after 2006. With this not happening, morale among rank and file voters has sunk.
Indeed, it is not merely among Republicans that Congressional Republicans have been hurt but also among Independents who consider themselves slightly right of center. These voters believe based upon polling that the Republican Party no longer believes in core conservative values. These voters are still very much in play as they are and the country as a whole continues to be right of center.
Yet President Bush and Congressional Republican identification with the President has allowed this demographic to either move into the Democratic fold as seen in Democratic victories in Republican leaning districts or these voters have stayed at home.
Quite simply put many Republicans and most voters are already looking beyond the Bush Presidency. Even more important to remember is that these voters are in play at this moment. For Republicans the concern is not so much that Republican voters will exodus the Party, although that is a possibility but rather they will stay at home.
Beyond the President’s problems, the Republican brand is being hurt because many voters including the Republican base do not believe that the Party has learned the lessons from 2006. Despite the stunning losses in 2006, voters do not believe that the Party has made adjustments or done a mea culpa and begun returning to core Republican principles.
In a corporation, after losses such as the Party suffered, at the very least there would be public apologies to the stockholders and a massive public relations campaign designed to show the change and put the company on offense, at the most extreme there would be a complete housecleaning of leadership.
The final image problem the Republican brand is suffering is a perception fostered by the media of being intolerant. The media has assisted in helping Democrats by saying that the Republican Party is closed to moderates while Democrats are now open to conservatives such as Heath Schuler, Travis Childers, and others. This turns off swing voters who may be conservative on pocketbook or defense issues but more moderate on social issues. Another key issue to the base in which the media and Democrats have cast Republicans as intolerant to great success has been immigration reform. While this issue remains a fissure issue, Democrats have been able with the media’s assistance to paint Republicans as anti-Hispanic and against all immigration. A key message that has been missing in this argument is that the Party is against illegal immigration but for legal immigration.
Having assessed the Republican image, there is some good news, the Democratic image while better than the Republican image still suffers in Congressional approval numbers. Voters are not yet sold on the Democratic Party and they have yet to solidify voter loyalty. This will not be enough to save and revive the Republican brand. Even with poor Congressional numbers, as long as the Republican brand is as mired as it is, the Party faces the prospect of losing between twenty to thirty seats in November.
To begin recovering the Republican brand in order to avoid such a sweep, a definite public relations and strategic marketing needs to be done. Congressional Republicans must show core policy differences from the President and not be afraid to combat him on policy issues. Congressional Republicans must show clearly to Republican voters and Republican leaning Independents that they are charting a different course from the Administration and moving away from the President on fundamental issues where voters feel he has strayed. The message to voters must be that Congressional Republicans are not the same as President Bush. If this is not done immediately, than voters will continue to equate the two as the same even after the President has left Washington and thus consigning Republicans to at least a decade out of Party.
The Republican leadership needs to emphasize to voters that it understands the reasons that voters have been rejecting it and apologizes for past mistakes. Congressional Republicans must pay more than lip service to the idea of change but rather demonstrate what a positive Republican change will entail. It must continue to crack down on members who appear tainted with corruption to regain the good government image that voters associated with the Republican brand. There must be a zero tolerance for even the slightest hint of corruption.
Congressional Republicans must show that they want the support of all voters and are not closed off to moderate voters. They need to remember the Reagan mantra of it is better to have someone who supports me, 80% to 90% of the time. In doing this they must abandon some of the harsher rhetoric they are using on such issues as immigration. They need to remember that being for legal immigration while against illegal immigration registers better with voters. In reaching out to these voters, Congressional Republicans would be advised to present a platform similar to the Contract With America.
Congressional Republicans must emphasize that the Party is not out of ideas to make the country better and improve individual’s daily lives. The Party has to demonstrate again that it for positive change rather than just opposed to the Democratic alternative. Yet, the message also must be of the harm that Democratic policies are doing to the nation and the economy.
Missing or lost for much of the past several years is the harmful consequences that Congressional Democrats are creating. This means attacking Democrats beyond the Iraq issue. Over the past year, Republicans have lost their advantages on dealing with the war on terror and defense, as well as the economy. Only by presenting a two tier approach can we recover.
Finally in getting the Republican message out, we must incorporate new viral marketing. This is definitely the new wave of communications. Even more interesting is that the fastest group of people using, online news outlets, blogs, and podcasts ate voters aged 45 and up. To successfully target voters, we need to use strategic email blasts, online chats and blogs, as well as constant podcasts.
With a highly motivated base and a shared common vision, Democrats are dominating us in fundraising. They are doing this through traditional methods as well as using new Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 in which we are far behind. We need to catch up! How can you overcome their dominance? By always remaining aggressive on the phone, increasing your event schedule, and maximizing your direct mail and email programs. Do not mistakenly rely on the PAC community. They are now forced to support the Democratic majority which means less money for Republicans.
First and foremost remain diligent in dialing for dollars. Don’t just call former high dollar donors. Reach out to new prospects. Always be prospecting because 12% of your list will go bad over 3 months.
Due to our base supporters being disenfranchised, direct mail response has dropped more than 40% over the past 2 years. Here are a few suggestions for improving your rate of response.
• Have a third party sign the letter on your behalf.
• Be creative. The standard #10 letter package is not going to cut through mailbox clutter this year.
• Include facts and figures to not only back up your arguments but also to prove that you have remained true to your word. For example, if you have an outstanding record with Americans for Tax Reform or the National Taxpayer Union, make sure to mention your ratings.
• Solicit smaller lists. The more targeted you can be with your message the better the results. After speaking to a local chamber, send them a fundraising letter. Try to hand address whenever possible.
To increase fundraising, you should be event heavy. People still want to be seen by their Congressman so be aggressive in your planning. Don’t neglect to do house parties. Not only do they easily net a profit, but they also generate new donors. Finally we need to begin using Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 strategies far better.
Our target voters aged 45 and older are used to paying bills online, purchasing online, and acquiring news online. We need to be using email marketing, RSS feeds, and online events to raise money. We need to be using conservative websites far more effectively in raising money. Quite frankly, we need to catch up and think anew with online fundraising or the disparity in fundraising will grow even greater.
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How Nunn could fit into a Southern strategy for Obama
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pay no attention, Sam Nunn has requested, to those who place him on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s short list for vice president.
But it’s an impossible demand. The former Georgia senator’s name continues to be bandied about. Remember yesterday’s post about how Bob Barr could put Georgia in play for Obama?
The Politico today works Nunn into that formula:
“Nunn has the advantage of helping the Democrats make a play for Georgia. Since Bill Clinton narrowly carried Georgia in 1992, the state has gone Republican, but by inconsistent margins.
“This election could be the perfect storm for Democrats to turn Georgia blue: Obama likely would inspire high turnout among African-Americans (who represent 30 percent of Georgia’s population); McCain might suffer low turnout among religious conservatives long skeptical of him; and the just-announced Libertarian candidacy of Bob Barr, a recent Republican member of Congress from northern Georgia, could siphon conservative votes from McCain.
“With this confluence of forces working for the Democrats, Nunn joining the ticket could take Obama over the top in the ninth-largest state.”
Photo credit: Associated Press
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About the attacks on a particular admiral’s son
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Blog for Democracy says that Bill Gillespie, the Democrat challenging U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Savannah), will get some time at 7:30 p.m. tonight on the John Gibson show on Fox Radio.
No doubt, Gillespie — a retired lieutenant colonel — will be asked to repeat the remarks he made about John McCain on Monday when the Republican presidential candidate made a stop in Savannah.
According to the Savannah Morning News:
“Admirals’ sons,” Gillespie said, “were treated like royalty. They were privileged people. They were given a silver spoon. Their careers were prepared for them.” Gillespie, a former Army officer who served in Iraq, said McCain was the kind of admiral’s son who became a “maverick.”
McCain, Gillespie added, was “somebody who needed to stand out, someone that needed to draw attention to themselves and … was usually out for themselves.” He said his “heart grieves” for McCain’s suffering as a POW.
“After that,” Gillespie said, “he was somewhat of a celebrity and it went to his head. … I think he was a self-promoter for the last four years (in the Navy.)
Republicans have pointed out that Gillespie’s comments appear to be part of a coordinated Democratic effort to discredit their candidate.
Given that state Democratic party chairman Jane Kidd was Gillespie’s side when he uttered the remarks, they’re probably right — but coordinated talking points are a Republican invention. Consider it a show of Democratic respect for a technique that often works.
National Review Online has pointed out the similarity of Gillespie’s statements with remarks made days earlier in the Des Moines Register, by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa):
Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, “and he has a hard time thinking beyond that,” Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Friday.
“I think he’s trapped in that,” Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. “Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.”
Harkin said that “it’s one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that’s just how you’re steeped, how you’ve learned, how you’ve grown up.”
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If CNN won’t go to them, they’ll go to CNN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Not that they expect Oregon-sized numbers, but Barack Obama supporters plan on providing a significant backdrop for a certain, locally based cable TV network on the evening of June 3, by filling the CNN Center lobby to celebrate the final Democratic primaries in Montana and South Dakota.
Thirty-one delegates are at stake that night — 15 in South Dakota, and 15 in Montana. Puerto Rico, where 55 delegates are at stake, will have voted two days before.
The communication to the “Obama family” notes that “even former Hillary supporters are invited to mark the end of a historic primary.”
There is no indication — let’s repeat that — there is no indication at all that the candidate himself will be here. However, given the venue, attendees are asked to wear Obama clothing and hats. There was no limit placed on style or taste.
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Jim Webb on the coolness of working-class whites toward Barack Obama
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Clearly, throughout this presidential election, candidates, journalists and, yes, even bloggers will be talking much about race, feeling for new boundaries with our toes without actually stepping over the precipice.
This morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) had his toe out — carefully describing the cool feelings of the white working class toward Barack Obama, the likely Democratic presidential nominee.
Keep in mind that Webb, like everyone else in the world, has been mentioned as a potential running mate for Obama.
Click on the frame to listen, but the interesting stuff starts just before the five minute mark. Webb is responding to a question from former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.
Says Webb:
”This is a very powerful cultural group that’s always underestimated, and it’s not simply in the Appalachian Mountains. But that original settlement that I wrote about began in Pennsylvania, went into Pennsylvania, went down the Appalachian Mountains into northern Georgia, northern Alabama, then spilled west.
“They formed sort of the core group in terms of value systems of working class white America, and we shouldn’t be surprised at the way that they’re voting right now.
“And the reason I would say that is — black America and Scots-Irish America are like tortured siblings. They both have long history and they both missed the boat when it came to all of the larger benefits that a lot of other people were able to receive. There’s a saying in the Appalachian mountains that they say to one another, and it’s, “if you’re poor and white, you’re out of sight.”
“The fact that they would line up and vote this way is not so much a comment on Barrack. I think Barack is saying a lot of good things that will appeal to this cultural group in time.
“When I hear people say this is racism, my back gets up a little bit, because that’s my cultural group. This isn’t Selma, 1965.
This is the result of how affirmative action, which was basically a justifiable concept when it applied to African Americans, expanded to every single ethnic group in America that was not white, and these were the people who had not received benefits and were not getting anything out of it. And they’re basically saying, hey, let’s pay attention to what has happened to this cultural group in terms of opportunities.
“…If this cultural group could get at the same table as black America you could rechange populist American politics. Because they have so much in common in terms of what they need out of government.”
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Barr could put Georgia in play, and the Obama campaign knows it
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Signs are popping up all over that Georgia could have a front row seat in the November race for president — thanks to Bob Barr, if he remains the Libertarian in the race.
Late yesterday, Matt Towery and his InsiderAdvantage unveiled a statewide poll, with a 3.6 percent margin of error, that — presuming Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee, and Barr as the Libertarian choice — had the following horse-race figures:
— John McCain, Republican, at 45%
— Barack Obama, Democrat, at 35%
— Bob Barr, Libertarian, at 8%
For now, pay no attention to those two top lines, which could be kind of soft. Stick with Barr, whose presence in Georgia and metro Atlanta goes back two decades and more.
No one knows what he’ll do in the rest of the nation. That depends on cash and organization. But in his home state, Barr is a known quantity.
“That 8 percent in Georgia could in fact hold — it could go down, but it’s enough to make the state competitive,” Towery said today.
Right now, Barr’s polling mimics the performance of Ross Perot and his Reform Party candidacies in 1992 and 1996. In his first run, Perot won nearly 14 percent of the vote in Georgia. In his second, he dropped to 6 percent.
But in each case, Bill Clinton was the beneficiary. In ‘92, Clinton won Georgia. In ‘96, he came within 1.2 percent of taking the state.
Don’t think that the Obama campaign isn’t watching every move that Barr makes. Should he become the Libertarian candidate, how Barr does in Georgia — worth 15 electoral votes — becomes especially important.
The Obama campaign has identified more than a dozen swing states where foot soldiers are already on the ground, preparing for November. In the South, North Carolina is one of those states. Georgia is another.
In Atlanta, eight full-time Obama workers are quietly putting together get-out-the-vote plans and setting up voter registration rallies.
To have an operation up and running, more than five months before the vote, bespeaks some serious ambition.
Many of you have also noticed that, as if to punctuate the above, RealClearPolitics has added Georgia to its list of battleground states.
This is what Noah Millman of the American Scene is saying:
Bob Barr is from Georgia. In general, Obama is going to have a tough time in the deep South - even if he gets record African-American turnout in states like Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, overwhelming white support for the GOP will make an Obama victory impossible.
But if Barr gets a significant vote in his home state, and Obama can generate historic levels of African-American support, there may be a window for Obama to contest Georgia, which would otherwise be out of reach.
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Bush vetoes farm bill; Chambliss calls president’s advisors ‘imprudent’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As promised, President Bush has just vetoed the $300 billion farm bill, supported by Georgia’s two Republican senators and two of seven Republican House members.
U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss isn’t hesitating in his defense of legislation that many fiscal conservatives among Republicans oppose. Within minutes of the president’s action, Chambliss’ campaign put out this YouTube clip from last weekend’s state GOP convention, in which the senator promises to work for an override.
Chambliss’ office has also issued the following statement:
“I am deeply disappointed that the President has accepted the imprudent counsel of his advisors and has rejected the farm bill which Congress approved by unprecedented margins. In any bill of this magnitude all parties must accept some compromise. Not only does our plan move in the direction of what the Administration requested, but it also contains many provisions they proposed last spring.
“Unfortunately, the veto will prevent the implementation of all the improvements and reforms included in this farm bill. Conditions have dramatically changed since the passage of the 2002 farm bill and our nation can not afford to operate under an extension of current law for another year. We have crafted a bipartisan and fiscally responsible farm bill and it should become law. Our farmers and ranchers have waited too long for a new farm bill and I will urge my colleagues to over ride the veto.”
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Bloggers of the ‘afrosphere’ think they’ve been shut out of the Democratic National Convention
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last week, bloggers found out which of them have been awarded credentials to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
About one blog per state was permitted — a total of 55. In Georgia, that means Jon Flack’s Tondee’s Tavern can book its plane tickets. And other blogs may have to resign themselves to cable TV.
Flack says advocacy for Democratic causes was a factor in the DNC selection process.
Tondee’s Tavern is a community blog, operated by several “bartenders.” Flack is a candidate for the Forsyth County commission. Going with him to Denver, under the blog auspices, will be contributor Amy Morton of Macon, who has her own site, Georgia Women Vote. Morton, too, is active in Democratic politics.
Both are white. And many of the objections about the blog selection process are coming from web sites operated by African-Americans.
Says the Dallas Morning News:
[S]ome members of the self-titled “afrosphere” — blogs written or published by African Americans — are angry that the “State Blogger Corps” appears to be mostly white, particularly since the party appears poise to nominate a black candidate, Barack Obama, for president.
“OK, folks, black bloggers to the back of the bus,” read the headline on the African American Political Pundit blog.
Party leaders said the factors in determining state bloggers were readership, Internet ratings and focus on local and state politics, not race…
A second round of blog credentials will be announced before the end of the month, party leaders said, and minority bloggers will be purposely included in that selection.
Andre Walker at Georgia Politics Unfiltered has a posting entitled “Jim Crow raises his ugly head…at the Democratic Convention?”
Says Walker, whose site is a one-man operation:
It wouldn’t surprise me if some state blogs more critical of the Democratic Party were passed over for other blogs who portray Democrats in a more favorable light, but I’m not going to dispute that one way or the other because I don’t know if it’s true or not.
However, there is a bigger issue here that minority bloggers from across the nation are beginning to pick up on. It seems, at first glance, that there is a significant absence of color among the DNCC’s State Blogger Corps.
Several blogs who received credentials expressed concern to Democratic National chairman Howard Dean about the lack of transparency in the selection process.
In the letter, dated May 19, the bloggers wrote:
As long-time progressive state bloggers, we have now witnessed many of our well-respected colleagues from crucial states be passed over. In many states, it appears that parochial politics and hurt egos played a role in these decisions. These concerns run counter to our shared goals of using programs like the state blogger pool to “tear down the walls” in Denver — and better connect the American people with the events on the ground.
The Democratic Party endangers its own long-term viability when it makes fealty a criterion for inclusion. Instead, the Party should act to ensure that it includes its ideological media allies, even if those allies are occasional tactical or strategic critics.
We, the undersigned, have been included in the state credentials pool, despite our own history of criticism of local Democratic actors. This speaks well to the character of our own local parties. But while our peers in other states are being excluded, we’d be remiss in staying silent.
Jon Flack of Tondee’s Tavern is among the signers.
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When energy policy resembles a root canal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tom Price, the Roswell congressman and orthopedic surgeon, is behaving like a mere dentist.
Price advocates the following policy shift for his fellow, ailing Republicans when it comes to energy: Drilling and lots of it. Drilling in Alaska, drilling off the coast of Florida, drilling wherever possible to produce made-in-America fuel.
In an interview with my Washington colleague Julia Malone, Price said he has tried to, well, drill that idea into the heads of John McCain’s senior policy team.
Price believes he has made some headway.
But the congressman acknowledged that one obstacle was the presumptive Republican nominee’s own vote against drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
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Yet another reason why e-mail and politics don’t mix
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of eternal maxims of politics is this: Never speak when you can nod, never nod when you can wink, and never — ever — put it in writing.
For the last 18 months or so, state Sen. John Douglas (R-Conyers) and the city of Conyers have engaged in a running feud. Douglas has accused Conyers officials of posting police officers outside the city limits on I-20 in order to catch speeders.
Conyers officials say they’re operating within the law.
The back-and-forth reached a crescendo last summer, when City Manager Antony “Tony” Lucas sent a letter to Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle — copied to half the world — that called Douglas an “ignoble politician” who had resorted to “blackmail” by threatening to hold up legislation to permit Conyers to levy a hotel-motel tax to help support the Georgia International Horse Park.
Also, this spring, Douglas picked up Republican primary opposition from former state senator Mike Crotts.
But all this is by way of background.
Last Wednesday, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed Conyers’ hotel-motel tax legislation. That very evening, an e-mail landed in the computer operated by this writer, containing a string of e-mails sent between Douglas and Conyers Mayor Randy Mills.
Click here to see the exchange.
The string begins with a request from Mills that Douglas support the hotel-motel tax bill, which had just passed the House. Douglas responds that Conyers isn’t within his Senate district — and advises Mills to seek out state Sen. Ron Ramsey, a Democrat.
But soon afterwards, Douglas sends this from a private e-mail account to Mills:
Randy:
After giving more thought to the hotel/motel tax bill coming to the Senate, I have this to offer:
I will work behind the scenes and guarantee its passage, if:
— You guarantee to me that your police department will only leave Conyers in emergency or essential situations, and
— Your city council apologizes to me at the next meeting for the name calling and unprofessional actions shown last summer, and
— Tony Lucas stays neutral in my reelection campaign and provides no assistance to Crotts unless the law requires it. (open records requests, etc.) (I have sources who can monitor this.)
Those three actions on the part of Conyers guarantees your tax bill. Ron Ramsey and I will work out how we are going to get it through the Senate, but we will get it done.
John
Douglas owns up to the e-mail, and said it must be read in the context of what was said at a Conyers city council meeting last summer. “When they called me ‘unhinged,’ and the city manager called me a ‘king,’ I never, ever responded in kind,” the senator said.
Both Douglas and Mills agree that the Conyers mayor never responded to the offer and conditions listed by Douglas above. “I just ignored it and moved on,” Mills said.
Said Douglas: “Even without an answer, I supported [the legislation], and it passed.” In fact, H.B. 302 was approved by the Senate with a 43-3 vote.
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Dubose Porter on a run for governor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
House Minority Leader DuBose Porter, an attorney and newspaper publisher from Dublin, edged closer to a 2010 race for governor, in an interview with Tim Bryant this morning on WGAU (1340AM) in Athens.
Listen to a three-minute sound clip here.
“I feel like I’ve done enough. I’ve been involved as Zell Miller’s floor leader, I’ve been speaker pro tem of the Georgia House, I’ve been leading our caucus for the last four years and I just think it’s a great opportunity to set the priorities that we think are important for our state,” the Democrat said.
Porter rattled off a series of issues he’s likely to focus on — cuts to education, alleged attacks the HOPE scholarship, water planning, and trauma care, to name a few.
When will he make a decision? Like everyone else, Porter said, “After November. You have to get through this election cycle.”
Photo credit: Elissa Eubanks/AJC
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David Scott on Hillary Clinton for veep: ‘We’ve got to have working-class whites’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Rep. David Scott (D-Atlanta), who was once for Hillary Clinton but is now for Barack Obama, has become the latest to argue for a “dream ticket” that puts the two together.
“We cannot win with just black voters, college students and liberal voters,” Scott is quoted as saying in today’s The Hill. “We’ve got to have working-class whites; we’ve got to have the support of white women. We’ve got to have Hispanics, Jewish voters and Catholics. These are the very people that form the core of Hillary’s support.”
But the same piece says more congressional Democrats would prefer Sam Nunn or John Edwards as Obama’s running mate.
Photo credit: Rick McKay, Cox Washington Bureau
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Broun getting help from GOP leadership in Congress
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You have to wonder whether the trifecta of defeats in special elections for Congress — Illinois, Louisiana, and then Mississippi — has encouraged Republicans in the U.S. House to put a higher-than-normal value on incumbency.
Last week, Roll Call reported that cash-strapped U.S. Rep. Paul Broun of Athens is “getting help” in a financial way from the Republican leadership in Washington, to fend off the primary challenge of Barry Fleming.
Broun is said to have received $13,500 from the political action committees of Deputy Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Tom Cole, who is chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee and in charge of House GOP races this year.
What’s more, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is to host a July, $500-per-head fund-raiser for Broun in Washington.
Broun may need every dime he can get. Fleming, too, for that matter. Last week’s win in Mississippi — and a bulging campaign coffer — has emboldened national Democrats to lengthen the list of Southern seats they deem worthy of competition.
One likely target is Georgia’s 10th District, where Bobby Saxon, a Democrat with good military credentials, waits. If Broun hangs on, the primary will have assured that his financial situation is no better. If Fleming beats him in July, Democrats will consider the seat open.
National Democrats didn’t make the call to engage in Mississippi until last month. A decision on whether or not to go from defense — protecting John Barrow and Jim Marshall — to offense in Georgia probably won’t be made until September, at the earliest.
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The argument from Bob Barr’s campaign manager
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
No doubt you saw today’s AJC story on Bob Barr’s use of campaign contributions. A few minutes ago, the Libertarian campaign of Bob Barr sent out the following fund-raising memo from Russ Verney, who was part of the 1992 Ross Perot campaign. Grammatical errors are his:
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Russ Verney
Campaign Manager, Bob Barr ‘08
TO: Friends and Associates
RE: Political Assessment
DATE: May 19, 2008
These days, politics seems to revolve around polling and predictions. I’m not convinced it’s the best use of anyone’s time — especially for someone like me who’s spent his whole life in full-time campaign activities — but consider this outline :
— early October: 7% in national surveys
— Mid October: wins televised Presidential debate
— late October: 12% in national surveys
— election day: captures 19% of national vote
That’s what happened in a previous election I was involved with: Ross Perot in 1992. That could have been the case with Ron Paul if he had opted to run on a third party ticket.
I believe former Congressman Bob Barr has the same potential. Maybe better. Don’t be mislead, however: I am no cheerleader by nature. But I do agree with our Senior Policy Advisor, Doug Bandow, in an e-mail I received from him yesterday:
“I’ve just read the early polling data and your election game plan — phenomenal. Congressman Barr is poised to have a huge impact on the public policy debates and political history. His will be no ordinary presidential campaign.”
That’s not going to happen without your involvement, but at this point I’m asking you to just to think about participating and to mull over the following … November 4th is light years away. In terms of laying the foundation for a dynamic and influencial campaign, the pieces for Barr 2008 are already in place. Consider …
America is swamped in Libertarian information:
— Congressman Ron Paul’s new book is the number one best-seller in the nation according to the New York Times
— Neal Boortz has 4,000,000 radio listeners daily
— On TV, John Stossel broadcasts such opinions as: “I am a libertarian in that I believe in limited government and as much individual freedom as possible.”
Finally, you may not have heard this from many media pundits, but nearly 130,000 people — 16% of the Republican primaary turnout in Pennsylvania — got out of their easy chairs and voted for Ron Paul and against John McCain … that was after John McCain had won the nomination.
Politically and ideologically, Bob Barr is plowing fertile ground.
It will take an articulate candidate and a powerful message to build the meaning of the Libertarian messages voters are receiving. We have both in the Barr 2008 campaign.
That’s why we need your participation: your investment of time, talent, and financial resources is vital as the campaign builds, from the ground floor, the alternative to politics-as-usual.
Will you take a moment to go to our website and contribute $25, $50, $100 or even $500 today?
I’d also like you to consider a pledge of support so we may plot out our post-convention strategy. Consider making a $25 contribution today — and a further investment of $25 or $50 on June 1st. Your gift of $50 or even $100 right away, with a pledge of another $25, $50 or perhaps $250 on June 1st, will allow us to set some ambitious campaign plans in place now.
If you cannot donate today or tomorrow, please do make a pledge payable on June 1st. Our budget process is the first responsibility I have to deal with.
With just a few days before what I believe will be great news coming out of the Libertarian Party convention, please be sure to act on this memo today so we can further our momentum.
While you are at the web site, look around (there are lots more news and information posted) and take time to volunteer. I’d like to count on your support of just one hour a week in June, two hours a week in July, three in August.
Will you help?
Please let me hear from you right away. Your investment in this campaign of $50, $25, $500, or $100 will really be of help right now. We will put the contributions into good use immediately, and if you can volunteer just an hour a week I assure you will be productively busy. Two more things …
Bob Schoen, in his book cited above, also stated, “I have a clear and unambiguous sense that the most important person in the 1996 election was Ross Perot, who in 1995 shaped and prefaced the outcome of the election the next year.” That’s regrdless of Perot earning some 9% of the vote in comparison to 19% in 1992.
There are more than 430 elected Libertarian Party officials in the U.S. How many more do you think a successful Bob Barr campaign will hep elect? I am convinced Bob Barr can match or beat the Perot votes of ‘92 and ‘96. Please be generous with a contribution, a pledge of further support, and your time.
Our fitting legacy of success — yours and Bob’s — would be the impact of a vibrant, effective Libertarian Party. You can make that happen, my friend.
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Now Georgia Democrats can argue over who’s going to Denver
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You’ve been reading about how Ron Paul supporters were shut out of the list of delegates to the Republican National Convention, approved over the weekend.
Now it’s the Democrats’ turn to scream. On Saturday, members of the state committee were to meet to elect many of those who would be heading to Denver in August. Given the enthusiasm among party activists, competition was to be stiff.
But Georgia Democratic Party chairman Jane Kidd has just sent out an e-mail letting members of the state committee know that the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have employed their “right of refusal” and removed any competition from the slate.
Read the message from Kidd and the entire list of delegates who will be headed to the Democratic National Convention on the jump. The real question is, who’s been struck off? Right now, I don’t know. It’s time for bloggers to do their work.
Dear XXXXX
Today, we received the list of candidates for At-Large Delegates as approved by the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns. The lists of approved candidates are below.
As outlined in the Democratic Party of Georgia Delegate Selection Plan, the Presidential campaigns have a “right of refusal” of any person applying to be a pledged delegate for that campaign. The campaigns may reject a potential delegate candidate for any reason, and they do not tell the Democratic Party the reasons for any rejections after their review.
Please make arrangements to attend the meeting of the State Committee in Atlanta this Saturday, May 24th, 2008, at 10:00 a.m. Your attendance at this meeting is crucial, as we will elect our At-Large Delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
The meeting will be held at the Loudermilk Center, 40 Courtland St SE, Atlanta, GA 30303 (www.loudermilkcenter.com). The full 2008 Georgia Democratic National Convention Delegation will meet for the first time immediately following the State Committee meeting. It is very important that all Delegates attend.
If you have questions about the process or the campaigns’ rationale for approving delegates, please contact the campaigns directly. The campaign contacts are: Paul Elliot, Hillary Clinton Delegate Selection Director, 703-469-2008 ext.1275. Khalil Johnson, Barack Obama Southern Political Director, 312-819-2790.
I look forward to seeing you this Saturday.
Sincerely, Jane Kidd Chair, Democratic Party of Georgia
List of approved candidates for at-large, pledged PLEO, and standing committee positions for Senator Hillary Clinton
PLEO
Thomas I. Irvin
Calvin Smyre
Vivian Bishop
Sally Rosser
At-Large
Keith Mason
Billy Mitchell
Bernita Smith
Andrea Young
Cheryl Williams
Nikema Williams
At-Large Alternates
Jeffery Meeks
Nikki Randall
Standing Committee Members
Platform
Michael Thurmond
Credentials
Gordon Giffin
Rules
Patty Payne and Rachel Rosenblatt
List of approved candidates for at-large, pledged PLEO, and standing committee positions for Senator Barack Obama:
PLEO
Shirley Franklin
Horencea Tate
Karla Drenner
Mary Osbourne
Ed Tarver
Roger Bruce
Randall Mangum
At-Large
Cheryl Jewell
Lori Gregory Jara Butler
Lewana Heard
Julie Borders
Kathy Nicholas
Jane Bradshaw
Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery
Chad Brock
Aaron Steele
Jerry Riley
R.J. Hadley
Steve Deak
At-Large Alternates
Emily Schunior
Miguel Camacho
Rev. Dr. Durley
Standing Committee Members
Platform - Margaret Kaiser, Gina Bennett and Joe Taylor
Credentials - Karol Mason, David Adelman and Kirk Dornbush
Rules - Evelyn Hall and Brian Wertheim
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Perdue’s relationship with Columbus heads downstream
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gov. Sonny Perdue’s on-again, off-again relationship with the city of Columbus appears to be hung up on the shoals. Again.
In his brief visit Saturday for the state Republican convention, local reporters questioned the governor’s line item veto last week of $3 million for the National Infantry Center museum.
Wrote the Ledger-Enquirer over the weekend:
Perdue reiterated that the state had met its obligation with a $5 million gift last year and anyone who said the budget cut shows a lack of military support is wrong. “For people to suggest a lack of support of the troops is absolutely disgusting to me,” Perdue said….
The $5 million approved last year was a “capstone gift,” and the governor made that clear to local leaders, Perdue said. But that’s not what the Columbus people pushing the project say they heard.
“My clear impression — my understanding — is the $5 million was a capstone gift,” Perdue said. “I am sorry for any misunderstanding that occurred.”
[Retired Maj. Gen. Jerry White, president of the National Infantry Foundation,] said Saturday the governor is mistaken.
“He’s remembering it all wrong,” White said. “I sat in his office and asked him for $15 million. We needed the $5 million to guarantee the loan.”
Construction on the $91 million facility started 16 months ago, and it is scheduled to be completed in March of next year. The foundation got a $42 million construction loan to begin the project. The loss of the $3 million will not stop or delay the project, White said.
Columbus wasn’t an area that showed strong support for Perdue during his 2002 election bid. Ever since, he and local leaders have tried to patch things up — with only occasional success.
The consolidated government of Columbus/Muscogee County got into a tiff with the governor last summer, when the city chose to pursue separate negotiations with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the flow of water in the Chattahoochee River — in essence rejecting Perdue’s leadership on the issue.
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Speaker to recruits: Be careful what you put your name to
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
House Speaker Glenn Richardson has sent out a memo to new Republican candidates to the House, warning them away from surveys by special interest groups that may lock the new recruits into positions they — or the speaker — may later regret.
Richardson doesn’t mention any names, but at least two organizations come to mind.
The speaker has feuded with Georgia Right to Life over its push for a state constitutional amendment to declare that human life begins at fertilization. And, as an advocate of remaking Georgia’s tax system, Richardson has occasionally found himself at odds with Grover Norquist and his Washington-based group, Americans for tax reform.
Read the memo here. But these are the paragraphs that matter:
Now that you have qualified for office, you will no doubt be receiving many pieces of advice and counsel. In addition, you will be receiving requests from many various and sundry organizations to fill out questionnaires, signed commitments and pledges.
I highly recommend you not respond to any questionnaires and definitely do not sign any pledges or commitments until you have sought counsel from your consultant, other elected representatives and me. Too many times I have seen people who sign pledges and commitments, not fully understanding what they are signing, only to have the action used against them later.
Some of the groups distributing surveys are very good and reputable, but many are not. Many that participate in this process are somehow, some way getting money to advance their cause. Their only goal is to use these documents to advance such a cause, not help you.
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Who’s going to Minneapolis?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ron Paul supporters are livid about being shut out of the Georgia delegation to the Republican National Convention in September. That’s old news.
But there was some additional score-settling that hasn’t been mentioned. Take a look at this list of delegates and alternates, approved Saturday in Columbus. Supporters of this candidate and that candidate are on the list.
Even Secretary of State Karen Handel, who scrupulously avoided any endorsement, is going to Minnesota. So is the irascible House Speaker Glenn Richardson, a Rudy Giuliani man.
But another Giuliani supporter is not. That would be state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, who has lit into the triumvirate of leadership at the state Capitol in his early bid for governor. He did it again in his Saturday convention speech.
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Sam Nunn on Barack Obama and the vice presidency
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last week, the Democratic world was abuzz with the news that former North Carolina senator John Edwards, a former contender himself, had endorsed Barack Obama in the never-ending race for the presidency.
The development was important only within the confines of the Democratic primary. Edwards will be of little use to Obama in a fall campaign, when Republicans highlight the commander-in-chief credentials of John McCain.
Obama received the endorsement of the white, Southern male who mattered weeks earlier, when former U.S. senator Sam Nunn of Georgia quietly announced that he would serve as an advisor on national security.
Even before he’s secured the Democratic nomination, Republicans have declared Obama’s greenhorn status in international affairs to be a ripe target. Nunn voted against the first Persian Gulf war in 1991 and has been a harsh critic of President Bush’s handling of the current conflict in Iraq.
Come October, Nunn could serve as an important reference on Obama’s resume.
The Georgian’s backing has also stirred talk that the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who keeps an office on the edge of the Georgia Tech campus, would make a fine running mate for Obama.
Nunn says you should treat such speculation with extreme skepticism. More on that in a bit.
But first consider how Nunn, a conservative Democrat, came to settle on Obama, who is not.
For the past year, the former senator had been one of the behind-the-scenes figures exploring a non-partisan bid for the presidency.
Only five months ago, Nunn and former Senate colleague David Boren summoned a group of centrist Democrats and Republicans to Oklahoma City, where — with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg among them — they decried the crass polarization of political debate, and the lack of any forum that required presidential candidates to address issues in depth.
Say what you will about it, the two party-system abhors a vacuum. Nunn’s complaints that middle America had been shut out of the dialogue coincided with the rise of McCain and Obama, both of whom appeal to independents.
“I suspect we were riding the wave much more than we were causing it,” Nunn said in an interview last week. As the air wooshed out of a third-party movement, the former senator began looking at the presidential candidates still in the race.
Nunn’s top priority is the restoration of the United States’s credibility in the world. You can’t imagine, he said, how much damage the war in Iraq has done.
What must be regained, the senator said, is a non-partisan approach to foreign policy. McCain doesn’t represent change. Hillary Clinton, Nunn said, would find the task difficult — a president who polarizes at home would find it hard to create a unified foreign policy abroad.
Nunn said he’s talked with Obama. But he was also swayed by the good reports about the candidate from Republicans — including the staff of U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Lugar has served as Nunn’s partner in a 17-year program to corral the world’s “loose nukes.”
“Lugar’s staff tell me [Obama] is genuine, he’s sincere, he’s very capable and not only is he a fast learner, but he’s got real depth,” Nunn said.
“Even when he’s heading to the left, he always wants to find out what the other position is. I think that’s enormously important. We’ve been heading down an ideological split in this country — it’s been annoying for a long time. It’s gotten dangerous now.”
“Even though I would love for him to have more experience, I think he’s the most likely to listen, he’s the most likely to be non-ideological,” Nunn said. “There are very few people in politics now who let the facts have a bearing on their conclusions.”
As for that vice presidential stuff.
It’s not just “highly improbable” that Obama would make the offer. “I think that it’s also highly improbable that I want to go back into government,” Nunn said.
And think about it. Nunn will be 70 this fall. He’s trim, he’s fit. Intellectually, he’s not about to slip into a rut. But John McCain is 71, and his age has already become an issue. As a running mate, Nunn would muddy any discussion.
“People are looking for younger leadership and change. And that’s an important factor that Obama needs to consider. And I would tell him that if he asked me,” Nunn said.
If you want proof of Nunn’s disinterest in the position, consider that vice presidential candidates aren’t permitted their own agendas.
Nunn has been hosting a series of “dialogues” — available on the Internet — on terrorism and national security with former U.S. defense secretary William Cohen.
Another one will be held in Atlanta early next month. It will concide with a national convention of volunteers, hosted by the Points of Light & Hands On Network, an organization headed by Michelle Nunn, the former senator’s daughter.
Nunn the father will make a pitch for a new national service program. Not a draft, but incentives — federal grants for college — given to young people who volunteer for the military or border duty, or who do civilian service as teachers, hospital workers or the like.
The grants would take the place of the current college loan system, which Nunn says has trapped many students in a cycle of debt. The former senator expects to be pounded by both right and left.
Photo credit: Bloomberg News
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Aaron Gould Sheinin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Aaron Gould Sheinin is blogging the 2008 political conventions. Aaron has covered politics in Georgia and South Carolina for more than 10 years.
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Linder carried from Capitol Hill restaurant
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Washington Post has an account of U.S. Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.) being carried from a Capitol Hill restaurant on Thursday night.
This was posted the following day on one of the newspaper’s political blogs, called The Sleuth:
It wasn’t his most graceful exit, we’ll put it that way. Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.) was carried out of Bullfeathers, a Capitol Hill bar and restaurant, Thursday evening, feet dragging on the pavement, as congressional aides enjoying happy hour looked on in amazement.
Two Capitol Hill Police cars and a fire truck were called to the scene. ”They had to hold up him up by the seat of his pants and his arms were draped around their shoulders,” says one source, a congressional aide, who asked not to be identified.
Another Sleuth informant who was sitting at the bar says the bartender told him “some older guy fainted from the heat or something.”
Linder’s spokesman, Derick Corbett, says the 65-year-old congressman didn’t faint but he did fall and hurt his knee pretty badly. Linder is scheduled to undergo an MRI medical test on Monday.
“John has a bad knee,” Corbett tells us. “He put his foot down the wrong way, and his knee gave out.” Corbett wasn’t there but he says the congressman told him, “It hurt, and it hurt bad.”
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Sam Olens thinking about a run for governor?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Marietta Daily Journal carried this tidbit in its Saturday editions:
Cobb Commission Chair Sam Olens is thinking of tossing his hat in the race for governor, now that U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) has decided not to run for the job….
“I do not feel the need to start an exploratory committee until after the November election. We need to focus on (the upcoming) elections and governance for now. But the calls (for him to run) have been very encouraging,” he wrote in an e-mail….
Olens has been increasingly vocal on the state Capitol’s failure to address transportation and other issues related to growth. And it’s known that the business community, somewhat disillusioned with Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, has been shopping around.
You have to wonder what Bill Byrne is thinking. Byrne was Olens’ predecessor in the Cobb chairmanship job, and ran for governor in 2002 — but was bested by Sonny Perdue in the Republican primary.
Now, if Cagle does run for governor in 2010, who replaces him? Word at this weekend’s state GOP convention in Columbus was that state Sens. Mitch Seabaugh of Sharpsburg and David Shafer of Duluth are kicking the tires.
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And it’s over.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columbus, Ga. — The state GOP convention adjourned just a few minutes ago, after electing what Republicans officials were calling a “unity slate” of delegates to the national convention.
A good bit of fractiousness erupted on the floor during the adoption of resolutions, as some delegates — many of them Ron Paul supporters — questioned a ruling on a voice vote by convention chairman Randy Evans.
Several delegates began shouting from the floor. And a large shout erupted from the floor when one delegate announced from the mike that he would vote against a resolution in support of the Iraq war because, he said, the conflict had nothing to do with the internal security of the United States.
Things settled down after when the convention got down to the business of electing the delegates. Rebels on the floor wanted a delegate-by-delegate selection process. But once Evans called for insurgents to stand and show their numbers — perhaps 10 percent or more of the convention — things settled down.
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Gingrey and Westmoreland on the farm bill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columbus, Ga. — By early Saturday afternoon, the only two members of Congress left at the state GOP convention were U.S. Reps. Lynn Westmoreland and Phil Gingrey.
One voted for the farm bill this week, and one voted against it.
“It was a tough bill,” Gingrey said. And from a national perspective, it probably does look “bloated.” But in the end, the Marietta representative said he supported the $300 billion measure because of the benefits it sends to Georgia.
Although some subsidies need to be trimmed back, Gingrey admitted, some of the subsidies required his support. For cotton, for instance. “I’ve got a textile mill in one of my counties. It’s the only employer in the county. If they go down, the county goes down,” Gingrey said. In other words, a vote against the farm bill was a vote against those jobs.
That $451 million federal bio-terrorism lab that the University of Georgia is trying to land was another concern, Gingrey said.
The farm bill contains a demand for a new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. This new operation would take over research on hoof-and-mouth disease and other nasty things, which is now confined to a laboratory on Plum Island, off the northern tip of Long Island, N.Y.
UGA is one of six sites still being considered. It would be difficult to keep Georgia in the running if the entire congressional delegation opposed the farm bill, Gingrey said.
As it stood, five Georgia House Republicans voted against the farm bill, while Gingrey, U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, and U.S. Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss supported it.
In his speech to the convention, Westmoreland warned that the GOP base was tired of party leaders who say one thing and do another. Afterwards, he reluctantly discussed his opposition to the farm bill.
“You have to look at what the entire bill did. I can’t get over having direct payments of over $40,000 to somebody that doesn’t put a seed in the ground or put a drop of fertilizer in the soil,” Westmoreland said. “If we’re trying to help the farmer, let’s help the people that are farmers. That, to me, sealed the deal.”
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Oxendine: Pass the Fair Tax via an amendment to the U.S. Constitution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columbus, Ga. — State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, the only announced candidate in the 2010 race for governor, drew one of the biggest rounds of applause at the state GOP convention this morning when he promised to start a movement to convert the U.S. taxation system to a national consumption tax via a constitutional amendment.
If elected governor, Oxendine he’d gather the nation’s governors to Georgia to start the process. “I’m calling upon the states to join together in a constitutional convention to adopt the Fair Tax,” he said. “If congress won’t do it, the people in the states will do it.”
Oxendine also had some harsh words for the three men who now run the state Capitol, though he didn’t mention any names.
“The problem with Georgia is, the taxpayers have paid the price for certain people playing politics as opposed to offering real leadership,” Oxendine said. “At the end of the session, Georgians have no tax cut, are still stuck in traffic, still have no economic development projects, and still trail Alabama in school test scores.”
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Stay away from the gimmicks, warns Sonny Perdue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columbus, Ga. — Gov. Sonny Perdue warned state GOP conventioneers — and the office-holders in their midst — Saturday that voters can see through gimmicks.
Democrats, Perdue told the several hundred Republicans gathered for the convention, lost power because voters “were smart enough” to see the GOP as the answer.
“They saw all the Democrats offered based on their positions of power,” Perdue said. But six years later, Perdue said, “the roles are reversed. It is is our mission to ensure we do not fall into the same trap. The people of Georgia are still smart.”
He warned Republicans to eschew “short-term gimmick made at long-term expense.”
That “will not fool the voters,” Perdue said. “Slick mail pieces and commercials can’t buy enough votes.”
Afterward, Perdue told reporters he wasn’t speaking of anyone in particular. “It was aimed toward Republicans in general,” Perdue said. “All of us, every elected Republican in Georgia.”
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Tomorrow’s thoughts on a Bob Barr candidacy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columbus, Ga. — Sunday’s Washington Post will have this op-ed piece on the problems that Libertarian presidential hopeful Bob Barr could create for Republican John McCain, by Micah Sifry, an expert on third-party candidacies:
“While the former Republican congressman from Georgia isn’t going to become president, his run is no joke. Barr might well inherit the sizable support garnered by Rep. Ron Paul during his own run for the Republican nomination — and leave McCain sputtering the sorts of epithets usually uttered by Democrats talking about Ralph Nader.”
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Farm bill? Never heard of it.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columbus, Ga. — There are times when you have to listen for what’s not said to understand what’s important.
The second day of the state GOP convention has begun. The third big meeting of Republicans, a buffet breakfast, is over.
Speaker after speaker has taken the microphone to lament the prospects of November. But no one has mentioned the $300 billion farm bill that has split Republicans in Washington — the one President Bush has promised to veto because of alleged overspending.
The one that has divided the Republican delegation from Georgia.
The two speakers at this morning’s breakfast were U.S. Reps. Phil Gingrey of Marietta, who voted for the farm bill, and U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, who voted against it. Both have been mentioned as potential candidates for governor in 2010.
Gingrey offered his fellow GOPers some practical advice. Nationally, the generic Democratic brand is beating the generic Republican brand. Which means Republican races in Georgia need to focus on the candidate and close-to-home issues.
“Keep things local. We don’t need to nationalize an election when Democrats have an advantage,” Gingrey said.
Westmoreland followed, but dealt in ideology and theory. The problem with the Republican party, he said, is that it’s been infiltrated by those who aren’t true-believers — by imposters who are merely attracted by the GOP’s success.
“It goes back to the city council, or the school board. Because if that city council doesn’t act like Republicans…then that may discourage somebody voting for the county commissioner because he’s Republican,” Westmoreland said. “And then if you’ve got a county commission that doesn’t stand up for Republican principles, it makes it hard for that state legislator to get elected. And then if you don’t have state legislators that act like Republicans, it makes it hard to win that congressional seat.”
You see it coming.
But the needle skipped.
“And then you make it harder for someone to win the presidency,” Westmoreland quickly concluded.
Again, it’s often what’s left unsaid that’s important.
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The Georgia GOP grabs itself by the lapels, and gives the misbehaving so-and-so a good shake
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columbus, Ga. — It was called a Victory Dinner. Said so right on the program. But it had the feel of an intervention session for a pill-popping, booze-chugging family member who was about to drag the rest of the clan down.
It’s time for a de-tox tour of Betty Ford Land, each speaker seemed to say, in his own particular way.
Republicans in Georgia are in good shape, thanks to a so-far hapless opposition. Nationally, it’s another story.
The loss of the congressional seat in by-God Mississippi was only Tuesday. Before that it was Tom Delay’s seat, then former House speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat, then the one in Louisiana.
None of the first three bothered him, said U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal. But the north Georgia congressman, a former Democrat, was the most despondent voice of the evening.
These are his exact words:
”I’m concerned about the Mississippi election, because I think it could signal a reversal of the process that the South has been a part of — and that is the power of the Republican party being swelled and invigorated by people who normally would have, in the past, been Democrats — myself being one of them.
“Now we have seen our state and our South make the transition to the Republican party. It was one of those phenomena, in my opinion, that started at the top and came down…..
“The reform of party affiliation, I think, took great momentum in the South in particular with [Clinton’s] presidency. And now, I think we’re seeing the reversal of that process — and we cannot allow it to happen — and that is a reversal of the process from the bottom up.”
Deal was followed by U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey of Marietta, who alluded to the failure of some GOP congressmen to keep their zippers secure:
“You’ve got to set the kind of example that the American people can look up to. And I’m talking about in regard to personal integrity and, yes, family values. These things are hugely important.”
House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who was not on the original agenda, gave the formal welcome. He didn’t talk about taxes, but he did complain — rightfully so, many thought — about the undercooked green beans.
Richardson’s thought about GOP health could have come from Chairman Mao, in the sense that he thought the Republican party needed to maintain its revolutionary fervor:
“I’m convinced that it’s not enough to win. You’ve got to keep doing something. Sometimes along the way you offend people. But I’d rather offend people doing something than offend people by doing nothing.”
The main speaker of the evening was Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland, an African-American and a Roman Catholic. He’s now the chairman of GOPAC.
Steele told the story of his 2003 swearing-in, on Martin Luther King’s birthday. He was informed that his office had once been occupied for several months by Thomas Jefferson, when Annapolis served as the U.S. capital.
Let Steele tell the story from there:
”I thought, Thomas Jefferson must be thinking to himself, how did a brother wind up in my office. And I would think about it, and I realized, Sally Hemmings knows how I wound up in that office.
“It’s the story of America, folks. And it is the story of our party. It is a story, I’m afraid we have forgotten. We’ve forgotten how to tell it, we’ve forgotten how to share it, and we’ve forgotten how to live it. We have come to Washington, and we have become consumed by Potomac Fever.
“We have come to Washington, and we’ve become like those we were sent to replace. And in 2006 the people of this country replaced us.
“And my fear is, if we do not get our act together, if we do not reform ourselves, and remember who we are and why we are, we will continue to be replaced to the point where we will be irrelevant.”
Two events were scheduled after the Victory Dinner and intervention. One was a “praise meeting” where wayward Republicans could come clean.
The other was a party where, in the din of loud music and with the help of some inebriants, the fear of November could be pushed aside.
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Watch what you say, says Cagle. And watch your back, warns another
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Other tidbits from a brief Friday afternoon session of the state GOP convention:
— “We can’t forget that the words that we say cannot be taken back,” said Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, whose masculinity was questioned by House Speaker Glenn Richardson during the past legislative session — in the middle of a confrontation over a failed tax cut package.
Incidentally, looking through the convention program, Richardson apparently doesn’t have a speaking role. Majority Whip Barry Fleming of Harlem, in a primary fight with U.S. Rep. Paul Broun of Athens, will be speaking on behalf of the state House Republican Caucus.
— Despite much happy talk, those three lost U.S. House seats — the last came this week in Mississippi — were on everyone’s mind.
“We must return to our core values quickly, if we are to survive as a party,” said Jason Shepherd, chairman of the Georgia Young Republicans.
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Chambliss: Bush veto of farm bill a ‘huge mistake’ that could hurt McCain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columbus, Ga. — U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss said he’s told President Bush that vetoing the $300 billion farm bill would be a “huge mistake” that could hurt Republican presidential candidate John McCain in November.
“He and I have had a couple personal conversations about that. I think it’s a huge mistake for him, politically and otherwise,” said Chambliss, a Republican who himself faces re-election this year.
Chambliss said he pointed out to Bush that the states in the South and West that gave him his strongest support all had agricultural economies.
“These are people that want to vote for John McCain. If they get turned off by Republicans, it’s going to make it tough,” Chambliss told reporters after a speech to
The House and Senate both passed the massive bill this week by veto-proof margins. Both Chambliss and U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson have promised to help override a presidential veto.
But in the House, five of Georgia’s seven Republican House members voted against the bill. And more conservative Republicans in Georgia have balked at the spending.
Last year, Chambliss faced the state GOP convention just as an immigration bill was unveiled in Washington. He and Isakson had participated in the negotiations, and Chambliss received a round of boos from delegates.
On Friday, at a sparsely attended afternoon session, Chambliss took no chance that the farm bill might also provoke the crowd’s displeasure. He made no mention of the farm bill, or immigration.
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McCain stops in Savannah on Monday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Columbus, Ga. — Just settled here at the state GOP convention. U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss will be up in a few minutes.
In the meantime, Steve Croy, who’s in charge of finances for John McCain in Georgia has sent notice of a Monday night fund-raiser featuring the presidential candidate, at the Savannah Marriott Riverfront.
Click here to see the invitation and details.
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Roy Barnes: It’s time for Hillary Clinton to leave the race
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One day after his favorite endorsed Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential race, former Gov. Roy Barnes called on Hillary Clinton to make a quick exit.
“I think for the good of the party, she needs to come out,” Barnes told Larry Peterson with the Savannah Morning News at a Thursday fund-raiser for Democrats in the harbor town.
“Barack Obama is the nominee,” Barnes said. “I don’t see any way mathematically Hillary Clinton can win.”
Barnes was a supporter of John Edwards. The former North Carolina senator and ex-presidential contender endorsed Obama on Wednesday.
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Barr on gay marriage: California decision is how it’s supposed to work
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr says that when it comes to gay marriage, what happens in California is California’s own business. He’s a states’ rights man.
Here’s the statement Barr’s issued, which — one week before the Libertarian national convention in Denver — is likely to generate some talk:
“Regardless of whether one supports or opposes same sex marriage, the decision to recognize such unions or not ought to be a power each state exercises on its own, rather than imposition of a one-size-fits-all mandate by the federal government (as would be required by a Federal Marriage Amendment which has been previously proposed and considered by the Congress).
The decision today by the Supreme Court of California properly reflects this fundamental principle of federalism on which our nation was founded.
“Indeed, the primary reason for which I authored the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 was to ensure that each state remained free to determine for its citizens the basis on which marriage would be recognized within its borders, and not be forced to adopt a definition of marriage contrary to its views by another state.
The decision in California is an illustration of how this principle of states’ powers should work.”
Photo credit: Associated Press
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Isakson, Chambliss on the farm bill: There could be a agro-terror facility in it for Georgia
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hours after they cast their votes for the farm bill, U.S. Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss began making their case for it.
Their first argument for the bill, which President Bush says he’ll veto: It contains a demand for a new agro-terrorism facility that the two senators say would be perfect for Georgia.
Right now, research on hoof-and-mouth disease is confined to Plum Island, off the northern tip of Long Island, N.Y. Created in the mid-1950s, the place is aging, and a new facility — called the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility — has been proposed.
Six sites are in the running, and the University of Georgia is one of them.
The new NBAF facility, overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, will develop vaccines and containment strategies for diseases, such as avian influenza virus, that can incubate in animals and jump to humans.
“With its world-class [U.S. Department of Agriculture] research facilities, Georgia is the logical choice to conduct such important research and Senator Chambliss and I are working hard to promote our state’s bid to have NBAF located in Georgia,” Isakson is quoted as saying in a press release issued by the two senators.
The release tosses in support from a top UGA official.
“The new and modern technology of the NBAF must be utilized to protect our food animals,” said David Lee, vice president for research at the University of Georgia. “Safe research and the development of effective counter-measures for this disease are critical to the health and welfare of the domestic herds of cattle, sheep, and swine, and to our agricultural industry, not just in Georgia, but across the country.”
No immediate word on how large such a facility would be. The target date for opening appears to be 2013. But we’re likely to hear more about this at the state GOP convention on Friday afternoon, when both Isakson and Chambliss are scheduled to speak.
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Farm bill vote splits Georgia Republicans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Look for the farm bill to be a topic of much conversation at the state Republican convention in Columbus on Friday and Saturday.
The bill, which President Bush has threatened to veto, has clearly split Republican members of the Georgia congressional delegation. In the House on Wednesday, U.S. Reps. Paul Broun, Nathan Deal, John Linder, Tom Price and Lynn Westmoreland voted against it.
Reps. Phil Gingrey and Jack Kingston voted in favor.
In the Senate today, Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss voted yes. And Isakson has just put out a notice saying he “will vote to override the veto” by President Bush. We’re presuming Chambliss will do the same.
John McCain did not vote, according to the Senate roll call.
On a somewhat related note, CQPolitics has obtained a copy of that 20-page memo floating around Washington, written by U.S. Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, which outlines the looming debacle Republicans could be facing in November. See it here.
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Two different polls, two different stories
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Make your choice and take your chance.
Strategic Vision, the Atlanta-based, Republican-oriented public affairs firm, has a U.S. Senate poll out that shows the Democratic race is further along than a Matt Towery survey released earlier this week.
Strategic Vision had this breakdown:
— Vernon Jones, 28%
— Dale Cardwell, 20%
— Jim Martin, 15%
— Rand Knight, 11%
— Josh Lanier, 5%
— Undecided, 21%
On Monday, Towery’s InsiderAdvantage cast the race like this:
— Vernon Jones, 21%
— Dale Cardwell, 14%
— Josh Lanier, 5%
— Jim Martin, 3%
— Rand Knight, 1%
— Undecided, 56%
Obviously the two significant differences between these polls are the standing of Jim Martin and the percentage of undecided voters.
Strategic Vision and InsiderAdvantage also duplicated polling on the Republican side of the 2010 race for governor — just in time for tomorrow’s state GOP convention in Columbus. But this time, results of the two surveys are much closer. The standings of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine are the only major differences.
According to Strategic Vision:
— Casey Cagle, 19%
— John Oxendine, 12%
— Jack Kingston, 11%
— Glenn Richardson, 9%
— Karen Handel, 7%
— Lynn Westmoreland, 5%
— Undecided, 37%
According to InsiderAdvantage:
— John Oxendine, 17%
— Casey Cagle, 17%
— Jack Kingston, 10%
— Karen Handel, 7%
— Lynn Westmoreland, 6%
— Jerry Keen, 2%
— Undecided, 41%
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Tommy Lewis leaves as GSU lobbyist
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tommy Lewis has been a fixture at the Capitol for close to 30 years.
He served as chief of staff for Gov. Joe Frank Harris in the 1980s, and for the past 18 years, he’s been Georgia State University’s man at the Capitol, lobbying for the school’s interests.
His boss, GSU President Carl Patton, announced late last year that he was retiring from the school. Lewis, senior vice president for external affairs at GSU, is to announce Friday that he’s doing the same.
Lewis, 56, said he will be retiring from GSU Nov. 30, but he may be back at the Capitol for the 2009 session. Lewis said he plans to try his hand at consulting.
Considering the tens of millions of dollars he’s been able to wrest from lawmakers for GSU over the years, he probably won’t have a hard time finding clients.
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Republican with child sex conviction withdraws, but promises he’ll be back in 2010
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
According to the Newton County Citizen, that Republican school board candidate with the child sex issues has withdrawn from the race.
But Horace Don Gresham says he’ll try for the Newton County commission in 2010.
“These actions that I have taken was just a test run for me in running for the school board,” Gresham wrote in his letter of withdrawal. “In other words, I have also used the newspapers to see what the voters thought about someone that had a record.”
Gresham was convicted of sodomy with a child under the age of 14 in DeKalb County in 1988, the newspaper reports.
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Fetch your buckets! Perdue signs up for a border war with Tennessee
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Among the mass of bills signed by Gov. Sonny Perdue on Wednesday was a directive from the Legislature, urging him to pursue negotiations with Tennessee over the 35th parallel.
S.R. 822 originally called for a two-state commission to look into the border dispute, but the Tennessee legislature rejected that approach and the language was dropped.
Instead, the resolution simply directs Perdue to pursue talks with Tennessee — and authorizes the governor to take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, if he chooses to do so.
The entire matter is now up to him, though funding for a lawsuit would probably require additional legislative approval. But by signing the measure, Perdue has — in effect — endorsed the border war.
Georgia has long argued that its northern border with Tennessee lies a tad too far to the south — the result of an inaccurate, 19th century survey. As a result, the state claims that it is wrongfully denied access to the Tennessee River, which carries roughly 15 times as much water as the Chattahoochee River that supplies nearly all of Atlanta’s water.
“The resolution directs the Governor to commence direct negotiations and contemplates litigation if those negotiations fail. Georgia has passed at least nine resolutions over the last 190 years objecting to the 1818 survey line and seeking to correct it. It is time that this issue is resolved, once and for all,” said state Sen. David Shafer, sponsor of the resolution.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press has already checked with Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen. No call from Perdue yet.
The governor signed the measure in a private ceremony — the better to avoid pesky questions about a gun bill and line item vetoes of Paulding County construction projects.
Attending were Shafer, state Rep. Harry Geisinger (R-Sandy Springs) and Dade County Commission Chairman Ben Brandon.
Why a Dade County commission chairman? Because if this tactic is successful and Georgia is allowed to slip a straw into the Tennessee River, that’s the county through which the “Shafer pipeline” — the “Shafer-Geisinger pipeline”? the “Shafer-Geisinger-Perdue pipeline”? — would pass.
Photo credit: Associated Press
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Boortz vs. Barr on Iraq, and Barr-o-metric readings from the blogosphere
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta talk radio provocateur Neal Boortz and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr had a fascinating exchange on Iraq this morning.
The WSB radio host was particularly troubled by Barr’s description of U.S. troops there as an “occupying force.”
I don’t have time to give you a word-for-word transcript, but you can listen to the entire conservative vs. conservative, Libertarian vs. Libertarian discourse here and here.
And if you don’t have time for the audio, here’s a taste of the conversation:
Boortz: “I would call them a liberating force, and I have a problem with someone who refers to these men and women in our armed forces as an occupying force in a foreign country.”
Barr: “Neal, they’ve been there five years now. When do you cross the line from basically protecting a domestic regime over there, propping it so that we provide the security blanket in terms of their economic system, their political system and their security system — I don’t think it’s an insult to the troops. I don’t think it’s an insult to the troops. It’s a fact. We’re occupying the country. We’re basically providing the mechanism whereby the country runs itself.”
Boortz: “Look, there is no time limit on trying to liberate a nation….”
Barr: “That’s what McCain says, too, I guess….There’s no despot or dictator over there. What are we liberating them from?”
Boortz: “Bob, an occupying army does not train the locals to replace them. A liberating army does. An occupying army does not.”
Barr: “I understand that people can argue over the use of a term, but my goal is not to play semantics with it. My goal would be to start very quickly, upon assuming office in January of next year, start reducing our financial and security and military footprint in Iraq.”
It’s also worth taking a stroll through the blogosphere to see what they’re saying about Barr’s announcement this week that he would seek the Libertarian nomination for president.
This is from the Democratic site Riverdaughter:
Both John McCain and Barack Obama could take a hit. Obama is running as a Libertarian Democrat (Oh, he won’t say it out loud but Donna Brazile pretty much admitted as much). There goes the mountain west that Obama was hoping for. Colorado? Nahgahappen.
John McCain will sweep up the Republicans in the fall. They’re mad at him now but whisper sweet tax cuts in their ears and they’ll follow him anywhere. Barr will probably get all of the poor deluded Ron Paul voters.
From a Constitutional Party web site called Ben and Bawb”s Blog:
Barr has some political baggage that might lose him support from libertarians. Barr was one of the GOP’s more strident drug warriors as well as supporting the GOP’s stance against gay marriage. He has since backed off on both.
Another ding on his record is that he voted for the Patriot Act (like just about every other congressman, except Ron Paul), but only after demanding a sunset provision in the bill. He now says he regrets voting for it.
PrezVid has posted a videotaped discourse by Barr on the rise of the “nanny state.”
And Matthew Yglesias on the atlantic.com says this:
Barr, a former wingnutty member of the House GOP leadership, is an unusually credible LP standard-bearer and his biography is well-designed to attract the votes of conservatives who loathe the war and Barack Obama with equal passions.
Photo credits: Rich Addicks/AJC, Rick McKay/Cox Washington bureau
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Again, WWJD: Where would Jesus drink?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gov. Sonny Perdue has approved legislation to permit the Sunday sale of alcohol in Gwinnett County stadiums and over the Internet.
And we’ve just gotten word that Perdue has also signed the Merlot-to-go bill, so that half-emptied bottles of wine can be taken home by restaurant patrons, even on Sundays. Call them doggy bottles.
Remember that, in the governor’s phrasing, these were all matters of economic development and not actual policy.
Even so, the new exceptions leave us with a drinking map in Georgia that resembles a slice of Swiss cheese — which experts recommend should be served with a fine Gewurztraminer.
On the day that most Christians celebrate as the Sabbath, you may not purchase that bottle of white wine in:
Grocery stores
Convenience stores
Liquor stores
But you may buy your inebriants in:
Restaurants, and bars that sell food
Wineries
Ballparks and arenas
In limos
From wineries out of state (via the Internet or phone on Sundays)
Now about the last entry, the result of Perdue’s signature on H.B. 1061. Same-day service is unlikely, but it certainly would be legal. Nothing in the bill prohibits it.
Moreover, there’s nothing to keep you from ordering on Saturday, and paying the extra fee so that UPS can bring it to your doorstep on Sunday. That, as our governor once said, is time management. But slightly expensive.
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An attempt to shut down a Democratic state House candidate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Someone, perhaps a friend of a friend of Republican Mike Jacobs, has challenged the residency of Keith Gross, the Democrat in the House District 80 race in north Atlanta.
Filed with Secretary of State Karen Handel, the complaint alleges that 24-year-old Gross still has a Florida drivers license.
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With Mississippi burning, the GOP wants to change the subject — to Jimmy Carter
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Despite heavy campaigning by Gov. Haley Barbour and Vice President Dick Cheney, Democrats grabbed a third congressional seat from Republicans on Tuesday, this one in Mississippi.
In the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger, Republican Greg Davis promised Democrat Travis Childers a rematch in November.
CQPolitics is reporting that Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the Republican congressman in charge of congressional races, may be in danger of losing his job:
“I expect we’ll discuss changes that may be needed to deal with the atmosphere we’re facing,’’ Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters after a House Republican Conference meeting at which Democrat Travis Childers’s eight-point win Tuesday in Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District provided a major focus for sometimes-pointed discussion.
Democrats, obviously, are giddy. This from today’s Washington Post:
“No one could have imagined the tsunami that just crashed on Republicans in Mississippi,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview after the victory. “There is no district that is safe for Republican candidates.”
House Democrats now hold a 236 to 199 majority, up from 203 seats they controlled two years ago.
In each of the last three congressional races — special elections to fill vacant seats — the GOP has attempted to nationalize the contests by linking the local candidates to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, his former pastor Jeremiah Wright, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
None has worked.
This morning, the Republican National Committee is tossing another name into the mix, hoping it catches fire: Jimmy Carter.
The RNC has posted on YouTube a video comparing Barack Obama’s opposition to a suspension of the federal gasoline tax, and the candidate’s support for a windfall profit tax, to the Carter policies of the 1970s.
The ad may be tipping the GOP hand on the themes it intends to strike during a general election campaign — Obama’s alleged elitism, and his inexperience.
Or, in the closing words of the ad, “Out of touch. Not ready to be president.”
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More on Mississippi: A phone call from Pelosi, and a rush into Elvis territory
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Rep. Cavin Smyre (D-Columbus) just called from Sacramento, Calif., where he witnessed the swearing-in of Karen Bass as the first black woman to be elected a state House speaker.
Smyre had seen this morning’s post on the importance of the congressional race in Mississippi to both Democrats and Republicans. He rang up to concur, and to provide eyewitness testimony as well.
Smyre is the former chairman of the Georgia Democratic party. This year, he’s president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. The current title has opened several doors. Smyre was on the south lawn of the White House to greet Pope Benedict XVI last month. He’s had conversations with both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi, in fact, called him personally to draw him into the Mississippi contest. The Democrat in the race, Travis Childers, had defeated two African-American candidates in preliminary rounds, and it was feared that black enthusiasm in the contest had cooled.
So, at Pelosi’s request, Smyre began a series of calls, and soon had African-American state lawmakers — from across Mississippi — pouring into the First District, right below Memphis. He figures his team hit 20 churches on Sunday.
But he doesn’t have any special news about what might happen tonight. “It’s a close race,” Smyre said.
Photo credit: Ben Gray/AJC
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On John Lewis and a Fifth District that’s not as African-American as it once was
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. John Lewis kicked off his first political campaign in eight years on Monday, promising to make himself a constant, even annoying presence in the Fifth District that he’s ruled since 1986.
“When I’m not in Washington voting, I’ll be out here campaigning,” Lewis said. “You’re going to be sick of me.”
Several analysts have looked at Lewis’s iconic status as a civil rights leader, and have pronounced this enough to beat back challenges from “Able” Mable Thomas and Markel Hutchins.
But Lewis has got more than reputation on his side. He’s got some favorable numbers.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta at his campaign kick-off Monday. Mikki K. Harris/AJC
First of all, assume that both Thomas and Hutchins, given their reputations as community activists, will draw their heaviest support among African-Americans, probably younger ones, on Atlanta’s south side and in Clayton County.
Further, assume that white voters in the district are the least likely to carry a grudge against Lewis for initially supporting Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary.
This is important, because — contrary to what many people think — the Fifth District is not majority black. Not in real numbers and not — at least in the past — in participating voters.
In terms of active voters, the Fifth District was 59 percent African-American in 2001. In 2002, the black vote was 53 percent. In 2005, the district was redrawn (yet again) to incorporate more of Buckhead, up to I-285, and a larger swath of west DeKalb. Both are areas with large white populations.
As of April 1 of this year, African-American voters made up 48 percent of the Fifth District. Another statistic: The Barack Obama enthusiasm factor may make this point moot, but in November 2006, white voters cast 51 percent of vote that gave Lewis his 10th term in Congress.
(In case you’re curious, Hank Johnson’s Fourth District has the highest black voting population, with David Scott’s 13th District coming in second.)
But here’s the killer question, no doubt one that Lewis’ campaign team is already pondering: Will Obama make an endorsement in the primary battle? And would he endorse Lewis?
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When Barr met Borat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Hill is having a little bit of fun with Bob Barr, now a Libertarian candidate for president. On its web site, the Washington newspaper has posted a 2006
Barr gives a dour, skeptical performance. Check it out here.
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The world watches West Virginia, but it’s Mississippi that matters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tonight, forget about West Virginia. The contest there between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is fraught with as much tension as a soccer match with 4-year-olds.
They’re just kicking the ball around. Any goals will be meaningless, and even the loser gets a trophy at the end.
No, turn your eyes South. The real political hacks will be watching northern Mississippi, where Democrats will try to snatch a third U.S. House seat in a row from Republicans.
And Republicans will discover whether their third attempt to tie Obama — and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — to the local Democrat is the charm.
The Mississippi combatants are Democrat Travis Childers and Republican Greg Davis. Both national parties and their 527 associates have been pouring money into the First District race. Here’s the Wright-Obama-Childers ad issued by Davis, as posted on YouTube.
The Obama link didn’t prove effective in Illinois or Louisiana, prompting Newt Gingrich to warn GOP leaders of a disaster in Congress come November. But today’s New York Times says the tactic may have found traction in this most Republican state:
In advertisements and speeches, Republicans have repeatedly associated Travis Childers, the white Democrat threatening to take the seat away from the Republican Party, with Mr. Obama.
Republicans say Mr. Obama’s liberal values are out of place in the district. But for many Democratic veterans here, the tactic is a throwback to the old and unwelcome politics of race, a standby in Mississippi campaigning.
Former Gov. William Winter, a Democrat, expressed shock at the current campaign. “I am appalled that this blatant appeal to racial prejudice is still being employed,” said Mr. Winter, who lost the 1967 governor’s race after his segregationist opponent circulated handbills showing blacks listening to one of his speeches. Mr. Winter went on to win the governor’s office 12 years later.
“I had thought we had gotten past that,” Mr. Winter said. “That was a tactic that was used against me in the 1960s.”
The risky nature of a political tactic can often be judged by whether the top brass in the party participate. And when Vice President Dick Cheney was in Mississippi on Monday, he made no mention of Obama.
According to the Washington Post:
Cheney … sought to tie Davis’s opponent, Travis Childers, to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other congressional Democrats.
“What we need in Washington is a strong conservative congressman from Mississippi, not another Democrat going to bat for Nancy Pelosi,” Cheney said to a crowd of several hundred at the DeSoto Civic Center here.
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Yes, borders are a federal matter, but…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Slightly wonkish here, but you’ll remember that, last July, Neil Warren in Cobb County became the first Georgia sheriff to join a federal program that allowed certain deputies to be trained to identify the illegal immigrants who peopled his jail.
“It’s been ‘catch and release, ‘” Warren said at the time. “That’s why I got into this. The federal government has not provided the resources. They have not done their job.”
Last October, Warren’s experimentation earned him a place at the side of then-Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, on his first swing through Georgia.
Not quite a year later, Cobb County appears to have been at the front of a stampede by local law enforcement agencies across the country:
According to stateline.org, a kind of clearinghouse for state and local government issues:
At the start of 2007, only eight police agencies took part in the 287(g) program; now a total of 47 police agencies in 17 states participate, with 90 more waiting to sign up. To date, more than 50,000 people have been deported or have been marked for deportation under the 287(g) program, according to [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. More than half of those were processed since October.
But ICE is short of money to expand the program, which reimburses local police agencies for holding prisoners, pays for a five-week training course for participating officers and provides the technology to allow those cops to access federal immigration databases.
In Georgia, sheriff’s departments in Hall and Whitfield counties joined the program this year.
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Allen Buckley, the Libertarian for Senate, and a conspiracy of events
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bob Barr has created a decent excuse to discuss another candidate of the same persuasion.
Allen Buckley, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, called a telephone press conference last Thursday, to condemn incumbent Saxby Chambliss for acting as the Republican champion of the farm subsidy bill.
Nobody phoned in.
In a year in which Democrats are floundering and Chambliss has raised a pile of cash to defend himself, it’d be easy to write Buckley off.
But there’s a conspiracy of events out there that could — despite the traditional third-party disadvantage of no money and less attention — allow Buckley to make the best showing any Libertarian has ever made in Georgia.
First, some quick background about Buckley — and yes, he’s got every ounce of charisma you might expect from an attorney/CPA who specializes in employee benefits and tax law.
As stated above, Buckley’s going after Chambliss for his support of the farm bill. Record farm profits were recorded for 2007, Buckley notes, and 2008 is expected to be even better. As some Democrats have also pointed out, Chambliss’ political campaigns have gathered up more than $1 million from agricultural interests.
“It’s one thing to charge people who drive and use the roads 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline, and quite another thing to force people to pay tax to make rich people richer,” Buckley was prepared to say during that press conference. “If Saxby Chambliss is a ‘conservative,’ then the definition needs to be changed.”
Buckley has also gone after the Fair Tax in exhaustive detail. Simply put, he refers to this variation of a national consumption tax as a “fraud” that would penalize the middle class and serve as a boon to the wealthy.
“The Fair Tax proposal amounts to a vote buy. Presumably, the politicians pressing for it know that the numbers do not work,” Buckley has written.
Buckley drew 3.6 percent of the vote in 2006 as a candidate for lieutenant governor. Democrat Jim Martin, who is in the same race with Buckley this year as well, took 42 percent of the vote. In 2004, in another U.S. Senate race, Buckley scored 2 percent.
Why might Buckley do better this year? This is based on two conversations I had this afternoon. One was with Joe McCutchen of Ellijay, a Republican who publishes a political newsletter and frequently holds forth against excessive government spending.
McCutchen is seething over Chambliss’ support of the farm subsidy bill. “Saxby shouldn’t have voted like that. I’ve never been so angry in my life,” he said. McCutchen says he’ll be voting for Buckley, and his urging his friends up in north Georgia to do likewise.
How big a splinter group does McCutchen represent? This week’s state GOP convention in Columbus could show us. Chambliss didn’t do so well among hardliners last year when immigration was the issue.
My second conversation was with Amy Morton, the Democratic activist and blogger down in Macon. Morton supports Martin in the Democratic race for U.S. Senate. The question was simple: If Vernon Jones is the Democratic nominee, would she vote for the DeKalb County CEO or Chambliss in November?
After a long pause, Morton said she’d probably vote Democratic. “I’d vote for Vernon, but it would not be with any enthusiasm.”
Morton said her party loyalty would keep her from wandering. “I’m the exception. I think there are a lot of Democrats who won’t vote for Vernon,” she said. Many of them — especially if they still harbor a grudge against Chambliss for his 2002 ads against Max Cleland — might pick Buckley in protest, she admitted.
Several “ifs” have to be settled yet, but if a disaffected right unites with a disaffected left, Buckley could find himself with more than 3.6 percent of the vote.
Photo credit: Rich Addicks/AJC
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Bob Barr jumps into the presidential race, but keep an eye on Ron Paul
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So now we know that Bob Barr is running for president.
First, we’ll have to wait and see if he wins the Libertarian party’s nomination. The Denver convention runs May 22 to 26.
A few, including Newt Gingrich, are already calling Barr a Republican spoiler. “Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion,” Gingich says in today’s Washington Times.
But if Barr is a spoiler, he isn’t the only one. The L.A. Times political blog, Top of the Ticket, says this:
”Quietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September.”
No word on exactly how they might embarrass McCain — whether through a demonstration, work stoppage, or simply tricking the nominee into a pair of mismatched socks.
But if any of you Paulites want to confess a detail or two, please give a call.
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Barack Obama and ‘symbolic racism’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Alan Abramowitz, the Emory University political scientist, had an op-ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post in which he argues that the resistance of white Democrats to Barack Obama “remains a serious threat to his chances in November.”
Read the entire article here. But this is the heart of his argument:
”Racial attitudes have changed dramatically in the United States over the past several decades, of course, and overtly racist beliefs are much less prevalent among white Americans of all classes today. But a more subtle form of prejudice, which social scientists sometimes call symbolic racism, is still out there — especially among working-class whites.
“Symbolic racism means believing that African American poverty and other problems are largely the result of lack of ambition and effort, rather than white racism and discrimination. Who holds symbolically racist beliefs? A relatively large portion of white voters in general and white working-class voters in particular, according to the 2004 American National Election Study, the best data available on this topic.”
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Morning polls on the Democratic race for Senate, GOP maneuverings for governor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Matt Towery’s InsiderAdvantage has done some overnight polling on the Democratic race for the U.S. Senate and the Republican side of a budding 2010 race for governor.
MOE for the 400-respondent survey is 5 percent. Towery’s Democratic numbers show all the candidates have much work to do, even though they have little money to do it: Vernon Jones, 21 percent; Dale Cardwell, 14 percent; Josh Lanier, 5 percent; Jim Martin, 3 percent; Rand Knight, 1 percent, and undecided, 56 percent.
According to Towery, if the 2010 GOP primary for governor were held today, undecided, at 41 percent, would walk into a runoff with Casey Cagle or John Oxendine, both at 17 percent.
As for the others, Jack Kingston stands at 10 percent, Karen Handel at 7 percent, Lynn Westmoreland at 6 percent, and Jerry Keen at 2 percent.
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The day ‘white’ and ‘colored’ signs disappeared from the state Capitol
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Over the past several years, the state Capitol has earned a reputation for very loud fights over very small things.
It wasn’t always so. Once upon a time, Jericho-sized walls came tumbling down under the Gold Dome, and without the bleat of a single trumpet, much less a press conference.
Worlds were overthrown with a minimum of fuss. Revolutions required 15 minutes, a quiet phone call or two, and a certain sense of right and wrong.
Last year, Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) began an oral history program, recording interviews with past political figures of Georgia and posting the video on the Internet.
Former Gov. Carl Sanders, now 82, was added just a few days ago. He’d been preceded by state Sen. Leroy Johnson, the first black lawmaker elected since the days of Reconstruction. He’s 79.
Without coordination or prompting, both men — each interviewed by Eric Johnson — tell the same, little-known tale of the day 45 years ago that desegregation came to the Capitol.
Former state senator Leroy Johnson (left) and former Gov. Carl Sanders in the state Capitol. Rich Addicks/AJC
In January 1963, the seat of state government, like the rest of Georgia, was divided not so neatly into black and white.
Restrooms and drinking fountains were labeled “white” and “colored.” The galleries perched above the House and Senate chambers were likewise segregated. The army of young pages who delivered messages to lawmakers was uniformly pale. A driver’s license office in the basement had two separate lines.
Into this hostile world walked 34-year-old Leroy Johnson, a Morehouse graduate forced to study law in North Carolina because “the University of Georgia was not accepting Negroes.”
For most of the session, Johnson’s days were spent in silence. “Not one senator spoke to me,” he said.
Sanders, who had likewise just begun his term, was watching Johnson closely. “He could have been a pain in the neck, as far as I was concerned,” the former governor remembered.
With little else within reach, Johnson’s objective became the desegregation of the state Capitol. The question was how to go about it.
Given the combustible environment — only months later nearby Birmingham would point fire hoses and police dogs at protesters — Johnson judged that it was better to make a point than a scene. It took him three weeks to recruit his first black pages, and then he started.
“I carried my pages into restrooms that said ‘white’ instead of ‘colored.’ And when we got to the water fountain, I had them drink from the water fountain that had the sign that said ‘white’ instead of ‘colored,’” he said.
Johnson created incidents, but not drama. “None of this was done with a news camera pointed to capture the fact,” he said.
Guards sent word to Sanders that two all-important lines were being crossed.
In the Georgia of the ‘60s, a governor was something akin to a king. He named the House speaker and each committee chairman. More important, he ruled the building itself. Sanders’ reaction would set the tone for white inhabitants of the Capitol, regardless of rank.
That night, “white” and “colored” signs disappeared from every water fountain and restroom in the Capitol.
“The courts had already ruled, saying [this was] unlawful,” said Sanders, who like Johnson was a lawyer. “I went ahead and did what I knew the law said to do. And while I was doing that, George Wallace was over in Alabama standing in the schoolhouse door.”
But Sanders had taken note of Johnson’s quiet style, which allowed the governor to respond in kind. “He helped me do some things that I knew had to be done — and do them in a way that wouldn’t create problems,” Sanders said.
The identical thought occurred to Johnson. “[The governor] appreciated that more than I realized then,” the native Atlantan said. “I could have caused chaos with his administration. That was not my intent. My intent was to try to correct what I thought was wrong. And that’s what we did.”
The two had not yet met face to face, but Johnson knew he’d found the ally that mattered. The senator went to the driver’s license office in the basement and stood in the line for whites. A phone call was made, and separate service for black Georgians disappeared.
A cafeteria worker told Johnson she couldn’t serve him. Johnson advised her to check with her supervisor. The senator got his food, but white diners emptied the room when he sat down. Changing policy was one thing. Changing minds was another.
Yet in the end, as the South was slowly learning, matters of race would bend to political necessity. The silent treatment given Johnson ended near the end of his 1963 session, on the day his Senate colleagues found they needed his vote on a bill.
“I learned that, in politics, you get not what you deserve, but what you can negotiate,” Johnson said.
The Johnson-Sanders revolution extended beyond the Capitol grounds. Shortly before adjournment, the Senate scheduled a luncheon at the whites-only Commerce Club, the exclusive lunching place for downtown Atlanta’s power elite.
Johnson arrived, pushed passed a protesting guard, and took a place at the prepared table. The white maitre d’ approached. “He took my plate, my silverware, my glass, and walked out,” Johnson explained.
For the first time, the Atlanta senator issued a threat. Call the governor, Johnson told state Sen. Hugh Gillis, or he would call the newspapers.
Now, in Sanders’ account, Johnson called the governor himself. But Johnson insists it was Gillis. In any case, here’s what happened next:
“I said, ‘Give me about 15 minutes,’” Sanders said. “I called Mr. Bob Woodruff out at the Coca Cola Co. He and Mills Lane [the head of C&S Bank] had created the Commerce Club. I said, ‘Senator Johnson’s at the Commerce Club, and they won’t let him in. If they don’t let him in, we’re going to have the biggest row you’ve ever seen or heard around here.’”
And what did Woodruff say to the governor? “Give me 15 minutes,” Sanders recalled.
A quarter hour later, back at the Commerce Club, the white maitre d’ quietly returned with a plate, glass and silverware, and arranged them in front of the African-American senator. Once he disappeared, black waiters in the dining room applauded.
“That integrated the Commerce Club,” the governor concluded.
Sanders and Johnson were at the Capitol last week, to sit for the photograph that accompanies this account, and to fill a few gaps in the story.
For instance, what happened that morning four decades ago, when the Capitol doors opened, and it was found that the cardboard commands that had kept whites and blacks separate for so many years had suddenly disappeared?
“Nothing at all. I never did hear a complaint or word about it,” the former governor said.
Johnson finished Sanders’ thought. “As if they had never been there.”
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Nunn gets another mention for veep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former Georgia senator Sam Nunn earned another mention as a vice presidential selection for Democrat Barack Obama this morning on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous.”
Much of the discussion was over the merits of Hillary Clinton as a vice presidential nominee.
But columnist George Will proposed this as a possibility:
“You can use your nomination to address one of your perceived weaknesses. And the vulnerability of the Obama campaign is that there could be a national security event during this next nine months, eight nine months.
In which case you can pick Sam Nunn — great national security credentials, and he’s from Georgia where the turnout down there in the primary might at least give you the illusion that you might make that state competitive……”
Another thing in Nunn’s favor: He’s spent the last two years or so campaigning against politics as usual, and so would add to Obama politics-of-change message.
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On the fallout — and lack of it — from Isakson’s choice
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Keeping events in perspective is difficult when dealing with politics.
On Friday morning, Johnny Isakson’s decision to stick to the U.S. Senate rather than run for governor in 2010 was on the front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Marietta Daily Journal.
It was the talk of Georgia’s political elite. We reporters were fascinated, because the decision unleashes the ambitions of a dozen or so elected officials.
But on Friday night, Isakson made his first public appearance since making his choice — at the Marietta Country Club, to speak to a group of Rotarians.
Isakson gave his stock speech. Energy, taxes and Iraq were the primary topics. The only allusion to the newspaper articles was a brief expression by Isakson of how much he enjoyed working in Washington. The word “governor” never passed his lips.
More important, in the question-and-answer session that followed, neither did the audience. Four-dollar-a-gallon gas, corn-for-fuel vs. corn-for-food, and the economy took precedent.
One more thought :
We’ve heard much about who might run for governor, even that state Sens. Eric Johnson of Savannah and Chip Rogers of Woodstock are interested in lieutenant governor should Casey Cagle abandon the position.
What hasn’t been mentioned is the fact that, by staying put in Washington, Isakson has put a limit — at least for the time being — on an extension of Sonny Perdue’s political career once he leaves the Governor’s Mansion.
For there was always the possibility that Isakson and Perdue could simply swap jobs in 2010.
Now there’s nowhere for Perdue to go — unless John McCain has something for him.
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This sounds like trouble
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Today’s Washington Post has this:
A powerful federal arts commission is urging that the sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. proposed for a memorial on the Tidal Basin be reworked because it is too “confrontational” and reminiscent of political art in totalitarian states.
The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts thinks “the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries,” commission secretary Thomas Luebke said in a letter in April.
By law, no project like the memorial can go forward without approval from the commission, the federal agency that advises the government on public design and aesthetics in the capital.
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Nunn at No. 5, Clinton at No. 3 in the veep sweepstakes?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Chris Cillizza, the man behind “The Fix” for the Washington Post, has put Sam Nunn at the bottom of his list of top five potential vice presidential candidates for Barack Obama.
Hillary Clinton is No. 3. Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas, ranks No. 1.
Of the former Georgia senator, who came out for Obama this spring, Cillizza says this:
”It’s hard to argue with Nunn’s place as one of the pre-eminent Democratic thinkers on foreign policy and defense issues. He spent more than two decades in the Senate representing Georgia and he chaired the Armed Services Committee. That resume coupled with Nunn’s status as a white southerner could well make him an appealing pick for Obama. But, is Nunn too moderate (some would say conservative) for the party’s liberal base to swallow?”
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According to Rasmussen: Chambliss safe, so far, but Perdue’s numbers have slipped
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rasmussen Reports has a Georgia survey that shows U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss with a comfortable lead over three of the five Democrats in the race.
Says Rasmussen:
Chambliss now leads Dale Cardwell 51% to 37%, Vernon Jones 58% to 30% and Jim Martin 54% to 33%. Those figures are very similar to results from a month ago….
Cardwell has the highest favorability ratings of the Democratic challengers, but he receives positive reviews from just 35% of voters statewide. Martin is viewed favorably by 34%, Jones by 30%.
None of the Democrats break into double digits in the Very Favorable category. by 15%. Cardwell and Martin are each viewed that positively by 9%, Jones by 8%.
When it comes to Very Unfavorable ratings, Jones is at 30%, Martin 16%, and Cardwell 15%.
There are also signs that Gov. Sonny Perdue may have been hit — ever so slightly — by shrapnel from this last session of the General Assembly. Perdue, Rasmussen says:
… earns good or excellent ratings from 49% of Georgia voters. That’s down from 55% a month ago. Just 17% give him a poor rating. Up four since March. Nearly a third, 32%, give him a more neutral assessment and say the Governor is doing a fair job.
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Tom Price and Barney Frank go at it over home mortgage bill, Bear Stearns
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On Thursday, the U.S. House defied threats of a veto from President Bush and 266-154 to pass a massive, homeowner rescue plan to provide cheaper, government-backed mortgages.
Thirty-nine Republicans voted with the majority. U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-Roswell) wasn’t one of them.
In fact, Price took the Bush side in a testy back-and-forth last night with U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chief architect of the proposal, on PBS’ “Newshour with Jim Lehrer.”
Read the entire transcript here, but this is a brief snippet that began with Frank contrasting Bush’s veto threat on his bill with the president’s support for the bail-out of Wall Street giant Bear Sterns.
REP. TOM PRICE: Well, it’s apples and oranges. Bear Stearns wasn’t on the floor today. In fact, the Bear Stearns assistance never came for congressional action, because it happened through the Federal Reserve. They made that decision, not Congress. We didn’t get a chance to vote on that.
And I would also make the point that this, in fact, is another bailout, if you will, for lenders. It’s a bailout for Wall Street. It’s not a bailout for borrowers, because lenders are the ones that determine whether or not this step occurs, whether they ask the FHA to move into this program.
This is a bailout for lenders. It’s a potential $300 billion liability transferred from borrowers and lenders to the taxpayer. And that’s not what the American people think are fair, especially the 110 million who have paid their mortgage, have paid off their home, or are renting.
So, it’s — this is not a fair program. It’s not what the American people want. And I believe that it’s also going to take a whole lot longer to get to the right answer because of what this Congress has done today.
REP. BARNEY FRANK: You didn’t get an answer on how the Bush administration, which strongly supported Bear Stearns through the Treasury Department and its appointees, how it’s OK to do $29 billion for Bear Stearns, but not $2.4 billion for homeowners.
REP. TOM PRICE: Well, with all due respect, Mr. Chairman, it wasn’t a congressional action.
REP. BARNEY FRANK: No, but it was the Bush administration. I understand that. I wouldn’t say it was a congressional action, if you were listening. I said the Bush administration. The Bush administration, I was asked, has threatened to veto the bill.
They say you can’t do $2.4 billion for homeowners, but you can do $29 billion for the people who did business with Bear Stearns.
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Barr schedules a D.C. press conference for Monday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former Georgia congressman Bob Barr has scheduled a Monday press conference in Washington “to discuss his future plans and the 2008 election.”
Obviously, a Libertarian run for the presidency is a natural topic.
You’ve got to think he’s going to do it. Just yesterday, Barr sent out a plea via the e-mail list of the Conservative Voice, asking for financial support. Not something you do if you’re going to throw in the towel a few days later.
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The real reason why Clinton won’t concede
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just got an e-mail from former state lawmaker Tom Bordeaux down in Savannah, who offered this insight into the Democratic presidential race:
“I sympathize with Hillary Clinton’s reluctance to quit the race. After all, did you see what they did to the last filly who came in second?”
He says his observation is original, and possibly even copyrighted.
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Isakson says he won’t run for governor, will seek re-election to U.S. Senate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson held a meeting with this staff this morning and told them he’s decided to seek another term in the U.S. Senate rather than run for governor in 2010.
The meeting was confirmed by Joan Kirchner, Isakson’s deputy chief of staff.
“Johnny loves serving in the U.S. Senate, and he thinks this presidential election — no matter who wins — will be one of the most important in the country’s history,” Kirchner said. “And in the next administration, the U.S. Senate will be where all the action is.”
State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, also a Republican, has already announced his candidacy for governor in 2010. But Isakson’s decision is sure to set more Republicans — not to mention Democrats — thinking about an attempt to succeed Gov. Sonny Perdue.
With the two most recent sessions of the General Assembly devolving into fights among the House speaker, lieutenant governor and governor, the Georgia business community had been pressuring Isakson to return home for the governor’s race.
But some close to the senator, whose residence is in east Cobb County, said the very nature of the infighting was a discouragement to Isakson.
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Newton GOP wide-eyed over school board candidate with child sex issues
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans who take I-20 east home are fuming over revelations that a GOP candidate for the school board in Newton County has a 1988 conviction for sodomy to a child under 14, and was arrested in 1999 on a charge of public indeceny.
The latter charge against Horace Don Gresham was dead-docketed, according to the Covington News.
Here’s the newspaper’s take on the situation:
According to Steve Bray, chairman of the Newton County Republican Party, the organization does not remove candidates from the ballot once they’ve qualified.
“At this point, Mr. Gresham is a candidate having gone through the qualifying process and paid his fees,” Bray said. “Each candidate is responsible for their knowledge of and compliance with the Georgia State Election Code. The Newton County Republican Party’s role in the qualifying process is to certify the candidate’s signatures on the documents and collect the qualifying fees.”
Gresham signed the Declaration of Candidacy and Affidavit, which states candidates must have had their civil rights fully restored for at least 10 years upon the completion of their felony sentence. According to the deposition, Gresham was sentenced to one year in prison and 11 years of probation in 1988, making him ineligible to run for public office until 2010.
State Sen. John Douglas (R-Social Circle) is demanding that Gresham immediately withdraw his name from consideration.
“The thought of having a person who is a convicted pedophile and who engaged in an act of indecent exposure represent any part of Georgia on a local school board boggles the mind and defies logic,” he said in a press release posted on PeachPundit.com.
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Newt on Hillary: ‘The mountain is very, very high’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Wednesday that Hillary Clinton’s bid to be the Democratic presidential nominee is looking grim.
“I think the mountain is very, very high, verging on a cliff,” Gingrich said in Atlanta following a bill-signing ceremony with Gov. Sonny Perdue. “On the other hand, the Clintons almost never give up.”
The legislation signed by the governor boosts high-premium health insurance plans that are paired with health savings accounts, and Gingrich has championed similar proposals.
The former House speaker talked politics after the formalities with my state Capitol colleague, Aaron Gould Sheinin.
Gingrich said he assumes Clinton will win primaries in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico, but doubts they’ll provide her with the momentum she now needs. Her victory over Barack Obama in Indiana on Tuesday was not big enough, he said.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions about Senator Obama,” he said. “And people in the Democratic Party have to wonder whether he is the next John F. Kennedy or he’s the next George McGovern, Mike Dukakis — and they don’t know yet.”
He suspects Democratic party leaders are putting pressure on Clinton to drop her bid, but knowing the Clintons as he does, “I wouldn’t bet anything that they’re going to get out.”
As for the strong warning he gave this week to Republicans in Congress, Gingrich said the stern tones are warranted.
“When you lose the speaker’s seat in Illinois that you’ve had for 75 years, and you lose a seat in Louisiana you’ve had since 1977 — a seat, by the way, that George W. Bush carried by 19 points — and you look at the national polling data, you had better figure out that the voters generally are not happy with how Republicans have run Washington,” Gingrich said.
“And they’ve got, I think, three or four months to prove that they got the message. And if they don’t prove that, they should expect to have a very, very tough election,” he said.
However, voter upheaval doesn’t extend to third party bids, such as the one being considered by another former Georgia Republican congressman, Bob Barr.
“No reasonable conservative is going to vote for anybody except (John) McCain if the alternative is Clinton or Obama,” Gingrich said. “Barr is not alternative. Barr has zero hope of winning.”
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And if that doesn’t work, lashes with a wet noodle are in the offing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We are well into the trash-talking phase of the Democratic primary.
A beefed-up U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta has climbed into the Wrestlemania ring and is ready to discuss his two July rivals, state Rep. “Able” Mable Thomas and the Rev. Markel Hutchins.
Microphone, please.
“I’m going to give them a non-violent kick,” promised Lewis, still a proper follower of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.
Seriously, my D.C. colleague Julia Malone sat down with Lewis today, and filed this on her blog:
The Atlanta Democrat, first elected to Congress in 1986, said he was “somewhat surprised that someone would challenge me and talk about change. That’s what I’ve been about all my life. I am change. But it’s okay. People have a right to run.”
He vowed to return every weekend to his home district and take nothing for granted. “I want to win big,” Lewis said. “No one is going to outwork me.”
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‘Bubba’ no more
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Southern politics are chockfull of cultural markers — signals and messages, some encrypted and some not, that say much about who we are as a people.
Race is the big one, of course. But there are others, and they are perishable.
We lost a significant marker last week. It was shelved without fanfare, but only after much internal deliberation.
Lauren W. McDonald Jr., a 69-year-old Republican, signed up to reclaim the seat on the Public Service Commission that he lost in 2002. But for the first time in 39 years of politicking, McDonald’s nickname will not appear on the ballot with him.
“Bubba” is no more.
“It was a decision that was deeply discussed,” McDonald said. This was a serious statement, made without irony — for the decision cuts to the man’s very identity.
Lauren McDonald Jr./SPECIAL
Since the late ‘60s, when he was a Jackson County commission chairman, over a thousand plates of barbecue and in a thousand Kiwanis Club speeches, and throughout an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1990, McDonald has introduced himself as “Bubba.”
McDonald was 65 percent “Bubba” and 35 percent “Lauren” in high school. He was “Lauren” to the U.S. Air Force.
But in the South, “Bubba” is by definition a family man, an everyman. An average Joe. There are — or were — an army of Bubbas out there. So in politics, “Bubba” is — or was — good advertising.
But times change. McDonald remembered back to the time when he was PSC chairman, and he took a phone call from an angry constituent with — judging from McDonald’s imitation — a high-toned accent from parts north.
“I cahn’t believe the chahrman of the Public Service Commission is named Bubba,” she complained.
McDonald also watched Forsyth County, where he lived until a year or so ago, swell with people from the Midwest and the Northeast or even downtown Atlanta.
“And honestly, ‘Bubba’ may be a bit offensive to them,” he said.
McDonald, by the way, is a dapper fellow who doesn’t look a bit country and can discuss the workings of nuclear plants with a degree of proficiency.
The very fact that this must be said perhaps explains McDonald’s decision. The innocent name that sprang from the tongue-tied lips of toddler sisters has become something of a pejorative.
So “Bubba” will disappear from the ballot, as far as Lauren McDonald is concerned.
Last week did give us a 64-year-old Democrat, James A. “Bubber” Epps of Dry Branch, Ga., who will run against Republican incumbent Allen Freeman in House District 140.
But clearly, Bubba’s days are numbered.
That said, McDonald warns that if you see him on the street and call him Lauren, he may not turn his head.
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Newt Gingrich and Allan Crow on the implications of Louisiana
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On Saturday, Don Cazayoux became Louisiana’s newest Democratic congressman, wresting a seat that had been in Republican hands for 33 years.
In Washington and elsewhere, the defeat wiped off whatever smiles the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton fight has been putting on Republican faces.
The Louisiana result came on the heels of the Republican loss of former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat in Illinois, which had been held by the GOP — with a single two-year exception — for 74 years.
That has Newt Gingrich calling for marked change of course for Republicans “or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November.”
Gingrich has this posted on the web site of Human Events:
Senator McCain is currently running ahead of the Republican congressional ballot by about 16 percentage points. But there are two reasons that this extraordinary personal achievement should not comfort congressional Republicans.
First, McCain’s lead is a sign of the gap between the McCain brand of independence and the GOP brand. No regular Republican would be tying or slightly beating the Democratic candidates in this atmosphere. It is a sign of how much McCain is a non-traditional Republican that he is sustaining his personal popularity despite his party’s collapse.
Second, there is a grave danger for the McCain campaign that, if the generic ballot stays at only 32 percent for the GOP, it will ultimately outweigh McCain’s personal appeal and drag his candidacy into defeat.
The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.
It’s worth noting that Atlanta consultant Allan Crow handled the media for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Louisiana.
National Democrats dropped $1 million plus on the Louisiana race, Crow said — twice what the candidate himself spent. National Republicans and various 527s spent a similar amount on Woody Jenkins.
This was the first attack ad in the race, and it could have implications elsewhere in the country. Even in Georgia.
Designed by Crow and launched close to April 15, the TV spot tied Jenkins’ failure to pay his taxes to his support for “a national sales tax” of 15 percent “on just about everything.”
That’s a reference to the Fair Tax, which has been embraced by many Republicans in the state. In Georgia, it might also apply to the property tax shift proposed this year by House Speaker Glenn Richardson.
“We found that it worked pretty well, particularly in the context of Woody not paying his taxes,” Crow said.
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John Barrow brings five African-American lawmakers to his side
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The lack of public African-American support for Jim Martin in the Democratic race for U.S. Senate was duly noted this week — a side effect of the Obama/Clinton clash in the stratosphere of the presidential race.
Others aren’t having quite the same problem building that biracial coalition so essential to success for pale candidates in a Democratic primary.
Rand Knight, another white Democrat in the U.S. Senate race, has in his corner Denise Majette, the 2004 Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate — who is, of course, black.
U.S. Rep. John Barrow of Savannah has found himself challenged by state Sen. Regina Thomas of Savannah, an African-American Democrat.
But the incumbent Barrow, who is white, just announced his endorsement by every member of the Democratic delegation in upriver Augusta. State Sen. Ed Tarver, and state Reps. Quincy Murphy, Gloria Frazier, Wayne Howard and Hardie Davis are all African-American.
State Sen. J.B. Powell endorsed Barrow as well. He is white.
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More on Cagle and his support for a Sunday sales referendum
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Y’all are great. (Relatively) early this morning, I referred to the Blog for Democracy item that reflected an interesting statement, made in a letter to constituents, by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle on the Sunday sale of alcohol.
I asked for samples of the letter, and was much impressed by the speed of the response — which beat Cagle’s office by a good hour.
Here’s the official letter, in its entirety.
But this is the salient section:
“As a Georgian with strong religious beliefs, I oppose Sunday sales of alcohol for individual religious reasons. However, I recognize we live in a democracy where the wishes of the majority must be respected. For this reason, I have not opposed a referendum that will allow voters to choose whether or not to allow Sunday sales.
“While I would vote against such a change at the ballot box, I do not believe the Legislature should deny the voters of our state a chance to make this choice for themselves and their community.”
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A slip of the tongue could mean Perdue will sign the gun bill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sonny Perdue apparently intends to sign H.B. 89, the bill that would let permit holders carry concealed weapons on public transportation, in restaurants that serve alcohol and in state parks.
The governor let it slip during a signing ceremony for legislation to toughen Georgia’s prohibitions against dogfighting.
Perdue doesn’t usually talk in advance about whether he’ll sign this piece of legislation or that one. And at first, when questioned about the bill, the governor was properly wishy-washy.
“Actually, we were going line by line over lunch, on that legislation. There are certainly some ambiguities regarding employer and employee rights in the bill, that I’m a little concerned about,” the governor said.
But likewise, he declared himself “moved by the fact” that this law would only apply to license holders who have submitted themselves to fingerprinting and criminal background checks.
Then he said this:
“I do think it will be litigated and tested very soon after signing, because of the craftsmanship of some of the semantics in the language that creates some latitude and interpretation.”
Whoops.
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Vernon Jones: ‘The Duke lacrosse team was falsely accused, too’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On WGAU (1340AM) in Athens this morning, host Tim Bryant had Vernon Jones, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, on the line — and played for him the accusations that his rival, Dale Cardwell, made the week before.
What was Jones’ response? At first, none at all. Listen to a sound clip here.
“Gasoline is four dollars a gallon. A gallon of milk now is four dollars. The war has been mismanaged,” Jones began. “At the same time, 8,000 homes are being foreclosed on per day. Jobs are leaving America and going to other countries.”
The DeKalb County CEO spoke of fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets. “That’s what people are concerned with now, not baseless allegations, not [by] someone who doesn’t have a record to run on,” he said.
But Bryant persisted: “Dale Cardwell called you a rapist. If somebody called me that and I didn’t do it, I’m looking for that guy.”
Replied Jones: “Here’s what’s interesting. Those boys at [the] Duke University lacrosse team were called that, too. Their character and reputation was assassinated because of people who wanted to just blurt things out. I’m on your show to talk about issues that are hurting America.”
A good slice of the Cardwell interview from last week can be found here.
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Cagle: ‘I have not opposed referendums on Sunday alcohol sales’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Blog for Democracy has this snippet of a letter on Sunday sales of alcohol, reportedly sent out by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle:
As a Georgian with strong religious beliefs, I oppose Sunday sales of alcohol for individual religious reasons. However, I recognize we live in a democracy where the wishes of the majority must be respected. For this reason, I have not opposed a referendum that will allow voters to choose whether or not to allow Sunday sales.
If you’ve got the entire letter, please send it on. A PDF would be quite handy.
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The guess here is that gender identification is slightly more confusing than with humans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On Wednesday, Gov. Sonny Perdue, a licensed veterinarian and bush pilot, will conduct a health check and ultrasound on Dottie the Pregnant Elephant at Zoo Atlanta. Dottie is due in 2009.
Elephant pregnancies last around 22 months. The only creature with a longer gestation period is the immobilis atlantis, also known as the common transportation bill, which requires seven to eight years before delivery.
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It’s probably the water. Possibly the barbecue.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My D.C. colleague Julia Malone points out a few lines that appeared Sunday in a Washington Post op-ed written by Stephen Carter, the Yale law professor and novelist.
Carter analyzes the ’08 presidential race as a high-powered thriller. And wonders out loud whether the plot could turn on either of two bit players in the drama:
“What about former Georgia congressman Robert Barr, who, perhaps unsatisfied with the many signs pointing to the Republican Party’s defeat in the fall, is considering adding to the mess by running himself?
“Or former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who evidently has similar feelings about the Democrats? (What is it about Georgia, anyway?)”
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House speaker’s chief of staff makes a move to Athens
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This one’s no shocker, but House Speaker Glenn Richardson just announced that Chris Cummiskey, his chief of staff, is leaving to become the University of Georgia’s liaison with the state Capitol.
Cummisky will have served 18 months — and two very rough sessions — as Richardson’s top aide. That’s close to two decades in political years. Prior to that, he served as U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson’s state director.
No mention of a replacement yet.
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Roy Barnes on an unappealing presidential field, and — of course — the Rev. Jeremiah Wright
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For some Democrats, the enthusiasm isn’t contagious.
Former governor Roy Barnes laments the state of the presidential field in today’s Marietta Daily Journal.
“Out of a nation of 304 million, is this the best we have?” Barnes said. “I’m not excited about any of them.” It seems as if he still pines for John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator.
Barnes says he’s not going to Denver this summer. Probably a wise move for anyone who doesn’t want to be caught up in the crossfire between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
More interestingly, here’s what the former governor said to MDJ columnist Don McKee about Obama’s former pastor in Chicago:
“Jeremiah Wright has done more in a week to damage Barack Obama’s campaign than Hillary Clinton has in the entire campaign,” Barnes said.
“He frightens me. I’ve been to a lot of black churches over the years and I’ve never heard anything like that. It gives Americans the wrong impression of what goes on in African-American churches. I have found them to be very patriotic. As Condoleezza Rice said: ‘African-Americans loved America when America didn’t love African-Americans.’”
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A not-so-GREAT parting gift from Richard Royal to Glenn Richardson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On Friday, as qualifying ended, long-time state Rep. Richard Royal, a Republican from Camilla, announced he wouldn’t be running again.
“In my 25 years of service, I have witnessed far too many competent individuals who sadly do not know when to step down. I prefer not to follow in their steps,” Royal, 69, wrote in a statement on the topic.
Royal’s plans were closely held. As a result, only one candidate qualified for the vacant south Georgia seat — and now has won it without an election.
You might be tempted to think that some high-up GOP machinations were at work here. Quite the contrary. If you look closely, this episode appears more like a rude but well-orchestrated gesture aimed at Speaker Glenn Richardson by a parting member of the House.
Under Democratic rule, Royal was for years the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and was still considered a leading expert on taxation in the state Capitol.
Royal switched parties when Republicans seized control, but never regained his former clout.
So far as I can tell, Royal kept his mouth shut during the debate over Richardson’s plan to shift the state and local governments away from property taxes — and toward an expanded sales tax.
But Royal let his thoughts be known on Friday, in the form of the fellow who replaces him — former Camilla mayor Jay Powell.
Powell was president of the Georgia Municipal Association last year, when the GMA threw itself forward as the lead opponent to Richardson’s “GREAT Plan” in all of its many forms.
Powell toured the state, stirring up opposition to the speaker’s effort. And now he’ll be a proper member of the speaker’s House.
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Democrats have their U.S. Senate race, and Vernon Jones remains the man to beat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So the Democratic race for U.S. Senate is set.
You know the undergirding dynamic of the contest. Many party leaders — though they’re loathe to say so publicly — fear that as a nominee, DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones’ background would leave him, and Democrats on the ballot beneath him, vulnerable to a GOP onslaught.
That’s why Jim Martin, the former state lawmaker, Atlanta attorney, and unsuccessful ‘06 candidate for lieutenant governor, was the first to qualify last week. His campaign treasury is sure to be larger than those of his four rivals. Union leaders will put their organizations behind him.
Problem solved, right? Not hardly.
There’s no doubt that, after eight years in the rough-and-tumble of DeKalb politics, Jones — the only African-American in the contest — enters the U.S. Senate race with baggage that would crush a normal career. No other candidate in the race has been singled out with a web page dedicated to the public documents generated by his encounters with law enforcement authorities.
But we are not in normal times. Jones remains the man to beat. Under no circumstances should you count him out — for two reasons. One is Barack Obama, and the other is Hillary Clinton.
To best Jones, a candidate must be able to attract a healthy percentage of African-American voters, who make up roughly half of the Democratic electorate.
Yet the never-ending fight at the presidential level has forced a crippling black-white divide among state Democrats. In private counsels, both black and white Democratic leaders say they’ve never seen their party so polarized along racial lines.
African-American leaders in Georgia, who saw what happened to U.S. Rep. John Lewis when he stuck with Clinton too long, have put themselves on the sidelines of the U.S. Senate race.
With his campaign two months old, and three months to go before a July 15 vote, Martin has yet to receive an endorsement from a major African-American political figure — a necessary first step in reaching out to black voters. Bob Holmes, the only African-American state lawmaker to publicly side with Martin when he announced in March, proclaimed his retirement from the Legislature two weeks later.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who endorsed Martin in ’06 and shares several decades of political history with him, has been noticeably silent. (It’s also worth observing that Roy Barnes, the former governor, is in Martin’s corner. But Mark Taylor, the former candidate for governor who partnered with Martin in ’06, supports Dale Cardwell, the former TV journalist.)
Other factors bode well for Jones as well. The Democratic primary challenge to Lewis, the state’s longest serving congressman, by “Able” Mable Thomas and the Rev. Markel Hutchins could drive the African-American vote in Atlanta, presumably in the DeKalb CEO’s favor.
In Clayton County, which shares a border with DeKalb, the racially charged fight over a tanking school system has made the formation of any black-white alliance that much harder. Ditto for the primary fight in Savannah, where state Sen. Regina Thomas, who is African-American, has decided to challenge U.S. Rep. John Barrow, who is white.
Without help from African-American leaders at the top of the party food chain, Martin has two alternatives, black and white Democratic strategists are saying. He can attempt to change the primary landscape by persuading more white voters — bored by the lack of contests on the Republican side — to choose a Democratic ballot.
Or Martin can, as the only Democratic candidate capable of launching an effective blanket of TV or radio ads, try to make his case against Jones to black voters.
Neither task is easy. And will be made harder if Obama and Clinton are still be going at each other in July.
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Warming up the leftovers: Jane Kidd on Vernon Jones, and Max Cleland says he’s staying out of presidential politics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With qualifying over this afternoon, state Democratic party chairman Jane Kidd had this to say about Vernon Jones, who — after formally joining the U.S. Senate race — dismissed party activists as “losers.”
To put Jones’ words in context, the DeKalb County CEO was asked by reporters about the efforts made to lure Atlanta attorney Jim Martin into the race.
Still, Kidd had this to say:
“Vernon admits that he has voted for President Bush for the last two times, so I do question his loyalty to the Democratic party. But he did qualify on the Democratic ticket, and we’ll just see how he does.”
On another topic, there’s a blog out there predicting that former U.S. senator Max Cleland is about to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
I just got off the phone with Cleland, who is in San Diego, campaigning for a pair of vets running for Congress. Cleland said it ain’t so — he’s staying out of presidential politics this year.
However, he did get a chuckle out of Josh Lanier’s YouTube clip.
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Lanier shows up with a certain, studied anger over Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Josh Lanier signed up for the Democratic race for U.S. Senate on Friday.
The question is what he brings to the table that the others don’t.
Jim Martin has the party’s leftward wing, and its regulars, too. Vernon Jones offers a certain personal charisma, and the potential for channeling the African-American vote.
Dale Cardwell’s specialty is a kind of evangelical honesty. Rand Knight’s emphasis is youth and passion.
Lanier, 55, of Statesboro, is a leisurely mannered fellow who recently came home after a 35-year career in Washington, first as a staffer for U.S. Sen. Herman Talmadge, then as the representative of a bevy of interests from cable TV to shellfish. He describes himself as a writer now.
Lanier wears a lapel pin indicating his Vietnam service. And despite his low-key manner, his contribution to this race will be a certain amount of anger about what Republicans — and the war in Iraq — have allegedly done to the U.S. military.
Lanier is one of those who believe that conservative Democrats like Sam Nunn — hawks, they were called, back in the day — were the ones who built up the military in the 1980s and ‘90s. Not Ronald Reagan. And the U.S. adventure in Iraq, they believe, has undone all that was accomplished.
As posted earlier today, Lanier’s campaign this morning offered up a YouTube parody of the TV ad that Republican Saxby Chambliss used to beat Max Cleland in 2002.
Chances are it won’t make it to TV anytime soon. Lanier isn’t accepting any contributions over $100.
Nonetheless, Lanier isn’t shy about tearing into Chambliss for his vote against a measure pitched by U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), to require that overseas troops be guaranteed a day at home for every day abroad.
“Republicans fought it tooth-and-nail. It would have slowed down the president’s plan for a surge. You can draw your own conclusions on that. One of which is that there were individuals who consciously traded off the health and the strength and the welfare of our military to support a political decision,” Lanier said. “That burns my ass. I’d just as soon throw that out on the table, and let’s chat about it.”
He continued:
“Here’s the fact. Our military right now, we don’t have once single brigade at full readiness. Not one….The Army is just stretched out. Marines and the Army are just at max exhaustion. If you don’t have a rotation — we’re not just talking about time off, we’re talking about the ability of those units restock and retrain and have full readiness to do their jobs.
“Right now, we’re moving ships into the Gulf as a show of force to Iran, and the only reason we need a show of force on Iran is because we’re in Iraq. And meanwhile, there’s an attempted assassination of the president of Afghanistan, and we have not secured it from the terrorists who attacked us.
“That’s a helluva fine investment for $2 to $3 trillion.”
Oh, and the part about being a writer. Lanier says he’s got a screenplay wandering around Los Angeles. It’s called “Statesboro Blues,” and is about “what happens to the mind when you think you’re about to die.”
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Judge rejects a dusty resign-to-run law in Henry County
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Henry County Superior Court Judge Wade Crumbley has struck down a local resign-to-run law that could have implications for similar measures around Georgia.
Read the entire judgment here.
Twenty-one years ago, as a matter of local legislation that applied only to Henry County, the state Legislature passed a statute that demanded the immediate resignation of any local official who sought another office.
You have to assume the measure was intended to discourage electoral challenges to the county commission chairman — as well as other incumbents.
But here’s the kicker: The law was never enforced. In part because it was never been submitted to the U.S. Justice Department for approval.
Until this year. On April 9. Ah, shenanigans.
Last week, the Henry County Board of Elections rejected Commissioner Elizabeth Mathis’ attempt to qualify for the chairmanship race in the Republican primary this July. The two terms don’t overlap, but even so, the local statute demanded her immediate resignation.
Former congressman Buddy Darden, of McKenna, Long and Aldridge argued the speedy case for Mathis. Republican insider Robert Highsmith represented the board of elections and the local GOP.
The strategic nut of the case was the request for Department of Justice approval. Pre-clearance by the feds usually takes a minimum of two months, which put Mathis in a kind of limbo.
“We made the DOJ aware of our dilemma, and they made their decision on the local act the next day. Securing a DOJ decision prior to the end of qualifying allowed us to play offense rather than defense,” said Amol Naik of the McKenna firm.
In other words, Justice Department approval permitted the local judge to disapprove the law. The fast footwork mattered.
Crumbley found that the local legislation contradicts the resign-to-run requirement embedded in the state constitution. The constitutional rule requires candidates seeking another office to resign only if the two terms overlap by more than 30 days.
“The act is inconsistent with the Constitution in that it imposes a disqualification to hold office which is more restrictive than the disqualification contained in the Constitution,” Crumbley ruled.
The order was handed down last night. The presumption here is that Mathis qualified for the Henry County chairmanship race before noon today.
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Lanier to make five, with a Saxby-Osama kick-off
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Josh Lanier, a former congressional staff member and Vietnam veteran from Statesboro, rounds out the Democratic Five in the U.S. Senate race this morning.
He’s kicked off his campaign with an ironic video that harkens back to the Max Cleland-Saxby Chambliss race of 2002, but this time placing Osama bin Laden and Republican incumbent Chambliss in the same spot.
“The original smear has bothered me for years. Return to sender,” Lanier said in a fax this morning.
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‘Able’ Mable Thomas declares generational war on John Lewis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
‘Able’ Mable Thomas, the state representative and Atlanta community activist, in essence called U.S. Rep. John Lewis an old fogey this afternoon, as she signed up to run against him in the 5th District Democratic primary.
“I believe that, at the end of the day, that my opponent is not only beatable, but my opponent should — right now — just get out of the race and let a new generation come forth. We’ve been with you, now why don’t you stand with us?” she asked — rhetorically, of course.
Thomas is 50. Lewis is 68, and has held the 5th District seat since 1986.
Markel Hutchins, 31, is also in the Democratic race, but Thomas made no mention of him.
Instead, she said that Lewis’ initial endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president showed that the man she called a Civil Rights icon was also “human.” And thus vulnerable.
“What it says is that he is out of touch, and did not see the movement — and he is a movement man,” she said. “We offer him an exit strategy today.”
That’s cold.
Lewis’ response? In a word, iconic. “People talk about change. I am change,” he said in a press release zapped this way.
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More on Vernon Jones and Dale Cardwell
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the blink of a qualifying fee, the Democratic race for Senate has begun throwing sparks, with two candidates in particular providing most of the flint-and-steel confrontations.
Dale Cardwell, the former TV journalist, in particular has come out in aggressive fashion.
He’s attacked Atlanta attorney Jim Martin as the choice of backroom strategists. But Cardwell has truly blistered DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones in a fashion that already has editors fidgety — and should have Jones thinking about how to respond.
On Wednesday, after signing up for the race, Cardwell referred to Jones as a “crook” and a “Republican.” The latter charge was based on Jones’ admission that he cast two votes for George W. Bush.
This morning, Cardwell was on WGAU (1340AM) in Athens. He called Jones an “unindicted criminal.” Cardwell recounted the circumstances of a 2005 rape accusation against Jones — which was withdrawn, though the woman never recanted.
Politics has always been rough, but this kind of language is exceedingly rare in a campaign — even on the eve of voting, let alone the outset of a race.
Listen here to the sound clip provided by WGAU host Tim Bryant.
Jones has responded to Cardwell, but in a limited fashion and only on the issue of Republican voting.
The Associated Press had this:
Jones fired back by providing a copy of Cardwell’s voting record from the Secretary of State’s office, which shows the ex-reporter cast a Republican ballot in the 2006 primary as well as the ensuing runoff.
Cardwell explained that he took a GOP ballot in the primary to vote against former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, who was then running for lieutenant governor. Reed lost. Cardwell said he could not recall why he voted in the runoff.
But Cardwell told The Associated Press that although he voted for Ronald Reagan in his first White House bid in 1980, he’s supported Democratic presidential candidates ever since.
When asked about how he would deal with questions about his controversial tenure as the top dog in DeKalb County government, Jones has said it remains the media’s job to keep political discussion on a higher plane.
Questions, Jones told reporters on Tuesday, “will come up by you all. It’s not going to come up by my opponents, because they don’t have a TV station or a newspaper. (Or a radio station.)
“You all are going to be picking up their baseless allegations because they don’t have a record to run on,” Jones said.
But this is a prediction more than a strategy. And right now, it may be coming true.
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Rand Knight: On energy, and dishing on the other three
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rand Knight paid his qualifying fee for the U.S. Senate on Thursday, becoming the fourth Democrat in the race.
He emphasized energy — the need to produce it, and his own.
Knight, a 36-year-old ecologist, doesn’t have much money, but he has been working. In February, he was the only Democrat to set up a booth at the annual meeting of the Georgia Christian Alliance run by Sadie Fields.
“I’m not going to criticize the other candidates right now. I don’t think it’s the time. May the person who works the hardest rise to the top,” Knight said.
No matter how new you are to politics, when you say you’re not about to talk about the opposition, that’s when reporters know to open their notebooks.
Knight on Jim Martin, who was urged into the race by Democratic heavyweights:
He lacks “passion,” the newest candidate said. “I do not believe that we are picking someone just because they raised $300,000.”
Knight on Dale Cardwell, the former TV journalist:
“Getting a news reporter who doesn’t have experience, and the problems we’re facing now — water issues, energy issues, jobs for Georgia. I don’t know how a news-reporting background is going to help that.”
And Knight on Vernon Jones and his Democrats as “losers” comment:
“Basically his history kind of speaks for itself. He’s running a very divisive campaign, he’s using the race card. The things he said about our fellow Democrats are nonsensical and frankly unacceptable… I find it a matter of disrespect. You may not always agree your folks, but you certainly ought to speak well of them.”
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‘Able’ Mable Thomas to run against John Lewis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Rep. ‘Able’ Mable Thomas will qualify early this afternoon at the state Capitol to run against U.S. Rep. John Lewis. She sent out a fax this morning, giving Lewis the title of “Civl Rights icon.”
The question is, who does her candidacy impact most? Does she draw from Lewis? Or does she take votes away from Markel Hutchins, who signed up for the Democratic primary on Wednesday, and is counting on voter anger of Lewis’ initial backing of Hillary Clinton for president over Barack Obama?
Thomas, who had her start as a community activist in Atlanta, has run against Lewis once before, in 1992.
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Eric Johnson on Clayton County schools and the ‘civil rights battle of the 21st century’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Late Wednesday, Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson of Savannah loudly — or as loudly as e-mail allows — proclaimed his frustration with his colleagues’ recent failure to address his voucher program.
The legislation was aimed at rescuing the slow-motion train wreck that is the Clayton County school system. But it ran into trouble when parents in neighboring school systems began to fear that fleeing, voucher-wielding students would swamp their boats.
Johnson began with the day’s news:
“I was outraged to finally see the contract with Clayton County’s new part-time School Superintendent. Even though he was declared unqualified by the accrediting agency, he will now receive $285,000 and a car and driver for 133 work days a year.
“Think about that. That is more than $2,100 a day plus benefits! Think about what that could have done if it was spent in the classroom. Some legislators, including most of the Clayton County delegation, opposed my attempt to give each child in these schools a $4,500 scholarship each and every year.
“They did it because of pressure from the same people that elected the present school board.”
Johnson’s exposition continues on the jump.
“Clearly this Board doesn’t get it. I believe the debate about Clayton’s schools needs to turn to ‘choice’. Should we give parents control of their own tax dollars that are spent on their child’s education? Or should we give it to a Board that hires a Superintendent at $250 an hour?
“Should we let parents decide whether they should go to a local school that is not accredited or an independent school that is accredited? Should we force children to attend a school that threatens their ability to go to college and earn a higher income the rest of their lives?
“Or should we allow students to escape to a better school? School choice is the civil rights battle of the 21st Century. Clayton County citizens need to demand vouchers. And they should demand them from any candidate running for the State Senate or House of Representatives.
“Before you vote in the July 15 primary, find out whether they think this School Board should spend their money or whether the parents should have that right.”
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Oxendine’s two-pronged advance: An insurance bill and the ‘birthday tax’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Today’s front page wasn’t good enough for state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine.
While he was picking a fight with the Legislature, and pressuring Gov. Sonny Perdue to veto legislation that the insurance commissioner says would result in a spike in auto insurance premiums, Oxendine’s minions were sending out a link to his new campaign web site.
It features video of Oxendine paying his annual car tax. Says the 2010 candidate for governor:
“The Georgia Legislature had a great opportunity to to do serious tax reform. But unfortunately, through infighting, it didn’t happen. When I’m governor, I’m going to work with the Legislature, and we are going to have serious tax reform.”
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Dear Mr. Barr: When you come, please bring a closer. Love, Bobby
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Calendar items don’t usually appear hear, but there is a (potential) presidential candidate involved in this one.
The anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity is holding a state “summit” at Turner Field on Saturday, at the 755 Club.
Bob Barr, who’s looking at a Libertarian bid for president, is on the schedule. So is Stephen Moore, the Wall Street Journal writer. Also look for House Speaker Glenn Richardson and Secretary of State Karen Handel.
Handel seems to be getting around quite a bit these days.
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