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Thursday, October 2, 2008
Bill Clinton makes a surprise appearance at Buckhead fund-raiser
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former President Bill Clinton dipped into Atlanta this afternoon for an unannounced Buckhead fund-raiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
“He returned to a state he won in 1992 to help elect Barack Obama,” state Sen. David Adelman (D-Atlanta), a member of Obama’s national finance team, told my AJC colleague Aaron Gould Sheinin. Clinton was the last Democrat to win Georgia.
The event, which was not open to the public or publicized in advance, was at a local art gallery.
Adelman did not know how much was raised and said the fund-raiser was the only event Clinton did for the campaign in the state today.
UPDATE: The fund-raiser also includes a vice-presidential debate watching party hosted by Hank and Billye Aaron, at the Atlanta home of Mack Wilbourne. The “ask,” we’re told, is $1,000 and the VIP entry fee is $5,000 — or raise $10,000.
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On TV, Jim Marshall explains his vote for the Wall Street rescue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall of Macon was one of two Georgia congressmen who voted for the Wall Street rescue plan on Monday — the one that tanked.
He’s just released a 30-second TV ad defending his decision. See it below.
The Democrat receives some cover from the fact that both Georgia senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, both Republican, supported a dressed-up version of the measure, which passed the Senate on Wednesday.
Still, Marshall’s Republican opponent, retired Air Force major general Rick Goddard, on Wednesday came out against the bailout, adopting the same position held by the seven House Republicans from Georgia.
Marshall has become quickly famous for declaring this was a vote that was worth his seat. The ad carries on with that tone. Here’s the Marshall script:
“Warren Buffet’s called this financial crisis the worst in our nation’s history. I don’t like this rescue plan any better than you do. And I’m not interested in bailing out the irresponsible people who dragged us into this credit mess.
“But I’m not going to stand buy and let this crisis undermine our economy, and damage the financial future of everyone in America — they’re jobs, their savings, their dreams.
“I’m Jim Marshall, and I approve this message because you elected me to do what’s best for America. Not what’s easy.”
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After the election, Georgia Republicans want to make a play for the 2012 national convention
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
During the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last month, state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, in a speech to the Georgia delegation, pitched the idea of Atlanta making a bid for the 2012 gathering.
The state GOP is taking him seriously.
A letter has gone out to members of the state committee, pitching a Nov. 22 organizational meeting of a convention committee.
“To avoid distractions from the 2008 campaign focus, the Committee will begin formally working after the November 2008 election. Commissioner Oxendine has committed to raise $50,000 by December 31st to provide initial seed money for the Committee and has invited his fellow statewide GOP elected officials and the US Congressional delegation to join him,” says the letter.
Here’s an assessment of the competition:
“Already Republicans in Arizona (Phoenix), Indiana (Indianapolis), Louisiana (New Orleans), and Texas (Dallas) are organized and moving forward with their 2012 bids. All these states have already formed committees - before the close of the 2008 election cycle.
“In fact, Arizona who is busy trying to elect their US Senator as President, is able to also focus on 2012. New Orleans has already earned the support of the Democrat Mayor, who sent an official delegation to Minnesota to observe and prepare for their bid. Indianapolis is hosting the 2012 Super Bowl and the Indiana state GOP is working with the business community - today - to do both the Super Bowl and the National Convention.”
The letter was written by Maria Strollo Zack, the 2012 bid chairman, Rob Doll, first vice chair, and Mansell McCord, the Fifth District chair.
Read the entire missive on the jump.
GEORGIA 2012 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION BID COMMITTEE
Dear:
We are excited to announce the formation of the Georgia 2012 Republican National Convention Bid Committee. I wanted to give you an update:
The first meeting of the Committee will be Saturday November 22, 2008 from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon at the offices of McKenna Long & Aldridge, 303 Peachtree Street, NE, Suite 5300 Atlanta, GA 30308.
Anyone who wishes to serve on the 2012 Bid Committee is invited to attend. This committee will be exploring the possibility of Georgia submitting a bid. We need everyone involved who wishes to participate. No decisions have been made and the point of this meeting is to allow everyone an opportunity to contribute and provide leadership and input. Please RSVP to strollom@bellsouth.net by November 14th, so that we may plan accordingly. Should you have any questions, please call XXX-XXX-XXXX.
After Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine called for Atlanta to host the RNC in 2012 at the 2008 RNC in Minneapolis Minnesota, members of the party have unified behind this effort.
To avoid distractions from the 2008 campaign focus, the Committee will begin formally working after the November 2008 election. Commissioner Oxendine has committed to raise $50,000 by December 31st to provide initial seed money for the Committee and has invited his fellow statewide GOP elected officials and the US Congressional delegation to join him.
Georgia would not be in a position to bid for the 2012 RNC National Convention without the leadership of such pioneers as Bo Callaway, Mack Mattingly, John Linder, Newt Gingrich, Paul Coverdell, Billy Lovett, John Stuckey, Carolyn Meadows, Dot Burns, Linda Herren, Alec Poitivent and our state Chair Sue Everhart.
We have a united effort growing rapidly on this bid, and I want to thank all of you who have expressed an interest in helping. In the old days, our party could only rely on a few people to do the hard work. Today, we are blessed by those who successfully laid such a solid foundation strong enough to seriously bid and host a national convention.
Already Republicans in Arizona (Phoenix), Indiana (Indianapolis), Louisiana (New Orleans), and Texas (Dallas) are organized and moving forward with their 2012 bids. All these states have already formed committees - before the close of the 2008 election cycle. In fact, Arizona who is busy trying to elect their US Senator as President, is able to also focus on 2012. New Orleans has already earned the support of the Democrat Mayor, who sent an official delegation to Minnesota to observe and prepare for their bid. Indianapolis is hosting the 2012 Super Bowl and the Indiana state GOP is working with the business community - today - to do both the Super Bowl and the Nation! al Convention.
Although these states are working now for 2012, we can clearly offer a better opportunity through our resourcefulness, hard work and great state. We take a back seat to no state in our ability to both elect our candidates and prepare for 2012.
Sincerely,
Maria Strollo Zack
2012 Bid Chairman
Rob Doll
First Vice Chair
Georgia Republican Party
Mansell McCord
Fifth District Chair
Georgia Republican Party
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U.S. Department of Energy to Sonny Perdue: ‘Uh, thanks for the letter, governor, but we didn’t do it for you’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Late Wednesday, the office of Sonny Perdue issued a press release stating that Samuel Bodman, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, had approved the Georgia governor’s request for additional releases of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Gulf Coast refineries.
Nearly 1 million barrels of crude were given their freedom.
Said Perdue, from Spain: “These crude releases will help ensure that the Southeast continues to receive consistent fuel supplies as we continue to see more stations receive fuel and lines shorten. I appreciate the Administration’s quick response and their concern for the fuel shortages we have experienced.”
This was ipso facto proof that our governor can handle a gasoline crisis and hunt down jobs in Europe at the same time.
Except that it’s not exactly true. Perdue’s request was well-timed, but there was no cause-and-effect, the DOE said today. The release was approved because of industry requests — not because of a letter from the governor.
Here’s a statement issued by Healy E. Baumgardner, press secretary for the DOE:
“DOE approved an additional release of up to 900,000 barrels of crude oil from the SPR to two refiners who submitted requests. This was a concurrent request made by the individual refiners that echoed what the Governor was asking for. The 900,000 barrel SPR release was not in direct response to the Governor’s request.
“We appreciate the Governor’s concern about fuel supplies in the United States. As he noted, emergency oil exchanges from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are an important tool to mitigate supply constraints. Following Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, DOE released over four million barrels of SPR oil for this purpose, and stands ready to quickly assist in response to additional refinery requests.
Update: Bert Brantley, spokesman for Perdue, said the governor never meant to claim undue credit. Brantley said:
“As our Monday letter to President Bush noted, we were fully aware and appreciative of the Department of Energy’s previous SPR releases. After hearing from the industry that there could be some additional refinery capacity available, we simply wanted to go on record supporting additional SPR releases if refineries saw a gap between what they could process and the amount of crude they were receiving.
“We never expected DOE to approve the request only because we asked, and never intended to imply that the request was granted only because we asked.”
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The Insider’s all a-Twitter over tonight’s debate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ll be posting the latest from the vice presidential debate beetween Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden via Twitter. Sign up up here to follow.
An added benefit: You’ll get updates on new Insider posts several times a day.
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Playing catch-up with Sarah Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What with Wall Street crumbling around our ears, the world has neglected the all-important race for president of the U.S. Senate.
The first and only vice presidential debate kicks off at 9 p.m. tonight, from St. Louis, Mo.
Republican Sarah Palin gets credit for bringing enthusiasm back to the base of the GOP, at least during the month of September. Fortunately for her, most people were watching their 401(k)s melt away last week when CBS began broadcasting a series of halting interviews with the Alaska governor.
But here’s a quick cheat-sheet to help you catch up for tonight’s show — oh, and the other candidate in the race is U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.:
— First, television station KTOO in Alaska has made available Palin’s last debate, from November 2006, in the race for governor of Alaska. A very poised performance. You can understand why she won. It’s brought to you by Sourdough Fuel.
— Polls are showing that America’s fickle voters aren’t as enamored with Palin as they were in September, when she was so unknown that even Fox News was calling her Susan Palin.
This is from today’s Washington Post:
Though she initially transformed the race with her energizing presence and a fiery convention speech, Palin is now a much less positive force: Six in 10 voters see her as lacking the experience to be an effective president, and a third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her.
And here’s the take from today’s Los Angeles Times:
Palin is still enormously popular among Republicans and continues to stoke enthusiasm in the party’s base, but as voters learn about her, many have started to view her unfavorably. After the GOP convention, more than half of the voters surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press said she was qualified to be president. In a Pew poll released Wednesday, just 37% said she would be ready to take over for McCain.
A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll last month found that Palin held no particular sway with women. Among independent voters, she was more popular with men: 44% said they were more likely to vote for McCain because of Palin, whereas just 31% of women said so. The poll also found just a quarter of Clinton’s former supporters were more inclined to choose the Arizona senator because of his running mate.
— The New York Times today has this introductory article on Biden:
Although he is among the least wealthy members of the millionaires club that is the United States Senate — he and his wife, Jill, a college professor, earn about $250,000 a year — Mr. Biden maintains a lifestyle that is more comfortable than the impression he may have given on the campaign trail. A review of his finances found that when it comes to some of his largest expenses, like the purchase and upkeep of his home and his use of Amtrak trains to get around, he has benefited from resources and relationships not available to average Americans.
— And here’s the NYT set-up piece on Palin:
When Gov. Sarah Palin meets Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday in the vice-presidential debate, even her fellow Alaskans might hear for the first time some of her views on health care reform, education policy and other issues of state government.
In her 22 months in office, Ms. Palin has not addressed many of those matters in a significant way, pursuing a narrower agenda rooted in Alaska’s resource-based economy.
Ms. Palin has approved increased spending for education and the elderly, sued the federal government for listing the polar bear as a threatened species, and pushed for a bill that would have reduced state regulation of new medical facilities. But by and large, oil and gas issues have dominated her tenure.
— Below is a CBS video in which Couric asks both Biden and Palin about Roe v. Wade. Biden, a Catholic who says he personally opposes abortion, defends it. Palin says access to abortion should be determined state-by-state.
Couric also asks Palin whether there are any other Supreme Court decisions she disagrees with. Palin can’t.
— But, under less pressure, the Alaskan governor has better luck in a detailed interview with Hugh Hewitt, a syndicated radio host, law professor and former member of the Reagan administration:
I know what Americans are going through. Todd and I, heck, we’re going through that right now even as we speak, which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don’t like the idea of just an everyday working class American running for such an office.
But yeah, there’s been a lot of times that Todd and I have had to figure out how we were going to pay for health insurance. We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs….
And you know, even today, Todd and I are looking at what’s going on in the stock market, the relatively low number of investments that we have, looking at the hit that we’re taking, probably $20,000 dollars last week in his 401K plan that was hit. I’m thinking geez, the rest of America, they’re facing the exact same thing that we are.
— Last week, Kathleen Parker, a conservative syndicated columnist, suggested that Palin’s interviews on CBS and NBC have been so painful that she should considering withdrawing. Parker caught an earful from hardcore Republicans. She writes about it here.
— Palin’s defenders include Fred Thompson, the former Republican candidate for president:
Wall Street and Washington were full of people who were “qualified and experienced” in the field of finance. Sen. Barack Obama, for one, has a great deal of experience in the housing field. So do many of his closest advisers. I would have traded some of that experience for a few more leaders with less experience and more courage to buck the establishment and tell the truth about what was happening.
— But it’s been David Brody, a senior correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network, who has served as the most constant link between Palin and conservative evangelicals.
The following is from Brody’s Wednesday blog:
Starting tonight, Palin supporters will gather at the vice-presidential debate site in St. Louis and hold prayer rallies for her….
This effort is being put together by The Christian Defense Coalition. They have a track record of holding prayer vigils and pro-life demonstrations on the big political and religious issues of the day. The Brody File has been told that big time Evangelical heavyweight Phyllis Schlafly will be there along with some members of Concerned Women for America, the Defense of Life group, homeschool groups and many more.
In addition a co-chair from the Republican Party of Missouri will be there though I am told these events are not officially sanctioned by the GOP.
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The Ox: Use state patrol at gas stations to ‘keep the peace and enforce common sense’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This press release rolled in Wednesday afternoon from John Oxendine, the state insurance commissioner and 2010 Republican candidate for governor:
“I call upon the governor to have the Georgia State Patrol, on a rotating schedule, integrate their regular patrol duties at gas stations to both keep the peace and enforce common sense.
“Georgia, in particular Atlanta, is on the national news every day. There was a media report on one national network where an out of state driver pulled up to a station, broke in line, and filled up both his truck and his boat. When approached by Georgia residents, he refused to stop and gloated he was going to the lake for some fun.
“This must stop.”
Damn these gloating tourists. Have they no shame?
Oxendine has been calling for a bipartisan summit of Georgia’s leaders — not a special session of the Legislature, mind you. Presumably, such a meeting would include the insurance commissioner.
Continued Oxendine:
“I call upon the governor to bring the bi-partisan leadership of Georgia together upon his return this weekend. Georgians have asked why our taxpayer funded leaders are not meeting on this crisis as our federal leaders have been.
“I stand with the taxpayers of Georgia and call upon the Governor to convene a Georgia Leadership Summit of our state Constitutional officers….”
So, yes, that would include the insurance commissioner.
“…..the Legislative leadership, county and local leaders and leaders from business and consumer groups. I urge we meet at our own expense and not at taxpayer expense.”
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