Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2009 > January > 09 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USCagle, the governor’s race, and Sunday sales of beer and wine
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As the state Senate’s presiding officer, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle has been viewed as one of those standing in the way of legislation that would allow Sunday beer and wine sales at grocery and liquor stores.
Cagle denies any opposition to the measure, but he has tremendous influence over what the Senate considers, and the Sunday sales bill has never made it to the Senate floor for a vote. Proponents of Sunday sales say they’ll try again this year — and earlier this week, Cagle promised neutrality on the matter.
Now Cagle is running for governor. My AJC colleague James Salzer took a look at Cagle’s first campaign fund-raising report, through Dec. 31, and found that he has received plenty of money from the alcoholic beverage industry.
Beer-maker Anheuser-Busch, for instance, contributed $10,000. Various families and businesses in the booze/wine/liquor wholesale and distributing industry chipped in another $56,000. But in the fight over Sunday sales, wholesalers and distributors have been largely neutral.
However, Cagle has received $10,000 from Board of Regents member Richard Tucker. The Gwinnett County businessman owns the biggest liquor store in the state. Tucker is a close ally of Cagle and Senate Regulated Industries Chairman David Shafer (R-Duluth), who happens to be running for lieutenant governor to replace Cagle.
And Tucker opposes Sunday sales. He and some other liquor store owners say opening another day probably would cost them more in payroll and overhead than they would bring in at the cash register. Meanwhile, other retailers already open on Sundays would just rack up more revenue, they say.
Grocery and convenience stores are the driving force behind the Sunday sales push. The Georgia Association of Convenience Stores has given Cagle the grand sum of $500.
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
Comments
By Serendipitous Stipend
January 9, 2009 1:38 PM | Link to this
If there’s a Falcon game on a Sunday, and if you’ve run out of beer, and if your wife finally let you invite the guys over……see the problem?
Vote yes on taste great, vote no on less filling…but sunday sales are a must and a necessity, and a holy day of innebriation.
We must enact Sunday Beer Sales. If not, then football is finished.
By GoOX
January 9, 2009 1:58 PM | Link to this
Casey participating in pay to play?
By Serendipitous Stipend
January 9, 2009 2:03 PM | Link to this
Off topic: Obama wants to shut down Gitmo and free the radical suspects incarcerated there.
One thing about releasing the GITMO guys: We’ll be putting into circulation terrorists who can hold their breath under water for long periods of time. Our navy will be sitting ducks, and we’ll be finished as a superpower.
Vote no on the Obama-sponsored, “Free the Frogmen” bill!
By Aaron Burr V. Mexico
January 9, 2009 2:35 PM | Link to this
I’m sorry you have so little faith in our navy.
And Guantanamo is doing more damage to us than the individual IN it could ever do.
They should have been shot a long time ago.
By Dept of Truth and Justice for All
January 10, 2009 9:39 AM | Link to this
To all of you holdouts against selling alcoholic beverages, whenever consumers want it, this Bud’s for you: Look at it as your only real chance to make the drinkers actually contribute to the costs associated with setting up road blocks and conducting sobriety tests at all hours of the day and night. Don’t you holdouts know that all those policemen that work all those hard hours trying to keep drunks off the roads need to get paid and who do you think should be paying them? Don’t you realize that the courts need money to prosecute those drunks? Don’t you know that the jails are overflowing and the people that need to be there also need to be paying their own way. Sell them their brew and collect the taxes to help pay for their abuses instead of forcing them to drive elsewhere and pay taxes to someone else and leave us to clean up after them out of our pockets when they drive back home swerving and weaving all over the roads and yards and into people’s houses. Get these people their drinks and back in their homes by reducing the miles that they must drive to accomplish their mission. Do it for your children.