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Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Barack, Billary or Barr?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr did get the Libertarian Party nomination over the Memorial Day weekend.
I’ve declared my intentions never to vote for a third party candidate. They’re spoilers. If they get hot and become well-financed, they pull in the teens. If not, it’s single digits, usually low single digits, often under 1 percent. That spells spoiler at best.
Barr expects the party to be on the ballot in 49 of the 57 states, though work remains to get on the ballot in about 20. Barr thinks his candidacy puts Georgia in play — and it could. Depending on the race and the candidate, Georgia can go either way, Democratic or Republican.
But through the summer doldrums leading up to Democratic and Republican national conventions, I will listen to Barr define the Libertarian Party. He took some flak over the weekend because some party purists insist he’s not really a Libertarian because he doesn’t buy into the entire party agenda, including legalization of all drugs and ending federal taxation.
Barr, who announced his candidacy just three weeks ago, says that “I am a competitor and I am in this to win. I do not view the role of the Libertarian Party as spoiler and I have no intention of being a spoiler.”
While waiting to see whether the Democratic convention’s rules committee will do “justice ” by Hillary( I love it when I can use the word “justice” just as the lefties would) and seat the Florida and maybe the Michigan delegates, Barr’s on the radar.
The question is whether Barr can define the party in such a way that it appeals to a broader audience or whether the purists in his party will hold him to a platform — drug legalization, for example — that will keep Libertarians on the fringe nationally. I don’t like Big Government, but I do want one that inspects the poultry plants and performs other necessary health-related functions.
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Straight arrows find it hard to survive Gold Dome
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There’s not much demand for PB&J Politicians.
We say we like them. We’re always looking for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the straight arrow of the 1939 Frank Capra classic.
But, truth is, they don’t fare all that well in the real world of politics.
Take Angela Speir, for example. After one six-year term as a member of the Georgia Public Service Commission, Speir, a Republican, opted not to run again this year. Could she have been re-elected? Probably, though she’d have a tough race against the veteran politico known during his legislative career, and later on the PSC, as Lauren “Bubba” McDonald.
Times change, though, and as evidence thereof, Bubba the Democrat is now Lauren the Republican. It’s a new Georgia. He’s the best-known of the four candidates —- two Republicans and two Democrats —- qualifying to succeed her.
Six years ago, Speir was an unknown, under-the-radar 34-year-old who spent little beyond the qualifying fee in a race against the better-known McDonald. When the votes were counted, she had 924,015 to McDonald’s 911,772. The upset was such that, for awhile at least, she was referred to as the “Accidental Regulator.”
Republicans just coming into power under the Gold Dome would have done well to emulate Speir. “I’ve never let a lobbyist even buy me a cup of coffee,” she says. Some in newfound positions of power under the Gold Dome do more than take a cup of coffee; they use lobbyists as credit cards, just as the good ol’ boys had before them.
For Speir, the perks of power held no sway. She declined the Crown Victoria that taxpayers provide members of the Public Service Commission. She declines, too, to accept tickets, gifts, junkets —- favors in all forms. She does not accept meals from lobbyists —- or journalists. For this interview, her suggestions include the snack bar at Agnes Scott College. “I usually eat a PB&J [peanut butter and jelly sandwich] at my desk, so I don’t know of many quiet places to meet,” she had said when I first proposed that we talk over lunch.
“You don’t have to ply me with food or beverages to give me the facts,” she recalls telling those who wished to influence her when she first joined the PSC. “Whatever you have to say, say it on the record in a committee room.” She continues:
“I wasn’t going to tell them how I was going to vote [on rate cases], and I wouldn’t tolerate off-the-record conversations with things they wouldn’t say before every interested party.”
One of her crowning achievements as a commissioner was to get the PSC to agree to a rule that would ban private talks between commissioners and those with business before the agency during the final weeks of deliberations when proposed settlements are being discussed. That rule, she said when it was finally approved last August, would move the PSC toward decisions “based solely on the evidence on the record and not on backroom deals.”
When she talks about her six years on the PSC, it’s with the refreshing innocence of a schoolgirl idealist, a Miss Smith Goes to Atlanta. “I didn’t run for office so I could make a living,” she says. “I looked on it as a way to make a difference. It’s a very humbling calling to be a public servant. I feel like I’m there to represent 9 million people and that they are there with me, counting on me to make a fair, honest and ethical decision.”
As she leaves the PSC, perhaps to work with children in a nonprofit, perhaps to start a family, she’s not certain what will come next. “I’m 40 years old; I’ve got a lot of life left and I’m really excited about that,” she said. “There’s more to life than utility regulation.”
Whatever’s ahead, Speir is certain of the legacy of her regulatory career. “I want to look back and know that I have done everything possible to honor the Lord and the people of Georgia with courage, strength and integrity.”
PB&J Politicians. God bless ‘em —- and the mamas and daddies that raise ‘em.
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