Newcomer shakes up race for governor

His decision in March to launch a big-bucks bid for the Republican nomination for governor has shaken the race.

“I could have done it [entered the race] with $25,000 in there,” Boyd said on a recent afternoon from the kitchen of his expansive home east of metro Atlanta. “They’d look at that and say, ‘Newcomer with $25,000? Forget it.’

“I said, ‘What’s Oxendine got in there?’ I said I’ll put $2 million in there. It did exactly what I thought it would do.”

Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, the early front-runner for the Republican nomination, has about $2 million in his campaign account. Boyd’s contribution vaulted him to second in fund-raising on the GOP side of the 2010 race to succeed Gov. Sonny Perdue.

But Boyd is running into the kinds of obstacles that can derail idealistic beginners. Last week he and state GOP chairwoman Sue Everhart tangled over his refusal to sign a loyalty oath the party requires.

Boyd made his first public appearance as a candidate Thursday when he joined most of the other GOP hopefuls at a debate in Roswell. There were few fireworks, and Boyd made it clear he was not fully versed on several issues.

Little is known about him. So, who is Ray Boyd and what does he think he’s doing?

One thing is, he’s rich. Boyd owns, through a leasing company, six Lear jets and a Falcon-20, according to records. He lives in a 6,000-square-foot house behind an 8-foot iron fence.

“Six feet says stay out,” Boyd said. “Eight feet says stay the hell out.”

But don’t accuse him of assuming his wealth entitles him to be governor. “It’s amazing how many people think I’ve got more money than brains and I want to buy this job,” he said.

Given to salty language, Boyd says his decision was about what he sees as the weakness of the other candidates. “My competition is so [expletive], they make me look better than I am,” he said.

Boyd compares his campaign to an airplane on the runway. He’s still gearing up and running his checklists. In other words, he’s not ready yet to talk much about issues. In broad themes, however, he wants more transparency and ethics in government, opposes the national health care effort, and fears a weakening of personal freedoms.

“In normal times a guy like me running for office coming out of left field, they’d grind me up for sausage meat,” he said. “This is not normal time.”

Who is Boyd?

Raymond Otto Boyd, born in Folkston outside the Okefenokee Swamp, is a veteran, a successful commercial real estate broker, a father, a widower, a raconteur.

Poor as a child, he picked cotton for a penny a pound. He enlisted in the Air Force after high school.

Once he finished his bachelor’s degree at the University of Colorado, he qualified to become an officer. It was the oath he took that has defined his adult life: “I swear to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Any conversation with Boyd today brings at least one reference to that pledge.

He left the Air Force after 10 years, moved his family to Atlanta and eventually started a commercial real estate company in Sandy Springs. He’s been in the same spot for 35 years. He has no staff, no secretary other than the shared assistant in his executive suite.

'Determined'

John Cheek remembers working with Boyd when the two were on opposite sides of Fulton County’s effort to create a special revitalization zoning district in Sandy Springs in the 1990s. Cheek was the county project manager in 1995 and Boyd owned property in an area designated for major changes.

Cheek, in an interview, said he recalls Boyd as a “real smart guy” with strong opinions.

“He certainly wasn’t afraid to voice them,” Cheek said. “We didn’t necessarily agree on everything, but he was willing to listen as well as willing to make his point.”

Earl Smith, a former Cobb County Commission chairman and veteran businessman, has known Boyd for 30 years. Boyd will bring the same characteristics to his gubernatorial race that he brought to his business, Smith said.

“He is a person that is determined ... If he has a goal in mind, a thought in mind, a project in mind, he’s already pretty well molded and determined how he’s going to get there.”

Own private retreat

As Boyd built his business, he and Sandi raised two sons and a daughter.

The family moved to Morgan County and created their own private retreat, with hundreds of rolling acres, a spectacular stone-walled pool with hot tub and a babbling stream.

Then Sandi got sick.

The diagnosis was unforgiving: a stage IV brain tumor and four months to live.

They fought it together. Sandi lived 34 months and died on March 22, 2007.

Boyd made this decision to run for governor near the anniversary of Sandi’s death. Would the decision have been different if she were alive?

“That’s a good question,” Boyd said, his voice breaking.

“I wear my emotions on my sleeve, and I don’t apologize for my tears,” he said, removing his glasses to wipe his eyes. “She was the love of my life. And the greatest asset I ever had. I’m not running because she died. I don’t know. Duty ... she understands me better than anybody. I think she would understand my need to do this.”

VOILA

After Sandi died, Boyd went back to work. Then Barack Obama was elected president.

“I then hoped and prayed he’d be the best president we ever had,” Boyd said. Instead, “it didn’t take but a short time to realize we screwed up.”

By September 2009, Boyd said, he was telling people the country was in trouble. “I said, why the hell isn’t somebody doing something? I stopped myself in mid-sentence, and I said, ‘Ray, aren’t you somebody? And in fact you’re more guilty than the somebodies out here because you’ve been paying attention.”

Boyd started by creating a grass-roots group called VOILA, which stands for Vote Out Incumbents Liberate America. He wanted to get rid of them all, but the focus was on Congress.

Boyd thought about running against U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) but knew the popular Isakson would beat him, badly. One morning while running on his treadmill, he decided he would run for governor.

Boyd isn’t intimidated by his opposition or impressed by the current members of the General Assembly. Get rid of them all, he has said, despite the fact most are fellow Republicans. He accuses other candidates of being ethically challenged and says former Secretary of State Karen Handel isn’t qualified to be governor because she doesn’t have a college degree.

Boyd is annoyed when it’s assumed he’s another Guy Millner. Millner, like Boyd, was a wealthy businessman who burst onto the scene with a self-funded bid for governor in 1994. Millner was the GOP nominee but lost that race and statewide runs in 1996 and 1998.

“I object to being compared with Guy Millner,” Boyd said. “Don’t compare me to someone else.”

Campaigns like the one Boyd is launching tend to have a short shelf life, said Chuck Clay, a former state Republican Party chairman and former state senator from Marietta.

“You never say never in politics or business,” Clay said. “Ross Perot showed what can happen with money and a message. But remember where Perot ended up.”

But, Clay said, should Boyd and the GOP fail to resolve their beef over the loyalty oath, Boyd could cause problems for Republicans in November if he carries through on his threat to run as an independent.

“It certainly creates much greater potential that he becomes a true spoiler,” Clay said, because Boyd would likely siphon votes away from the Republican nominee.

Getting his message out

There’s still the question of how a political unknown persuades enough voters over the next three months to make him their nominee for governor. Even with $2 million.

Boyd won’t give away much about his strategy. He references six degrees of separation, the concept that everyone is connected to everyone else within six steps.

He gets his message to one person, who sends it on to more. “Pretty soon your message can go through a tremendous number of people and somewhere you’re all connected,” he said.

He has no plans to hire a political consultant, although at least five have called to offer their services. He sent them all packing because they all wanted him to change — change who he is, change how he talks.

They wanted him to spend his $2 million on TV ads. But Boyd said in his real estate business, he advertised little.

Boyd knows that once he deposited that $2 million into his campaign account, he could only get $250,000 back under state law. Boyd didn’t become rich by squandering cash, making it unlikely he’d let it go to waste.

And anyway, after he decided to run, Boyd’s adult son asked if his father had “lost his ever-loving mind.” Boyd’s response:

“I said I have no choice, son. I feel duty-bound to do this.”