Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Thatsogay
UGA's Charles Bullock's quoted assessment that the only group this is good for is the Republicans is right on. It's right in their wheelhouse on two issues: gay marriage and judicial activism. It doesn't matter what the actual merits of Judge Russell's decision was; she will be cast as an activist nullifying the will of the people (which is sometimes, you know, a judge's job...but I won't digress into a fullblown discussion on that right now). If the Supreme Court upholds the ruling, well, they're activists too. The Republicans are probably hoping for the ruling to be upheld, because as on many issues, they don't care about the actual policy. They just want an issue whereby they can get poor cultural conservatives to keep them in power. And if the Court upholds the ruling in time to get another ban on the ballot in November, the R's get to milk both issues (gayness and activism) all over again.
A further sign of where Georgia is as a state on this issue: both Cox and Taylor support the ban (despite Cox's "I actually was for it even while I was against it" misstep).
Monday, May 15, 2006
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Schrenko, etc.
Schrenko will spend eight years in the slammer pursuant to her plea deal.
Athens' economy gets another punch in the junk as Cooper Tire announces that it will be closing the Oneta Street Oliver Rubber plant. This after $12 million in low-interest bonds with tax abatement was approved 2 years ago as incentive to get the plant to stay and in fact expand. 140 local jobs will be lost.
And federal agencies officially passed on the NavySchool property. This means the base is now available to the local development authority, which met this morning at 9 a.m.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Chuck
Monday, May 01, 2006
Terry Holley
"Also, Charlie Norwood has a Democratic challenger. His name is Terry Holley. I don't know much about Terry Holley except that he's the current Chairman of the 9th Congressional District for the Democratic Party of Georgia."
And that is now all that I know about him. Anyone with more info, please share.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Super Lawyer to the Rescue
We've discussed our thoughts on the merits of a lawsuit previously, and so I won't go into that again, but I will say that Kidd certainly has a strong advocate for the suit: her lawyer is Emmet Bondurant, Georgia's #1 "Super Lawyer" for the past three years straight (yes, this is an actual list, compiled by Law and Politics magazine in conjunction with Atlanta magazine based on attorney suggestions). Go, Super Lawyer, go.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Leaving Las Vegas
Yesterday was the beginning of qualifying for candidates. Still no Jane Kidd officially in the Senate or House race. We shall be monitoring the SOS website this week as time permits, and commenting on anything out of the ordinary. Let us know if you hear any skinny before that.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Get a load of this guy
Despite all of the talk of reduced postings, I couldn't let this one go. Sonny is apparently being challenged in the Republican gubner primary by batshit-crazy "States Rights" candidate Ray McBerry, whose platform seems to be that he doesn't find the current state flag to be offensive enough. Never mind that Sonny won in part by campaigning against Roy Barnes' dinner mat blue version of the flag, or that the current "compromise" version of the flag is itself an homage to the one of the Confederate flags; McBerry is upset that Georgia didn't return to the 1956 Confederate battle flag version. The compromise version isn't hateful enough, I guess. He also doesn't think Sonny was tough enough on companies that hire illegal immigrants (the one thing I might, kinda, be inclined to agree with him on, although I'm sure that the remainder of our ideas on immigration are in stark conflict), and that Georgia needs to amend its constitution to give fetuses legal status.
What's the matter with Georgia?
Ok Cupcake, you win
Ok, fine, you win. We’ll try to keep some interesting content up here. To be honest, we weren’t expecting the minor deluge of comments and personal emails we got about our hiatus. It’s nice to feel appreciated, and for once, we’re not being sarcastic. Apparently great minds think alike, because as I was banging out the massive post below, my co-editor was doing the same.
Overend Kickoff
Courtesy of our friends over at Bill Overend’s campaign for Solicitor, the candidate will be having his campaign kickoff party this Sunday over at Farm 255 from 4pm until 6pm. There’s going to be some food, some music, and some talking from the candidate. It’s free and open to the public, although the campaign does suggest a $10.00 donation at the door.
Overend faces C. R. Chisholm in the Democratic Primary, and the winner takes on incumbent Republican Mo Wiltshire in the November general.
New Maddox Website
WTF? I mean, WTF? This is an improvement? Y’all liked talking about this one a month ago or so, so let the Snark 2.0 begin. By the by, there was a version in between the first incarnation and this current abomination that featured a – shall we say – extreme usage of the tag. Miss Publius strongly considered a lawsuit against the designer for the seizure she almost had.
Will She or Won’t She? Also, will she or won’t she?
She number 1 = Heidi Davison. She number 2 = Jane Kidd. If we were cynical and misogynistic, we would say that they’d both made up their minds months ago, but are late because they’re up in the bedroom trying to find the right pair of earrings. Fortunately, some comedy is beneath even your crack editorial staff.
Seriously, the big political questions right now, on a local level, are whether Heidi runs again, and whether Jane gives up the safety of her House seat (which is, by our last count, approximately 8,329% democratic) to run for the State Senate against Cowsert. We’ll dispose of Heidi first by saying, how could she not run? We know, we know, only a few months ago, we went on record saying she wouldn’t run. But, whether she runs or not, we’ll have been right. Here’s our take. Heidi has an agenda. She’s got a vision of what she wants this city to be, and whether you agree with her vision or not, you’ve got to agree that she hasn’t done everything she wants to do. Plus, she reeeeeeeaaaaaallllllly likes to screw with people’s minds during the qualifying process. Remember four years ago?
As far as Jane Kidd goes, your guess is as good as ours. Rumors abound (meaning that we’ve heard this from multiple sources) that the fine folks at the Democratic Party of Georgia have encouraged her to stay in the House seat, and not risk a loss in the Senate race. (More on the DPG in a second.) For what it’s worth, if the DPG is pushing that on her, they’re wrong. Any Democrat with a pulse can win Jane Kidd’s House seat. To beat Cowsert in the new 46th (now with 10% more conservative base), you need at least one of two things in a candidate, preferably both. You either need a candidate who can be credible with conservative-leaning swing voters, or you need a name. We don’t know how Jane Kidd would fare in rural
Will all of that make a difference? Who knows? We will mention that both members of your crack editorial staff recently gave up safe, secure, stable gigs to pursue far less safe, but more rewarding career options – and it is a tough personal call to make. Jane Kidd is far more about governing than she is about campaigning, so she may stay in the House because she gets a more or less guaranteed chance to continue governing.
The Democratic Party of
Campaigns and Elections magazine, a trade publication in the politics industry, recently did a piece on the best and worst state parties. We were shocked to see that they’ve listed the Georgia Democratic Party as one of the best in the nation. Seriously kids, we thought it was a typo. Alas it wasn’t. Apparently seasoned political observers think Bobby Kahn and his posse are doing something right. Really?
As Samuel L.
You can’t blame the DPG completely. Smart candidates know that they have to raise the money they need, and a commitment is worth exactly $0 until the check comes in. Unfortunately, a lot of candidates are first-timers, and they don’t learn that nugget of wisdom until it’s too late. And we don’t mean to imply that the DPG is making promises that they know they can’t keep. When you’re involved in an enterprise that depends on the kindness of others to keep it financially afloat, you have to believe that eery year will be better than the last. But sometimes, fundraising falls short.
The other major shortfall in how the DPG does business is in its coordination with local parties. A lot of rural counties don’t even have a local Democratic party structure, and that’s a shame. Even in the smallest counties, you can find 5 or 10 hardcore Dems who would be willing to get together every month and figure out how to help some local folks win some races. Many hands make light work. For the counties, like
So whither now, DPG? Here’s our suggestion. Stop trying to be a vote machine and start being a support machine. Build the infrastructure to help your candidates out. Focus on providing the research and tools that campaigns need, and get your hands out of every race in the state. There are tons of good operatives in
One really good thing the DPG could do right now is to take a hint from states like Alabama and Iowa, where state Democratic parties laid out the cash to build a colossal voter file – better than the raw data available from the Secretaries of State in those states. The parties sent canvassers out to update, test issues, get demographic data, and generally make the voter file a very useful database for Democratic campaigns.
The fact is, the DPG is not very good right now. So, if you want to win some races, maybe it’s time for a new direction and a new purpose.
Not Dead Yet
Solicitor's race - As alluded to in the comments, there's talk that Mo won't even run for reelection. Given the political makeup of Clarke County, it's unlikely that he'd defeat any of the potential challengers. (As an aside, why didn't Sonny respect this when appointing a replacement for Ralph? Sure, I guess the instinctive thing to do is to do a patronage appointment of someone in your own party in that situation. But he had to know that a Dem would win the election the very next year. Wouldn't some sort of continuity in the ACC Solicitor's Office be more important than whatever marginal political advantage Sonny might gain from appointing a R Solicitor in ACC? Then again, I guess that's the point; what happens here really doesn't matter to Sonny politically, so might as well reward an R. Ah, jeez, back to my post I guess).
As also mentioned, the confirmed candidates are C.R. Chisholm and Bill Overend, with Brian Patterson as a possible but as yet unannounced third. All are expected to run as Dems. CR has experience in the Solicitor's Office, and the other two have experience in the DA's Office (I believe BP is still there, although it's hard to keep up with the fast-food-esque turnover in that office). Those talking shop around the courthouse have CR pegged as the early favorite.
Rawson-Hudgens - I'm still learning about Rawson myself, but I wouldn't be so dismissive of his chances. He is a part of the local county party machinery, and we've certainly been critical of them in the past. However, Rawson also seems to be a serious-minded candidate who knows his stuff. Couple that with the right kind of campaign on the ground, and who knows what might happen. Rawson may be the guy to restore some credibility to the county party machinery.
More soon, although no guarantees on when exactly. Thanks for all the kind words everyone, and we'll try to keep at least some level of posting up with regard to these local elections.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Posting Slowdown (er..Standstill)
The Solicitor's race is heating up, with several former prosecutor's lining up as possible challengers, including my personal favorite Bill Overend;
The filing deadline approaches rapidly, with still no definite word on where Jane Kidd will run;
Mac Rawson will challengeRalph Hudgens for his State Senate seat.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Eminent Domain Bill
Sonny and everyone else under the dome yesterday scrambled to take credit for HB1313 at the signing ceremony. Republicans proclaimed loudly their victory over those that would abuse eminent domain at the expense of private property rights. I’m tempted to think that the “abusers of eminent domain” are strawmen created by Republicans to exploit a sensitive nationwide issue, but that’s not true. The potential abusers of eminent domain in Georgia were the Republicans themselves.
Dan Moody proposed SB 5 in early January 2005 which would have allowed developers to use eminent domain to seize private land in partnership with almost any local government. Neal Boortz brought attention to the bill on his radio show resulting in a public outcry. Under pressure, Moody changed direction and co-sponsored SB86 in mid March 2005, which specified that eminent domain could not be used to seize property for the benefit of private developers. This was at best a modification of his previous stance if not an all out reversal. Somehow this has evolved into a campaign issue. Ralph Reed has been attacking Casey Cagle as being soft on private property rights through weekly email newsletters.
While I’m glad that HB1313 was signed yesterday, I’m rather annoyed that Republicans are taking credit for “solving” an issue that they themselves created, while simultaneously using it as an attack issue in their campaigns. Your opinions welcome.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Registering Student Voters: The Myth
“In this election, I am going to call for the largest student vote turnout in the history of Athens.”
Chuck’s statement kind of implies that he’s going to embark on a quest to register a massive number of UGA students and get them to vote for him. Well, good luck, pal. The streets of Athens are littered with the shells of campaigns that tried to tap into the “student vote” as a path to victory. To be perfectly fair, Chuck isn’t the first person to think of this – so please don’t think we’re picking on just him. Andy Rusk has brought it up, and Chuck and Andy are just the examples from this cycle. Every time we have an election, at least one candidate decides that the path to victory runs through Creswell Hall. Here’s why it doesn’t.
It’s seductive, it really is. You’ve got 30,000-plus students out there, many of whom have definite views, and most of whom would be attracted to a young, dynamic candidate, like a Blake Tillery or an Andy Rusk. For the more idealistically-minded, there’s also no question, given their presence here for at least nine months out of the year (not to mention their contributions to the local economy), that the students deserve a representative voice.
And registering them is super-easy. Go set up a table in any crowded area of campus, and you’ll get plenty of folks who are willing to register to vote or change their registration to Athens.
But what do you do with them once they’re registered? Ay, there’s the rub. Registration isn’t the hard part – activating your newly-registered voters is the hard part. Now that requires a field effort the likes of which has never been seen in Athens before.
We were told there would be no math, but let’s play with some numbers real fast. Best case scenario, let’s assume that a candidate registers 20,000 students to vote. Now, in order for your 20,000 new registrations to be able to vote, you’ve got to have them all in to the Board of Elections by October 10. The election is on November 7, giving these students almost a month to forget that they changed their voter registration. In fact, quite a few of them probably registered because it seemed like a good idea at the time, but forgot about it by the end of the day. By the way, unless you’re counting on registering those 20,000 new voters all in one day, then the time to forget about registering is even longer; state law says that the applications have to be in no more than 15 days after they’re filled out.
Anyway, you’ve got 20,000 new voters. You’ve got their names, addresses, maybe even their phone numbers and email addresses. How are you going to get them out to vote on November 7? More importantly, how are you going to get them out to vote for you on November 7? Remember, they’re swimming in the community pool now, and they’re fair game for any candidate with the wherewithal to get his or her hands on an updated voter file.
Well, the first step is persuasion. Again, just because you registered them doesn’t mean that they’re going to vote for you. So how do you reach them? Well, there’s direct mail. Assuming an average cost per piece of mail of $0.75 (and we are so lowballing you here – the good stuff costs upwards of a buck per piece), then you’ve just added another $15,000 to your campaign budget. But wait, one piece of direct mail isn’t going to do the trick. You’re going to need multiple hits – at least three or four pieces. (Preferably targeted pieces based on demographic info, but we’re sure that you already thought of that, right candidates?) So now that $15,000 has become $45,000 or $60,000 and that’s just persuasion, we haven’t even addressed GOTV yet.
Ok, so maybe direct mail isn’t our best tactic. TV and radio, anyone? Well, locally, that is going to cost you less than the mail for sure, but you’re also getting a lower ROI, because you can’t hold a TV ad in your hand and look at it carefully. (Some people actually do read direct mail.) In any event, expect to spend at least another $15,000 - $25,000 on TV and radio ads for them to do any good whatsoever.
Well, persuasion is expensive, but at least you can buy good persuasion. Good GOTV work is more a matter of sweat equity. You’re going to need volunteers, and lots of them, to dragoon those 20,000 college students into going to vote. Vans to get them there (because not everybody on campus has a car), are also a must. Even if all 20,000 of your new voters have brand-new SUVs, you still want to transport them yourself, because GOTV – really, really good GOTV – is a controlled process. You’ve got to move people in the most efficient manner possible, while knowing the status of every targeted voter, and making sure no one falls through the cracks? Sound complicated? That’s why the really good field consultants get the big bucks.
Of course there are more passive means of GOTV than a balls-to-the-wall grassroots effort. You can send emails reminding people to vote. You can send out a slew of robo-dial calls. But don’t ask me what your return on investment is going to be. These are before-the fact reminders, nothing more, and thus far less effective than a real election-day GOTV campaign. By the way, organizing something like this is, as Chuck says, difficult but not impossible, and there are ways to make the student GOTV somewhat less of a shitshow than it has the potential to be. Of course, if you want to shell out the big bucks for someone with the knowledge to do it, be our guest. We’ll even make some recommendations, if you ask nicely enough.
The worst problem any candidate is going to have to deal with in getting student turnout up is the dynamic itself. There’s a vicious cycle as far as UGA students and Athens politics (the concept, not the blog) are concerned. Students don’t vote because they feel like a separate entity from the local government. They feel like a separate entity because they often get screwed by the local government. They get screwed because they don’t vote. And the cycle continues. Can anyone break that cycle?
Probably not. And there’s another dynamic at work here too. Many students, as shocking as this might seem, do not consider Athens “home,” and that’s where you vote – home.
Bottom line on this one. The students who actually give a rat’s ass about voting in ACC are already, for the most part, registered. The rest don’t consider this to be their home – they may live in Athens, but they’re from Dublin, or Columbus, or Millen.
So is registering students and convincing them to take a more active role in their local government a bad thing? Not at all. Like we said way back at the top of this post, they live here most of the year, contribute gobs of money to the local economy, and are seriously underrepresented in local government. But for a campaign to put all of their eggs in the “we’re going to win on the student vote” basket is just silly. There’s a reason why it hasn’t worked in the past. Resources (time, energy, and most importantly, money) are too scarce and too valuable on a campaign to do the kind of work that a successful effort like this would require. And remember, while our hypothetical candidate is focusing on the 30,000-plus UGA students, his or her opponents may well be putting their energy where it belongs – on the 40,000-plus people who are already registered to vote.
Sure, the students need to get organized and start taking a role in local government, but the time to organize the students is in the off-years, not during campaign season, and the people to do it are the students themselves, not the folks who want their votes.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Bob After Dark
So Athens-Clarke County Commission meetings go too long, eh? Well, hell, tell us something we don’t know, Bob Smith.
As most of you already know from being the in-the-loop readers that you are, State Rep. Bob Smith has taken a page from Ralph Hudgins’ new book, “How to Meddle in Local Government Without even Being Elected!” For Smith, his meddling is in the form of H.B. 1587, a measure designed to limit the amount of time for which local governments can meet.
Now Smith says that the measure isn’t specifically targeted at Athens, but we think you all know that he’s fuller of crap than a Christmas turkey. Unless, of course, Bob Smith has suddenly taken it upon himself to represent the interests of Vidalia, or perhaps Powder Springs? Maybe Albany? If so, then perhaps he should run for office there.
Of course this thing is targeted at Athens, and it’s yet another attempt by the people who purport to represent us in Atlanta to usurp the power of the local government to, you know, govern locally.
Seriously, kids. We don’t care if you’re a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, or Socialist – you have to have some measure of respect for the system that gives us separate governments for separate jurisdictions. If you don’t respect that, then heck, let’s do it all the way and go in for central planning all around.
Do ACC Commission meetings last too long? You bet your sweet bippy they do. (As JMac puts it in the best quote we’ve seen all day, “Mayor Heidi Davison has said so, and everyone not named Carl Jordan has said so.”) Is it any of Bob Smith’s business how long the meetings of our local government take? Not in the least. (Aside: Does Bob even go to Commission meetings?)
The issue here is not that the Commission is occasionally a bunch of long-winded gasbags. (They are.) It’s whether the right of a free citizenry to question their duly elected leaders is within Bobbo’s purview to restrict. (It ain’t.) If it’s a legitimate local issue, and we’re not saying it isn’t, then let it be handled locally. We were kind of expecting this to come up as a minor campaign issue among some of the local candidates this year, anyway.
We suppose the big political question to come out of this is whether the ACC community is going to get as up in arms about this as they did about redistricting. In any event, much like redistricting, this is a good issue for someone to bring up when they run against Bobbo. Anyone thinking along those lines?
And here’s one final thing. So what if the meetings run long? Is that really so bad? No one ever said participatory democracy was supposed to be easy. It’s a job to be a citizen, and it should be a job. As a culture, we tend to expect the highest results from the least possible effort, and with democracy, that’s a prescription for disaster. Frankly kids, we can’t think of any better sign that the system is working than the fact that people stay up until 2 a.m. to make their voices heard about speed humps and bike lanes.
To sum up, we’re going to paraphrase the mayor. Qualifying for local races is in June, Bobarino. ‘Til then, keep your sticky fingers off our free political speech.
Related:
Athens Banner-Herald: “Burning midnight oil blasted in bill” 03/29/06
Safe as Houses: “Whither local control” 03/29/06
Daily Douchebag: “Bob Smith” 03/29/06
Updating the Blogroll
More substantive posting coming later today, but please also note the wrap piece on the PPA meeting below.
Meanwhile, we've got to update our list of candidate websites, so if you are a candidate, or you know a candidate running for anything in or around Athens, drop us an email with the URL. Yeah, we could do all the research on our own, but many hands make light work.
'prec.
Eds.
PPA: Too much of a good thing
First, as has been mentioned in the comments and in the ABH, the response from the community was overwhelming. with something around 750 people showing up. Just about anybody who is a candidate for anything showed up, but there were also plenty of ordinary folks.
The evening began with an intro from Judge Jones and Red Petrovs, and then there was an extensive presentation of the statistical profile of poverty in Athens-Clarke County by Matt Bishop from UGA, who did an in-depth analysis for this purpose. There was too much to summarize here, but the long and the short of it is that Athens has a problem that goes beyond "the poor will always be among us". It turns out that Athens essentially has no middle class, or at least not very much of one compared to the state and national stats. There are a handful of richie-riches and a lot of poor people.
Just a sampling of the stats:
The poverty rate is 28.3% including students, and 23.5 not including them.
39.3% of ACC lives below 150% of the poverty rate.
16.8% of ACC lives below 50% of the poverty rate, which is higher than the statewide poverty rate of 13.o%.
25.2% of the under 18 population in ACC lives in poverty (that's 1 in 4 kids, and that's by definition not influenced by the student population)
Poverty is relatively color-blind in ACC; 27.8 of whites, 28.5 of blacks, and 30 percent of the hispanic population.
65% of those in poverty in ACC are working.
Once the initial presentation was done, we broke into the sub-committee groups. Because there were six groups (Education, Physical & Mental Health, Housing & Transportation, Dependent Care, Economy, and Workforce) and over 750 people, each group was obviously large (in the case of my group, Economy, greater than 100). This made for a logistically difficult situation, especially since not quite this many people were expected. The first session, which lasted for about an hour, consisted mainly of random individuals in the groups standing up to offer suggestions of what we should do to address our specific part of the puzzle. We filled up several easels with the brainstorming ideas, and anybody who didn't want to or didn't get to say it out loud got to write what they wanted to say on a blue card for consideration by the steering committee.
The next meeting for my group, and I think all of the groups (although each group is going to meet at different places this time, I think) is April 24. If the groups are still large at that meeting, the plan is to break up into smaller groups for discussion, which should be more effective.
Obviously, no silver bullets were offered Monday night. This problem wasn't created in one night, and won't be solved that quickly (there is a problem that goes beyond normal poorness, though: the poverty rate in ACC 10 years ago was about 19%). Who knows if it will be solved at all. All we can hope for is that the collective efforts will have a substantial, noticeable, positive impact that will make this community more like what we want it to be.
I will be involved in this process for the duration and will give more updates in the future.
Monday, March 27, 2006
PPA: First Public Meeting Tonight
Tonight
7pm
Cedar Shoals
Be there.
Anyone want to run against Ralph?
Wanted: Candidate to challenge entrenched Republican State Senator. Good fundraising network essential; centrist street cred preferable. Contact your local Democratic party.
The ABH talks a little about the struggle to find someone to run against Ralph Hudgens this year. With a little less than thirty days to go before filing, the crunch is on.
Right now, you’ve got a couple of gentlemen flirting with the race. As we mentioned some two weeks ago, some well-connected Democrats have been whispering sweet nothings in the ear of one Jim Ponsoldt, law professor. Ponsoldt is a good choice; his law school connections will make raising money somewhat less of an uphill battle, and he has both run for office (ACC District 9) and served in office (Clarke County School Board).
The other person dipping their toe in the electoral waters is the chairman-elect of the Clarke County Democratic Party, Mac Rawson. Again, the fundraising may be less of a struggle, if the local Democratic machine gets behind Rawson. JMac has an interesting take on Rawson and today’s ABH story – check it out. We’re not sure if it isn’t pretty accurate. Either way, it’s pretty amusing.
Please also note that the Democratic Party of Georgia is saying that this race is a high-level target for them. Gee guys, will you be as forthcoming with the help as you were for Becky Vaughn, when you targeted her race in 2004?
So what does it take to run a good race against a bad Republican? Well, for starters, we’re not 100% sure that an Athens candidate is the way to go. We know, outside Athens, the bench of qualified Democrats gets pretty shallow. But, we also take exception to the remarks of Athens’ self-professed political swami, Charles Bullock, when he avers that a successful candidate will be someone with previous political experience.
Not necessarily. In fact, if you find a Democrat who can appeal to the areas outside Athens while making sure that Athens trusts him or her as well, well, that candidate has a shot. If the candidate has never run for elective office before, that might even be a plus; it opens Hudgens up to the usual “career politician,” “sold out our interests to the big money lobbyists,” type of charges. As long as the potential candidate is willing to put in the sweat equity it takes to introduce himself or herself to the voters (and retail politics still works to a large extent in a race like this), then being a relative unknown isn’t a huge hindrance.
What is a hindrance is the numbers in the district. Suffice it to say that the numbers aren’t exactly friendly to Democrats – we can’t imagine that Hudgins and his gang of thugs had that development in mind. Any candidate who wants to run and win in this district as a Democrat is going to have to do the legwork, identify the opinion leaders, and convince the voters that electing a Democrat isn’t going to be the end of the world.
The bottom line is that this election is going to be a referendum on Ralph Hudgins and the “leadership” that he has provided. Nonetheless, anyone running against Ralph cannot expect to run successfully on a platform of all-Hudgins-all-the-time. They’ll have to frame this election as a referendum not just on the arrogance of one state senator, but on the arrogance of the GOP majority since they took control of Georgia’s government. That means that a smart candidate has alternatives on all of the major issues.
The biggest question of all is this: Is the race winnable? Absolutely it is. By all accounts, 2006 is shaping up to be a good year for Democrats; that dynamic will help, although how much help it will provide remains to be determined. In addition, there is a rising tide, even in areas that overwhelmingly supported Hudgins in years past, that ol’ Ralph is becoming more of an insider and less of a public servant. So yeah, the race is winnable by the right Democrat, but it’s going to take a lot of hard work and a near-perfect strategy.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Fox News Gets it (gasp!) Wrong?
Extra, extra, read all about it. Shocking news from the media: Faux News screws up; misinformation hurts Democrats.
Ok, so not so surprising after all. To close things out on Friday, a little bit of national politics. Seems that the whiz kids over at the Screamin' Eagle network have bollocked it up again, as far as you know, actual facts are concerned - inaccurately listing former Congressman Dick Gephardt and former Senator Tom Daschle as registered lobbyists in this story. Coincidentally, Gephardt and Daschle, in addition to being Democrats, were among Fox News' favorite targets when they were in Congress.
Good luck getting a retraction on this one, fellow Democrats. In any event, just to make sure there's no confusion among our readers, we've created another AthPo useless infographic. Enjoy.
Oh, and by the way, don't just take our word for it. Visit the Senate and see for yourself.
Think Progress has the scoopy scoop scoop.
(The AthPo Useless Infographic is a new feature which will appear to assist our
readers, whenever we get bored, or when we want to make fun of USA Today.)