4th UPDATE

Perdue Wins Twin Victories In DOT Races

4th Update at 1 p.m. adds detail.
3rd Update 12:15 p.m. Updates story throughout
2nd Update 11:36 p.m.

By Dick Pettys
InsiderAdvantage Georgia

(2/1/08) The two board members who sided with Gov. Sonny Perdue in choosing Gena Abraham to head the state DOT last October won re-election Friday despite efforts to dump them by House leaders still angry that their choice for commissioner - Rep. Vance Smith - didn't get the job.

Mike Evans, who faced the most intense opposition, won 13-10 over Speaker Glenn Richardson's preferred candidate, former Rep. Stacey Reece, for the 9th District seat. Evans is chairman of the board. Assuming he got all seven Senate votes, Evans picked up at least six votes from the House, where only one of the 17 members of the caucus from the House side is not a Republican.

Raybon Anderson won 15-12 in a district that is evenly divided between the two parties, defeating former Rep. Ben Allen. A third candidate, former Sen. Floyd Griffin, was eliminated on a first ballot which revealed merely by the numbers that at least four Republicans did not side with Anderson.

The 9th District was always the bigger battle, and it showed in the concern on the faces of members of the 9th District caucus as they gathered for the vote.

Word in the halls before the vote was that the House had held a private, preliminary caucus on Thursday and the vote was 12-11 after House leaders assumed that all of the senators would vote for Evans. A 12-11 vote would have fallen short, however, because 13 votes were needed. At least one vote changed over night.

Throughout the session there has been talk of pressure, threats and intimidation - not entirely unknown in DOT races.

Rep. James Mills addressed that from the floor after the results were published.

"This whole process has sickened me," he said. "We are members of the same caucus ... I hope this is water over the dam."

Evans, in the back of the room, replied, "We're all on the same team now."

There were no surprises in any of the other three DOT races except for the 2nd, where former DOT Board Member Ward Edwards dropped out before the vote, giving the election by acclamation to Rep. Johnny Floyd.

Payback was promised after the DOT commissioner's election last October, and House leaders had been working to deliver it.

They failed, but there may be some punishment for House members who didn't vote with the leadership. Like it or not, the political process runs on a certain amount of discipline, and the fear of same.

While it is debatable what role the House leadership played in the 12th District battle, particularly toward the end, it is undeniable that the House high command was out to dump Evans. There were a number of reasons, but they all related to his role as chairman in guiding the board's election of a new commissioner.

There was also the matter of defending what the Legislature sees as its prerogative over DOT matters (since it elects the board members), compared to the desire most any chief executive has to try to put his own stamp on it.

At any rate, this has to be scored as a win for Perdue and the second straight loss for Richardson on DOT-related matters.