Walter C. Jones

Late Summer Brings Out A Different Side Of Politics

By Walter C. Jones
Morris News Service

(7/29/08) Summer's lazy meander from Independence Day toward Labor Day tends to bring out a different side of politics that would otherwise be overshadowed by more significant news.

This year's late summer is no different. Saturday marked 100 days until the general election -- far enough away for average people to remain disengaged and too soon for dropping any major bombshells. On the other hand, the primary runoff comes Aug. 5, which has partisans, who mostly agree with one another, sniping at each other over the minor disagreements the choose to magnify. Here are a few items that would go unremarked in other times:

* Gov. Sonny Perdue got drawn into a teapot-sized tempest over whether or not he endorsed state Sen. Nancy Schaefer in the GOP primary for a Senate seat in extreme Northeast Georgia. Both Schaefer and challenger Jim Butterworth would claim him, but according to Butterworth's campaign the governor denied picking sides when asked about it on the Martha Zoller radio program.

* A challenge to the speaker that's been simmering for a year boiled over right after the primary. State Republican Party counsel Randy Evans reports that Speaker Glenn Richardson has lined up 80 votes in the House GOP caucus, more than enough to win there. While it wouldn't be ample to win in the full House where 91 votes take the day, his challenger, Rep. David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, has said he won't take the contest to the floor for Democrats to help defeat the first Republican speaker in 13 decades.

The caucus election won't be until November, and any floor fight in January, but the wait hasn't prevented chatter around the Capitol.

* An election that is coming up sooner is the Democratic runoff for U.S. Senate between Vernon Jones and Jim Martin. To stretch their meager finances, they have mostly resorted to a battle by press release -- so-called earned media in campaign parlance. Veteran observers have been scratching their heads over the topic for the latest round of bickering, namely who they voted for in the past.

Martin tossed the first grenade on the night of the July 15 primary when he reminded his supporters that Jones had said he voted twice for President Bush.

Then the Jones camp fired back that Martin hadn't supported Barack Obama, even though John Edwards -- Martin's stated preference -- had dropped out of the race before Georgia's February presidential-preference primary. By the end of last week, bloggers were pointing to two $1,000-plus contributions Jones had made to the Republican Party.

The whispered charge is that Jones is running as a Republican straw man even though he's been elected as a Democrat repeatedly.

* More grist for the mill was an anonymous claim reported in a Washington newspaper for political junkies called "The Hill" that U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, had spent a year's worth of office funds in six months. His primary challenger state Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, had tried to make the point that a decades-old bankruptcy proved the freshman congressman couldn't be trusted with taxpayer funds. Fleming was blasted for bringing up old news as a personal attack, and he was soundly defeated days before the office spending was leaked.

Broun raised little money for his campaign, and the rap is that he essentially used taxpayer funds instead. But Congress' rules permit members to send mass mailings to constituents and to pay for thousands of people to participate in town-hall meetings via phone as long as everything stops 90 days before the election. Broun's Democratic challenger, Bobby Saxon has already leveled an attack, but only time will tell if he's more successful than Fleming.

* Speaking of attacks, an independent group, Take Georgia Back Inc., has popped up with announcements in e-mails and blog sites about radio ads it intends to run against U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., linking his acceptance of political contributions from donors connected to the petroleum industry to $4-gallon gasoline -- despite the recent drop below that price.

"It's almost as if Saxby Shameless doesn't want us to be energy independent at all," an actor says, emphasizing the play on his name. For his part, Chambliss says the Democrats running the Senate are the ones to blame for high gas prices for refusing GOP proposals, like domestic drilling.

Take Back Georgia Inc. is soliciting funds online, and one site showed only $360 contributed so far, not exactly a budget to blanket the airways statewide.

* Another group mounting a campaign undoubtedly has deep pockets, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. It's rallying support among member companies for an appeal of a decision by a Fulton County Superior Court judge to halt construction of a coal-fired power plant on the Alabama line in South Georgia.

More than a power plant is at stake because Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore ruled that the state must regulate carbon dioxide emissions, something that could affect many of the state's largest manufacturers. The showdown comes Tuesday in the Georgia Court of Appeals.

Also stirring the capitol grapevine is concern about the state's worsening revenue picture and news Friday that Georgia public schools fared their worst in four years on the adequate yearly progress report. Either dose of bad news could become election fodder to be used against Republicans.

The most heavy-duty news tends to pause during the vacation season. But there still seems to be plenty to talk about whenever political buffs gather, even during summer.