(1) Bill Shipp: Economic woes & being a do-nothing governor & being proud of it could trip Perdue up. (2) Sid's take on the Dean's column.
This week the Dean of Georgia Politics and Journalism writes:
The mainstream media, including me, may have misled you. We keep saying next year's race for governor will likely feature incumbent Sonny Perdue versus one of two Democrats, Secretary of State Cathy Cox or Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor.
Sure, Cox or Taylor may be on the ballot. The real contest, however, will pit Gov. Perdue against Gov. Perdue. Taylor or Cox will simply be along for the ride. One will pick up the pieces if Sonny beats Sonny. In view of recent history, that is not an unlikely scenario.
Remember 2002? That governor's election turned out to be a referendum on incumbent Roy Barnes. Didn't matter much about his opponent. Just about anybody would have done.
Barnes ran a spirited, gold-plated campaign recounting a stunning array of achievements. Voters weren't interested. Teachers didn't cotton to accountability. Bubbas didn't like the new flag. Georgia's economy was beginning to cool. The Barnes campaign fizzled. Perdue moved into the governor's mansion apparently believing he had defeated Barnes. Sorry, Sonny, Gov. Barnes defeated himself.
Now, it's Perdue's turn. Surely, Sonny will not repeat Roy's mistake. Perdue won't bother to prattle on about solutions to traffic congestion, education problems, health-care issues or any of that boring stuff.
Sonny's brain trust knows Georgians aren't enthusiastic about high achievers in high office. Georgia voters like a guy who hasn't done too much. That'd be Sonny.
Of course, Perdue can't just stand in front of the cameras, grin broadly and say earnestly, "Vote for me. I didn't do much."
Even if that is a winning strategy, it might make Georgia a national laughingstock - again. So what should Sonny say to entertain audiences and kill time until the Sonny vs. Sonny main event is decided?
He could rerun parts of his 2002 campaign. No one paid much attention to it anyway. They were too busy hating Barnes.
For instance, Gov. Perdue could declare as he did in 2002: "I will propose a constitutional amendment that will ensure HOPE scholarship assistance and pre-kindergarten programs are the only annual expenditures allowed with lottery revenues. All excess revenues will be trusted and will grow in an endowment for future generations."
That unfulfilled promise is still as fresh as the day it was offered. The HOPE-protection measure went into a deep freeze and was forgotten. In fact, Sonny recently latched onto more than $1 million in HOPE scholarship cash to construct an "education" site on the Internet. The page looks more like luvsonny.com. So much for campaign promises.
Or he could remind voters of a news release he distributed just a week ago, declaring:
"The state economy continues to grow, and Georgians are better off now than they were a year ago." To prove it, the governor cited a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing that "the total number of new jobs created during 2004 in Georgia was 45,000."
Sounds good so far, right? It's not the whole story. The feds also revealed that Georgia led the nation in workers losing their jobs over the past year. Some 42,500 people disappeared from payrolls from February 2004 to February 2005. Georgia saw more jobs vanish than any other state, except Mississippi.
A close look at impartial numbers suggests Georgia government is playing, at best, a zero-sum game in economic development.
Additional folks looking for jobs keep showing up in the Peach State. In the past 12 months, only four other states saw more people entering their labor force.
Meanwhile, a giant automaker, DaimlerChrysler, has backed out of a deal to build a scaled-down factory on the Georgia coast because Perdue demanded that the company guarantee its plant will hire a set number of people.
Economic statistics befuddle most of us. Gov. Perdue knows that. He knows a TV commercial starring a spreadsheet does not work in a political campaign. Except when numbers start to wear faces. When the bank takes a neighbor's house because he or she has lost a job and can't pay the mortgage. Or we go to work one morning to find a memo from our employer saying: "Gone to China."
When those things happen too often, when cold numbers turn into personal bad news, Perdue will be hard-put to win another term as governor, regardless of his press releases or whether Cox or Taylor is his challenger.
(4-17-05, The Athens Observer.)
_______________
Don't count the Cracker Squire as being among the "mainstream media" (nor the Dean for that matter. He has been saying the same thing I have for just as long if not longer than I have.)
I noted it as early as in a 9-7-04 post that observed:
As an aside, just because I did not mention the top of the ticket for the GOP does not mean Sonny Perdue is a slam dunk. Talk about his replacement began some time back, and it may gain momentum or fizzle out as time goes on.
And then a 10-24-07 post was captioned in part "Where is it written that Perdue will be '06 GOP nominee?"
And as recently as in a 4-15-05 post I quoted the AJC in noting:
"The winner of the Democratic primary will face Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue in the November 2006 general election. Perdue is the state's first Republican governor in more than a century."
And then noted:
What's wrong with this? Nothing if you are into mainstream thinking, and this is certainly what Gov. Perdue hopes is the case.
But Bill Shipp for one agrees with me that there remain many in Perdue's own party who are far from ready to sign off on this script that Perdue will be the '06 GOP nominee.
As noted in the caption to my 3-27-05 post, "GOP and Democrats assume it will be Perdue in '06. But Shipp agrees with Sid it is possible that an ABS -- Anybody but Sonny -- candidate will emerge."
So where does this leave us? Given Perdue's uncompelling story of gubernatorial leadership, should Democrats want someone else from the GOP to step forward and challenge Perdue?
I would not mind seeing Perdue having competition from the perspective of this interfering with his fund-raising advantage of being an unchallenged incumbent (think Roy Barnes).
But beyond this, just as having Ralph Reed jump into the race for lieutenant governor is one of the best things that could happen to the Democrats with respect to both the lieutenant governor and governor's races next year, having Perdue at the top of the ticket favors our party.
Thus here's to hoping things stay the same, and that the Republicans do not emerge with an ABS candidate.
The mainstream media, including me, may have misled you. We keep saying next year's race for governor will likely feature incumbent Sonny Perdue versus one of two Democrats, Secretary of State Cathy Cox or Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor.
Sure, Cox or Taylor may be on the ballot. The real contest, however, will pit Gov. Perdue against Gov. Perdue. Taylor or Cox will simply be along for the ride. One will pick up the pieces if Sonny beats Sonny. In view of recent history, that is not an unlikely scenario.
Remember 2002? That governor's election turned out to be a referendum on incumbent Roy Barnes. Didn't matter much about his opponent. Just about anybody would have done.
Barnes ran a spirited, gold-plated campaign recounting a stunning array of achievements. Voters weren't interested. Teachers didn't cotton to accountability. Bubbas didn't like the new flag. Georgia's economy was beginning to cool. The Barnes campaign fizzled. Perdue moved into the governor's mansion apparently believing he had defeated Barnes. Sorry, Sonny, Gov. Barnes defeated himself.
Now, it's Perdue's turn. Surely, Sonny will not repeat Roy's mistake. Perdue won't bother to prattle on about solutions to traffic congestion, education problems, health-care issues or any of that boring stuff.
Sonny's brain trust knows Georgians aren't enthusiastic about high achievers in high office. Georgia voters like a guy who hasn't done too much. That'd be Sonny.
Of course, Perdue can't just stand in front of the cameras, grin broadly and say earnestly, "Vote for me. I didn't do much."
Even if that is a winning strategy, it might make Georgia a national laughingstock - again. So what should Sonny say to entertain audiences and kill time until the Sonny vs. Sonny main event is decided?
He could rerun parts of his 2002 campaign. No one paid much attention to it anyway. They were too busy hating Barnes.
For instance, Gov. Perdue could declare as he did in 2002: "I will propose a constitutional amendment that will ensure HOPE scholarship assistance and pre-kindergarten programs are the only annual expenditures allowed with lottery revenues. All excess revenues will be trusted and will grow in an endowment for future generations."
That unfulfilled promise is still as fresh as the day it was offered. The HOPE-protection measure went into a deep freeze and was forgotten. In fact, Sonny recently latched onto more than $1 million in HOPE scholarship cash to construct an "education" site on the Internet. The page looks more like luvsonny.com. So much for campaign promises.
Or he could remind voters of a news release he distributed just a week ago, declaring:
"The state economy continues to grow, and Georgians are better off now than they were a year ago." To prove it, the governor cited a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing that "the total number of new jobs created during 2004 in Georgia was 45,000."
Sounds good so far, right? It's not the whole story. The feds also revealed that Georgia led the nation in workers losing their jobs over the past year. Some 42,500 people disappeared from payrolls from February 2004 to February 2005. Georgia saw more jobs vanish than any other state, except Mississippi.
A close look at impartial numbers suggests Georgia government is playing, at best, a zero-sum game in economic development.
Additional folks looking for jobs keep showing up in the Peach State. In the past 12 months, only four other states saw more people entering their labor force.
Meanwhile, a giant automaker, DaimlerChrysler, has backed out of a deal to build a scaled-down factory on the Georgia coast because Perdue demanded that the company guarantee its plant will hire a set number of people.
Economic statistics befuddle most of us. Gov. Perdue knows that. He knows a TV commercial starring a spreadsheet does not work in a political campaign. Except when numbers start to wear faces. When the bank takes a neighbor's house because he or she has lost a job and can't pay the mortgage. Or we go to work one morning to find a memo from our employer saying: "Gone to China."
When those things happen too often, when cold numbers turn into personal bad news, Perdue will be hard-put to win another term as governor, regardless of his press releases or whether Cox or Taylor is his challenger.
(4-17-05, The Athens Observer.)
_______________
Don't count the Cracker Squire as being among the "mainstream media" (nor the Dean for that matter. He has been saying the same thing I have for just as long if not longer than I have.)
I noted it as early as in a 9-7-04 post that observed:
As an aside, just because I did not mention the top of the ticket for the GOP does not mean Sonny Perdue is a slam dunk. Talk about his replacement began some time back, and it may gain momentum or fizzle out as time goes on.
And then a 10-24-07 post was captioned in part "Where is it written that Perdue will be '06 GOP nominee?"
And as recently as in a 4-15-05 post I quoted the AJC in noting:
"The winner of the Democratic primary will face Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue in the November 2006 general election. Perdue is the state's first Republican governor in more than a century."
And then noted:
What's wrong with this? Nothing if you are into mainstream thinking, and this is certainly what Gov. Perdue hopes is the case.
But Bill Shipp for one agrees with me that there remain many in Perdue's own party who are far from ready to sign off on this script that Perdue will be the '06 GOP nominee.
As noted in the caption to my 3-27-05 post, "GOP and Democrats assume it will be Perdue in '06. But Shipp agrees with Sid it is possible that an ABS -- Anybody but Sonny -- candidate will emerge."
So where does this leave us? Given Perdue's uncompelling story of gubernatorial leadership, should Democrats want someone else from the GOP to step forward and challenge Perdue?
I would not mind seeing Perdue having competition from the perspective of this interfering with his fund-raising advantage of being an unchallenged incumbent (think Roy Barnes).
But beyond this, just as having Ralph Reed jump into the race for lieutenant governor is one of the best things that could happen to the Democrats with respect to both the lieutenant governor and governor's races next year, having Perdue at the top of the ticket favors our party.
Thus here's to hoping things stay the same, and that the Republicans do not emerge with an ABS candidate.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 8:45 PM
1 Comments:
If this post legislative session didn't convince someone to vote Democratic, nothing will. Just as we don't miss our water until the well has run dry, this past session made us miss Roy and a party that cares.
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