Bill Shipp on the candidates to chair the Democratic Party of Georgia

Bill Shipp writes:

Atlanta lawyer Bobby Kahn, a leading scapegoat for the Democrats' string of recent ballot-box catastrophes, ends his nearly three-year tenure as state party chair with the election of a new chairperson on Jan. 27.

A glance at possible successors may cause a few Kahn haters to long for a return to the days of the brusque, razor-tongued strategist.

Here's the roster of candidates for state Democratic chair:

• Mike Berlon, Gwinnett County Democratic chair, is allied with leaders of Georgia's ever-shrinking labor movement. A handful of county chairs are also in his corner. Berlon's bid is built on the curious notion that the state party should keep Democratic elected officials at arm's length and concentrate strictly on raising cash for the overall "Democratic cause." (Some party organizations in other states already play such roles.)
Several elected officials, including Labor Commissioner Mike Thurmond, are hopping mad at the idea of a party that is mainly an independent boosters' club and not an operational campaign organization. Berlon is presently favored to win the position, though he spent a wad in 2004 on losing a Public Service Commission primary to underfunded Democrat Mac Barber by a whopping 43 percentage points.

• Jane Kidd, daughter of former Gov. Ernest Vandiver and a consummate political person, is looking for a landing place after she gamely ran for the state Senate in a district openly gerrymandered to end Kidd's political career. She leaves the state House after serving only one term. Kidd is closely allied with House Minority Leader Dubose Porter of Dublin, causing her detractors to fear that she would use the position of state party chair to promote Porter's nascent bid for governor. She is the anti-Berlon candidate in the contest, seeing the party as mainly an instrument of and for elected officials.

• Former state Sen. Carol Jackson could be the compromise choice for chairperson. For three terms, this diehard Democrat held onto a state Senate seat in a GOP stronghold. She retired from the Senate in 2004, and then attempted unsuccessfully to regain the seat against Nancy Schaefer, a longtime conservative icon. Republican Schaefer retained the seat with the help of Democrat renegade Zell Miller, who once counted Jackson among his most influential supporters.

• The Rev. Jim Nelson, an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in the 1st District, has indicated that he too expects to be a candidate for party chair.