Dick Pettys: A Year No One Could Have Imagined

From InsiderAdvantage Georgia:

The best writers couldn’t have scripted a political year like this in Georgia. A defeated former governor hit the comeback trail; the lieutenant governor, after preparing his own gubernatorial bid, backed out, and the sitting Speaker of the House announced out of the blue he had tried to kill himself and then resigned after his ex-wife sat for a devastating television interview.

The year ends with Democrats handed a major opportunity to hammer ruling Republicans for a “culture of corruption” and the hope that when the 2010 elections come around they can prove that Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue’s surprise victory in 2002 was a fluke rather than the beginning of a long-term trend.

The depressed economy and the state’s budget woes served as bookends for a year that, if anything, was in worse shape when it ended than when it began. And despite all the rain we got in the last few months of the year, water remained a front-burner issue, thanks to a federal judge’s ruling.