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PAGE 4A BARROW JOURNAL WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2008 Opinions “Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ” - Henry Ward Beecher - Chris Bridges, editor • Email: cbridges@barrowjournal.com our views Why the rush on Auburn actions? W HAT is the real pur pose of Auburn’s quick moves to change its city charter? That is the question being asked by some Auburn residents after the city made several intertwined moves in the past few months. In September, the council dis cussed creating an overlay zoning district for its downtown area. At the same time, it activated a Downtown Development Authority. Then in November and December, the council has held hearings on making changes to its city charter, one of which would be to allow the new DDA to issue debt without first holding a referendum of citizens. All of these moves may be wor thy efforts by town leaders. It is true that the city is unusual in that its charter requires a public vote before the town can issue any kind of debt. But the way some of this was handled raises a red flag. First, the town’s public notice information about the proposed city charter change was vague and did not mention anything about removing the section dealing with debt and a public vote. It was only after a citizen read the proposal and came to a council meeting that the issue was brought to light. In addition, the debt section has a controversial history in the town, having been added in 1998 by a citi zens’ referendum. Which begs the question: Was the council’s down playing of the proposal an effort to slide something by citizens hoping they wouldn’t notice? On top of that, when the new DDA met to get organized last month, Mayor Linda Blechinger had herself named as its chairman. While that might be legal, it’s very unusual for a mayor to hold both positions. It’s clear that the Auburn council has a mandate in all of this. The city activated its DDA and began working on a charter change so that the council could have the DDA borrow money for a down town redevelopment project. And with the mayor holding the key position in both groups, the DDA is little more than a puppet for what ever the city council wants. That might be OK, but before the show goes on, all the cards should be put on the table so citizens can see what’s taking place. A DDA can be a powerful organization. It can, for example, issue revenue bond debt to make property exempt from property taxes. It has the power of eminent domain. And it can set up districts to collect special fees to fund projects. So the question is, why all of this activity now? In the middle of a major economic downturn, why the rush to have a DDA issue debt in Auburn? Perhaps there are good answers to those questions. But the coy way the matter has been handled by city leaders does not inspire confidence. The Barrow Journal Winder, Barrow County, Ga. www.BarrowJoumal.com 77 East May Street Winder, Georgia 30680 Web Site: www.BarrowJournal.com Email: news@barrowjournal.com Phone: 770-867-NEWS (6397) Fax: 678-425-1435 SUBSCRIPTIONS: Inside Barrow County $15.00/yr Senior Citizens in Barrow $13.00/yr. Surrounding Counties $19.75/yr. Other In-State $38.85/yr. Out of State $44.50/yr. Military/APO $42.50/yr. Out of county Senior Citizens Deduct $2 Living in a right turn world IN AN effort to cut expenses at the Clark house, Mr. Clark has begun driving like a UPS driver. No, he doesn’t wear a brown uniform, nor has he (at least not yet) painted our vehicles brown, but he is making only right turns, whenever possible. You see, he read an article about how UPS plots delivery routes to use the maximum possible number of right turns. The idea behind this is left turns involve more idling at stop lights and corners and, more idling equals more fuel use and greater carbon dioxide emissions. UPS began the right turn thing a couple of years ago and it must really work as currently 90 per cent of the turns UPS drivers make to deliver the nearly 15-million packages they deliver each day are right turns. In 2007, UPS trucks drove 2.6-billion miles and all those right turns saved three million gallons of fuel, as well as reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 32,000 metric tons. Back to Mr. Clark. While 1 appreciate his efforts to cut our fuel costs (and reduce the size of our carbon footprint), driving through town with him is a madden ing experience. We all know how terrible Winder traffic is — well, add the challenge of making only right turns and you can imagine how long it seems to take to get anywhere in Winder with Mr. Clark at the wheel. It reminds me of taking rides with my grandpa when 1 was little. My grandparents lived in a town much like Winder, only smaller and with less traffic. My grandpa was a big driver - loved driving, always had nice cars, lived for a good road trip. So, sometimes — I suppose it was when the urge to drive hit him, but there was no trip planned — he would take me for a ride, all around his little town. We’d go to the post office to get his mail, then visit a few of his merchant friends downtown. Then we’d cruise around to see “the new construction,” which in this town meant a new roof, a freshly repaired drive way, a new swing set in a back yard, or a repainted restaurant sign. Sometimes we’d go out to the airport to “see if there’s any new planes.” There never were. Other times, we’d drive out in the country to “see the wheat.” (My family had a wheat farm outside town and let me tell you, wheat grows pretty slow if you’re check ing on it frequently.) The ride would wind down with an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen. The last stop was always to “go see the badger.” (The high school mascot was a badger and they kept a poor, sad, sample specimen in a cage out by the airport.) Sometimes, we’d take the badger a snack. Other times, we’d just check on him. I remember these rides as being pleasant in their own way, but also pretty boring and slow. It seemed like my grandpa could cruise around for hours, not really see ing anything. And he didn’t even know about the right turn thing. One day, sitting next to Mr. Clark as he wound his way through Winder making only right turns with no hope of reaching our destination in sight, it hit me. This was just like going to see the badger with my grandpa, only I’m much older now, have a lot less patience and there’s no ice cream cone involved. No wonder I’ve started sending Mr. Clark out on errands alone most of the time! “Too bad there’s no badger in Winder,” I told him. “If there was, at least we could go see him as we wind our way through town, one right turn at a time.” “How do you know there’s no badger in Winder?” Mr. Clark responded. “Maybe we’ll stumble upon him on one of our “trips” (to and from the grocery, the post office, the bank, etc.) I don’t know if Winder has a badger. Maybe, instead, there’s a Wog somewhere, in a little cage, hoping for some visitors or a snack. If he’s out there, we’ll find him. Then “seeing the Wog” can become part of Mr. Clark’s right turn routes through Winder. In the meantime, think of all the gas we’re saving... Lorin Sinn-Clark is a columnist for the Barrow Journal. She can be reached at lorin@barrowjournal. com. Chambliss had history on his side THERE WERE many explanations being floated for Saxby Chambliss’ smashing success in last week’s run off election for the U.S. Senate. He raised a lot of money. Even with a late surge of funds to Jim Martin from Democratic party leaders in the Washington, D.C. area, Chambliss still had nearly three times as much money for his reelection campaign. He realized after the close call in the general election that he needed a ground game and beefed up his get-out-the-vote operations for the runoff. Chambliss and a host of inde pendent GOP committees ran wave after wave of TV attack ads that hammered Martin during the runoff. He utilized the star power of celebrity Republicans like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and presidential nominee John McCain, who campaigned for Chambliss and energized Republicans who weren’t enthused about the senator’s record and voted for a Libertarian candidate in the general election. He also capitalized on the success of Democratic candidates in Senate races in other states. Chambliss argued that electing Martin would enable national Democrats to get dangerously close to a filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats in the U.S. Senate. The voters responded well to this “firewall” argument. All of those factors played a part in helping Chambliss win another six-year term, but the simplest explanation for his runoff victory can be summed up in one word: history. In all of Georgia’s general election runoffs over the past two decades, history shows that Republican vot ers do a better job of coming back to the polls than do Democrats. That pattern held true in this election as Chambliss and Lauren “Bubba” McDonald, a GOP candidate for the Public Service Commission candi date, both enjoyed landslide runoff victories over their Democratic opponents. There are strong historical parallels between 2008, when Chambliss held off Martin, and 1992, when Republican Paul Coverdell came back in the runoff to topple Democratic Sen. Wyche Fowler. Both elections were held in the same year that a Democrat was elected president (Bill Clinton in 1992, Barack Obama in 2008). In both elections, the voter turnout for the mnoff amounted to about 56 percent of the number who voted in the general election. In both elections, the president-elect tried to help the Democratic candidate. Clinton came to Georgia to campaign personally for Fowler. While Obama did not travel to Georgia, he did radio commercials and robo-calls for Martin, and also dispatched staffers from his presidential campaign to help with get-out-the-vote efforts. In both elections, Republican voters were anxious to push back against the election of a popular Democrat for president and turned out in heavy numbers for the runoff. Coverdell trailed Fowler by 35,000 votes in the general election, but he won the runoff by more than 16,000 votes, a turnaround of 51,371 votes. Chambliss, who finished just below 50 percent in the general election, increased his advantage over Martin from 109,671 votes to more than 318,000 votes, a huge improvement. Republicans had the added incentive of pushing back against a president-elect who was not only a Democrat but the country’s first African-American president as well. “The Georgia electorate is easily the most racially polarized of any state we polled regularly during the 2008 election cycle,” said Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling (PPP), one of several firms whose runoff polls underestimated the turnout by white Republicans. You could predict the outcome of the runoff election by comparing the early voting statistics. In the general election, nearly 35 percent of the early ballots were cast by black voters who were obviously enthused by the prospects of voting for Obama. That heavy turnout helped Obama run a closer-than-expect- ed race against McCain (he lost by only 5 percentage points) and enabled Martin to finish within 3 points of Chambliss. The early voting for the runoff election was another story entirely. The percentage of black voters dropped to less than 23 percent. The proportion of white male voters, who are more likely to vote Republican than any other group, increased from less than 30 percent to nearly 36 percent of the early vote. Those were all signs that Chambliss was headed for a big victory. In the end, Republican voters came back to the polls and Democrats didn’t. With that bit of history on his side, it would have been hard for Chambliss to lose. Tom Crawford is the editor of Capitol Impact’s Georgia Report. He can be reached at tcrawford@ caDitolimDact.net. Remembering a politician of the people DURING the late spring of 1998, I set about the task of deciding who I was going to vote for in the primary for Lt. Governor. With an open race that year, a number of candidates were set to be on the ballot in both the Democrat and Republican races. After reading numerous newspapers articles on each of the candidates who had signed their name on the dotted line to run, one clearly stood above the rest in my opinion and that was Mac Barber. While I had heard of the name Mac Barber prior to 1998, (you can’t consider yourself a Georgia political junkie and not have heard of him) I admit I really didn’t know that much about him. After my own research was done, my better half Pam began telling me what she knew about him since Barber was from Commerce, near her home. All things pointed to one conclu sion: Mac Barber was a politician for the people. His No. 1 priority was to represent those he served. He didn’t care about procedure or giving in to those who thought he should do things a certain way. Barber’s pri mary reason for being in office was the people. In fact, I often referred to him as the “people’s champion.” The people lost that champion, however, on Sunday when Barber died at the age of 91. His death leaves behind a political legacy which will be remembered both for its quirkiness as well as its honesty, which is more than can be said for some of his political opponents through the decades he served in various offices. Going back to 1998,1 enjoyed being a volunteer for the “Friends of Mac Barber” campaign. Political observers really didn’t know what to make of his attempt to run for Lt. Governor. Barber stepped down from the Public Service Commission (a decision that left many scratching their head) to run for the second highest elected office in the state. Many believed, or per haps feared, he might actually win the Democratic primary. None of his opponents in the sum mer of 1998 had the name recogni tion he did and Barber had been on the statewide ballot for so many election cycles, there was legitimate talk he just might win this election as well. Barber’s campaign method of running newspaper ads and using yards signs didn’t translate into vic tory this time, however, as Mark Taylor won win the Democratic primary and eventually the Lt. Governorship. Barber would try to regain a seat on the Public Service Commission after 1998 on three occasions although he would not be successful in those efforts either. Barber did win the 2004 Democratic Primary (I admit to encouraging him heavily to run), but he fell in the General Election to Bobby Baker as by this time the Republican tidal wave had completely swept over the state. This would be his last run for elect ed office. In the many times I spoke with him since 1998,1 always found Barber to be humbled by the oppor tunity he was allowed to represent the people of Georgia. He always put them first. He wasn’t in office for financial gain like some who become career politicians or some who do little more in office than promote an idea and bask in the national attention it garners. No, Mac Barber was a man who never forgot he was in office for the citizens of Georgia. A politician who doesn’t forget those who elected him once he takes office. How refreshing is that? We could use a few more Mac Barbers today, that’s for sure. Chris Bridges is editor of the Barrow Journal. He can be reached at chris@mainstreetnews.com. chris bridges