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THE JACKSON HERALD
WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 2010
Named the best weekly editorial page in the nation for 2007, 2008
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
- Henry Ward Beecher ~
Mike Buffington, editor • Email: Mike@mainstreetnews.com
our views
Voters,
candidates
need to be
more engaged
O NE of the more dis
turbing trends we’ve
noticed in recent
election cycles is the lack of
knowledge many voters have
about local candidates.
While everyone seems to have
an opinion on national issues,
few seem to grasp issues that
confront their own communi
ties. Many people have an opin
ion about illegal immigration, but
few could tell you much about
the issues in the local Jackson
County Board of Education race,
or the State Senate District 47
race.
Making that even worse is the
growing tendency of local can
didates to pander to voters with
extreme or simplistic views. In
the Senate 47 race, the discus
sion seems to revolve around
which candidate can foam at
the mouth the most over ille
gal immigration, although the
state’s role in that debate is very
limited.
In the BOE race, the two candi
dates are vying for who can use
the most words to say the least.
It’s a race with no substance and
both candidates seem inept.
So what we have here is a
conspiracy between candidates
who don’t want to say much
outside of their simple mantra
and voters who seemingly don’t
want to know much about local
issues. (And we can also blame
the state legislature for having
the Primary in the middle of the
summer when people are on
vacation and not paying atten
tion; that was a system adopted
by incumbents to assure their
own re-elections.)
Still, The Herald this week pro
files each candidate in the local
races so that interested voters
can read what they have to say
and perhaps get some idea of
what kind of public official they
would make if elected.
We encourage voters to
become more engaged in find
ing out about these candidates
and the issues the community
faces; and we encourage candi
dates to be less obtuse in their
comments and give voters more
substance.
Our system won’t work until
both sides get more engaged.
The Jackson Herald
Founded 1875 • The Official Legal
Organ of Jackson County, Ga.
Mike Buffington Co-Publisher & Editor
Scott Buffington Co-Publisher &
Advertising Manager
News Department
Angela Gary Associate Editor
Jana Adams Mitcham Features Editor
Brandon Reed Sports Editor
Kerri Testement Reporter
Sharon Hogan Reporter
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I hate primaries...
Georgia voters will conduct the final poll
tom
crawford
THE race for governor has been a very stable one so
far, at least if you believe in the validity of the polls.
For more than a year now, every credible poll has indi
cated that Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine is at
the top of the list of Republican
candidates while former gover
nor Roy Barnes has been the
choice of Democratic voters.
Oxendine was expected to
be the early poll leader among
GOP voters because of the
name recognition he built up
from serving 16 years as a
statewide elected official. The
Ox has maintained that lead,
although it has been eroding
a bit, and he appears to have
the solid support of roughly
one-third of those who will ask
for a Republican primary ballot
on July 20.
The real competition has been among the three can
didates fighting to make it into a runoff with Oxendine:
former secretary of state Karen Handel of Roswell,
former congressman Nathan Deal of Gainesville, and
former state senator Eric Johnson of Savannah.
The most recent polling suggests that Handel may be
pulling away from Deal and Johnson in that fight for a
runoff slot, but there are enough undecided voters (any
where from 10 to 20 percent of the total) who could give
us a different result on election day.
Oxendine has tried to frame this primary race as a
battle between himself and a Republican Party estab
lishment, headed by Gov. Sonny Perdue, that is trying to
engineer the nomination of Handel, who once worked
as an aide to Perdue.
The accusations surfaced recently when the State
Ethics Commission tried to hold a hearing into allega
tions that two Georgia insurance companies regulated
by Oxendine’s office funneled $120,000 to the Oxendine
campaign through a network of political action commit
tees based in Alabama.
Lawyers for the insurance companies went to court to
block the ethics hearing, where they complained to a
Fulton County judge that a majority of the commission’s
members were appointed by Perdue.
“In that kind of politically charged environment, there
is no fairness, there is no level playing field,” attorney
Daniel Meachum said. “The commission has lost its
moral compass and become a conduit for certain politi
cal candidates.”
The court challenge was successful for Oxendine,
because it prevented the Ethics Commission from hold
ing a hearing prior to the primary election.
Over on the Democratic side, Barnes has been trying
to achieve two goals in his campaign: apologizing to
voters for the mistakes that caused his defeat in the 2002
governor’s race and building up a big enough lead that
he could win the primary without a runoff.
While there are three credible candidates running
against Barnes, this primary comes down to a race
between the former governor and Attorney General
Thurbert Baker.
In terms of financial resources, it isn’t even close.
Even in a dry year for campaign fundraising, Barnes has
pulled in nearly $5 million during this election cycle,
far more than any other Democratic or Republican
candidate.
He has spent the bulk of that money on TV commer
cials aimed at putting him above the 50 percent support
level that would win the nomination without a runoff.
Since April, Barnes has paid more than $2.1 million to
LUC Media - a media buying firm founded by his long
time adviser and strategist, Bobby Kahn - to purchase
the airtime for running all these TV spots.
If Barnes wins the primary outright, he avoids a bruis
ing runoff fight against Baker that would drain money
Barnes could otherwise have spent running against the
Republican nominee in the general election.
If Baker forces a runoff election and then upsets
Barnes for the Democratic nomination, he would virtu
ally ensure that the Republican nominee, whoever it is,
will win the general election in November. That’s why
Republican activists will be watching the results of this
primary very closely on election night.
Two independent polls of likely Democratic voters
that were released late last week showed Barnes receiv
ing 56 percent and 59 percent of the vote in this pri
mary. A third poll commissioned by a Baker supporter
showed Barnes at the 49 percent level.
Georgia’s voters, of course, will tell us next week how
accurate all of those polls were. The election day poll
is the only one that matters.
Tom Crawford is the editor of The Georgia Report.
He can be reached at tcrawford@sareDort. com.
It was a false
economy
W HAT kind of economic
future does Jackson
County want?
That question comes as the reces
sion bumps along the apparent bot
tom. While a second downturn isn’t
impossible, the economy appears to
be stable for now; not improving, but
stable.
So will we see a return to the wild
growth days of just a few years ago?
Remember that time when everyone
with a cell phone and pickup truck
was a “developer?”
Remember when anyone with a
pulse
could
walk into
a bank
and get a
100 per
cent mort
gage that
everyone
involved
knew
could
never be
paid off?
Rem
ember
when
speculators were driving up land
prices faster than a speeding bullet
and how quickly the county govern
ment responded by raising property
assessments?
Remember when the zoning board
held five-hour meetings because so
many people wanted to cash-in on
the land grandpaw left them?
Remember when new retail and
restaurants were sprouting up like
flowers at every major intersection in
the county?
Remember when the county tax
digest was exploding and local gov
ernments were being showered with
double-digit revenue increase year
after year?
Ahh, seems so long ago now.
Today, many planned subdivisions
are just unfinished PVC farms in the
county; foreclosures have left a slew
of empty houses; mortgage loans are
impossible to get even at the banks
which have survived the recession;
there are few zoning meetings; and
many restaurants and retail centers
sit empty.
The real psychological impact of
this recession is that it has totally
upended the previous notion that
rapid, massive growth was inevitable.
It’s not. This year, the Jackson
County tax digest is likely to shrink for
the first time in decades. An econom
ic reality of slower growth is starting
to sink in.
Maybe in the long run, this down
turn will bring some reality back
into the market. During the boom
years, housing was the driving force
in Jackson and other Metro Atlanta
counties. Constmction was the eco
nomic engine.
But it was all a sham and we
should have known it couldn’t last.
Construction should be the result of
solid economic development, not the
driving force itself.
For a community to really have
solid growth, it must have manufactur
ing jobs that employ people to create
wealth. New wealth creates the desire
for new homes and allows people to
be mobile both in geography and in
their climb up the economic ladder.
Housing by itself isn’t the creation
of new wealth, especially when much
of the real estate market was built
on crazy loans given to people who
could never repay the debt. That’s not
real wealth.
Despite a high unemployment
rate, Jackson County has been rather
lucky. The recession did wipe out
some local manufacturing jobs, but
other new jobs seem to be destined
to locate here. Exactly what impact
that will have remains to be seen.
But the one truism to come out of
this recession is that an economy
built on shallow service and construc
tion jobs isn’t a real economy. Only
manufacturing can create the kind of
wealth needed for a solid economic
system to work.
Mike Buffington is editor of The
Jackson Herald. He can be reached
at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
mike
buffington