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THE MAYOR'S RACE
In the mayor's race, incumbent Davison car
ried 18 out of 24 voting precincts in the county,
and Maddox carried six. Some were very close,
like precinct 1A, where Maddox led Davison by
only five votes. In precinct 7A along Timothy
Road, Davison led Maddox by the same mar
gin-five votes—with Tom Chasteen not far
behind. Chasteen led Maddox in five of the
precincts which Davison carried, and he was
close behind Maddox in several others where
Davison commanded a large lead; he performed
strongly across District 1 and moderately well
in District 6. By precinct, Maddox's largest leads
over Davison came in the same heavily African-
American precincts (2A, 2B
and 3A) that Alvin Sheats
carried in the District 9 race.
Most observers had long
expected a runoff in the may
or's race, and neither Davison
nor Maddox seems particularly
surprised or disappointed
with the results. Davison told
her supporters on election
night, "We've got more left
to do, but I'm confident that
we'll pull it out, because I
don't know that any campaign
has a better team than we
do." Says Maddox, "We hit the
target, and we're in the ball-
game." He sees Davison's lack
of a majority vote as telling.
"The results speak for them
selves. that the majority of
people—whether they voted
for me. Tom Chasteen or
Richard DeRose—said they're
not satisfied with what they've got," Maddox
says. He doesn't seem overconfident, though.
"No matter what is said in the final analysis," he
says, "when the voters speak, I will be accepting
of that."
For Tom Chasteen, who has served 16 years
on the Commission (and served on the ACC
Planning Commission before that), a loss in the
general election means his remaining time at
City Hall is now very short. Chasteen's last vot
ing meeting as a member of the ACC Commission
will be on Wednesday, Dec. 6, the day after the
runoff. "It's coming to a close in a hurry," he
acknowledges. Chasteen says that in the days
following the election, his thoughts have been
most with his family and other dedicated cam
paign volunteers. The loss for his volunteers
"was the most painful thing for me," he says.
"Certainly it's painful—I don't like losing, for
sure—but it was almost more painful for them
than for myself." Chasteen adds, "It's been a fun
ride... it's sort of like anything else: you try to
make the place you live better."
Ben Emanuel ben©llagp: le.com
Capitol Impact
Can’t We Do Better?
After watching far too many debates, stump
speeches, candidate forums, campaign commer
cials and attack ads over the past six months, I've
reached this conclusion: our two major parties
nominated the wrong candidates for governor.
Either that, or there was a mixup during qualify
ing week when the candidates signed up to run
for statewide offices. This became obvious to me
as I was reading through newspaper endorse
ments in the days immediately prio. to the elec
tion. Each of the newspapers who recommended a
candidate for their readers to support—regardless
of whether it was Sonny Perdue or Mark Taylor—
did so with great reluctance and distaste.
None of the newspaper editorial boards espe
cially liked the candidate they were endorsing.
Every newspaper was basically holding its nose
and saying, "We know this guy is a dork, but
since we have to pick SOMEBODY, you might as
well vote for him as the other one."
Just consider some of the statements from a
few random newspaper columns: "Neither man
has a compelling vision for taking the state
confidently forward," said the Atlanta Journal-
Constitution. "It's too bad Georgia's political sys
tem has not produced candidates for the state's
highest position with more to ofter." The Macon
Telegraph delivered a similarly unenthusiastic
endorsement of hometown guy Perdue: "Gov.
Sonny Perdue, while going into office with ethics
and open government as themes, has turned out
to be ethically challenged. Instead of opening
government, he and his Republican-dominated
General Assembly have attempted to make
it harder to keep track of state government.
Instead of following his own promise to give
control of schools to local people, he's done just
the opposite by requiring districts to spend 65
percent of all money in the classroom...."
The Tifton Gazette made it obvious it didn't
want to recommend either of the candidates: "In
this race, we lament that Secretary of State Cathy
Cox is not on Tuesday's ballot.
Cox, who lost the Democratic
nomination to Taylor this past
summer, has been a shining
star among statewide elected
officials, and we believe she
would be a good governor."
The Marietta Daily Journal,
which has long been one of
the most conservative, pro-
Republican newspapers in the
state, had this to say about
the incumbent Republican
governor: "It doesn't appear
the governor has broken
any laws, but he has shown
a repeated tendency to
benefit himself financially
from insider information not
available to most other
Georgians... Perdue and the
Republicans can complain all
they want about the excesses
when Georgia was ruled by
Democrats—but we don't recall having ever had
a Democratic governor determined to carve a
reputation as a real estate mogul at the public's
expense."
It's unusual to find a statewide race
where both candidates turn off the
voters like this, but these feelings of
disgust showed up time and again
in newspapers across the state.
Then there was the daily newspaper in north
east Georgia that laid it out this way: "Sonny
Perdue and Mark Taylor: Thanks for stopping by.
Don't call us, we'll call you. Because you two
have forgotten something important this election
season. You have been on a job interview, and
you both failed miserably."
It's unusual to find a statewide race where
both candidates turn off the voters like this, but
these feelings of disgust showed up time and
again in newspapers across the state. If you be
lieve that local newspapers, as imperfect as they
may be, reflect the feelings of the community,
then this has to be very distressing. From the
tone of these editorials, it's obvious that both
Perdue and Taylor were seen as deeply flawed and
wholly unsatisfactory candidates for governor.
The state's newspapers—both conservative
and liberal—seemed to be saying the same
thing: we should have better than this to choose
from when we are electing the state's chief exec
utive. I can't say that I disagree with them. With
every week that passed during the campaign, the
media dug up more stories about Perdue buy
ing real estate from developers, giving himself
tax breaks, and passing up chances to preserve
wilderness areas so that they could be chopped
up into subdivisions. He came across, sadly, as a
greedy and grubbing little bureaucrat.
As for Taylor, all he could do was keep recy
cling tired, stale issues—like the HOPE scholar
ship program—that were settled long ago during
the Zell Miller administration. If you waited for
Taylor to come up with a fresh, invigorating vision
for the state's future, well, you're still waiting.
Is it too late to go back and start over?
Tom Crawford tcrawford@capitolimpacl net
HdUPtj Ml..
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