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John Barge similarly details the problems with
federal programs such as No Child Left Behind.
I have to say, I was a little disappointed
that these guys' campaign literature was so
riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes.
To whom it may concern: "rigid" is the oppo
site of flexible; "ridged" is a type of potato
chip. One can't be ridged with students.
On the Democratic side, lifelong educa
tion specialist Beth Farokhi accents her set
of good ideas with a renewed attention to
the arts in schools. Joe Martin also delivers
a solid platform, emphasizing his business
experience to prepare him for the tough fiscal
decisions facing the next office holder. Finally,
Decatur's Brian Westlake is a former U.S.
Marine who aims to strengthen early child
hood education.
Insurance Commissioner
Is there a Republican in the state who
isn't running for Insurance Commissioner?
Nine GOP candidates are duking it out for the
most boring elected office in the land. Local
State Senator Ralph Hudgens has thrown his
hat in the ring, offering to defend us from
Obama's "single payer" health caffe system.
Hudgens serves as Chairman of the Senate
Insurance and Labor Committee. Dennis Cain
takes his seminary training into his candidacy,
opposing Obama's insurance reforms without
sounding heartless. Tom Knox is the only one
in the field who can boast of being awarded
the Forsyth County Republican Party's Ronald
Reagan Freedom Award. John Mamalakis is
another candidate hoping to bring a career's
worth of insurance experience—and a pretty
cool name—to the office. Did you know that
Georgia only has six fire marshals? Cobb
County's Stephen Northington promises to
remedy the shortage, reminding voters that
the office also serves as state fire safety
chief. Gerry Purcell makes "no apologies for
being a strict Constitutionalist." So, don't ask
him for an apology on that—won't happen.
Finally, Maria Sheffield explains that she
loves Ronald Reagan, hates taxes, is pro-life,
supports prayer in school and refutes climate
change. She doesn't offer a whole lot in the
way of insur? ice rolicy, however. The winner
of that GOP cage match will face Democrat
Mary Squires, who runs unopposed.
Agriculture Commissioner
Commerce's Gary Black stresses that he is
a "conservative Republican." He began his road
to the candidacy at age 17, when he became
the Georgia FFA President. Since then, Black
has served on the Georgia Agribusiness Council
and worked with the Georgia Farm Bureau,
when he wasn't tending to his cattle farm. All
of that experience becomes instantly moot,
though, as soon as you visit his competitor's
website, where Darvrin Carter has two pictures
of himself with Ronald Reagan! Besides being
photographed with Saint Reagan, Carter offers
a promising focus on local consumption of the
state's agricultural goods.
Labor Commissioner
A Republican has never held the office
of Georgia Labor Commissioner, but looking
to make history are Mark Butler and Melvin
Everson. Butler is an eight-year state represen
tative from Carrollton who can't go for too long
without mentioning how so very conservative
he is. The conservatives in Washington are
actively (and successfully) working to keep
unemployment insurance from citizens, so it is
a bit difficult to imagine Butler happily serving
as the administrator of Georgia's unemploy
ment insurance. Butler all but admits his antip
athy to workers, saying, "I want to make the
whole department more business-friendly." In
labor-speak, that means lessening regulations
and protections for workers and their families.
His primary opponent. Everson, does well not
to mention how remarkably conservative he is.
The two Democrats vying for the nomina
tion seem to have a better handle on what the
office is all about: helping Georgians remain
safe on the job and helping them when jobs
are hard to find. Darryl flicks is interested in
facilitating the employment of those hit by
the recession through training. Terry Coleman
at least spends a moment or two focusing on
workers before expounding on bringing devel
opment to the state through "business-friendly"
policies. I had no idea businesses and corpora
tions had it so hard—could've sworn it was the
working man who can't get a fair shake.
Matthew Pulver
★ ★★★★★★★★★★★★★ VOTE ON JULY 20**************
VOTE ON
JULY 20
Job creation, tax reform and transportation
improvement rank among the most important
issues for candidates in contested local.prima
ries in Tuesday's elections. Another parallel?
Every one of the candidates below received a
degree from the University of Georgia. Here
are your handy guides to the three local races:
Georgia Senate District 47
In this district, Republican Ralph
Hudgens is leaving to run for state Insurance
Commissioner, opening the door for four
Republican candidates (Athens drug and alco
hol counselor Tim Riley is unopposed on the
Democratic side).
Frank Ginn, most recently the Franklin
County Manager, has been city manager of
Royston and Sugar HilL He cites his public
service, including as the director of member
services for Jackson Electric Memfiership
Corporation in Jefferson, as his most impor
tant qualification.
Though he says he supports autonomous
local governments, saying that "the state
government should be there to support the
decisions l made locally." he also says the state
has the resources to support and develop local
economies and governments. His platform
includes an expansion of services from the
Georgia Public Safety Training Center, which
provides training for local services including
taw enforcement firefighters and emergency
medical service personnel, and state govern
ment promotion of local workforces.
"We have some great vocational and tech
nical schools... Georgia [has] low-cost energy
and has a non-union workforce mostly... We
just have to capitalize on our assets," he says.
Shane Coley is the founder of MSC
Technologies, an IT and machinery firm in
Statham. He says he has spent years studying
economic problems facing the state and nation.
"1 had a strong desire to understand
why the American entrepreneur and family
had a desire for the nation to be moving in
one direction, and yet we were moving in
another," he says.
He has distributed hundreds of copies of
The Law by Frederic Bastiat and Whatever
Happened to Penny Candy? by Rick Maybury,
two texts advocating limited government
involvement in economies.
He says that he envisions the develop
ment of an Athens-Atlanta business corridor,
anchored by the universities at either end. He
supports private road and rail development
and the reduction of governmental office con
centration in Atlanta as a means of reducing
traffic congestion there.
He also considers private enterprise the
best means of developing water resources.
"Reservoirs cost two to three times more than
they should and take two to three times lon
ger than they should because of government
and regulation... We have plenty of water in
Georgia, and plenty of spaces to build reser
voirs; we just need to build them," he says.
Kelley Gary is a former busihess consultant
for the firm Marsh and McLennan and current
owner of Premier Storage in Braselton.
His proposals focus heavily on taxes,
including an v elimination of state property tax,
a reduction of corporate taxes and legislation
to allow local governments to hold reforendums
on the elimination of their own property taxes,
to be replaced by tax revenue of their choice.
Doug Bower served one term on the
Oglethorpe County Commission and lists his
profession as counselor. He ran for State
Senate as a Democrat in 1992 and again as a
Republican in 1994,1996 and 1998.
He has announced through his website that
he is not accepting donations and says, "This
campaign is completely dependent on the
power and authority of the will of the voters."
Georgia House District 113
Three candidates are running to replace
the retiring Republican Bob Smith. Hank
Huckaby was the Georgia State Budget Director
for five years, worked for the University of
Georgia for nine years, including six as Senior
Vice President for Finance and was executive
director of the Georgia Housing and Finance
Authority for a decade. He
describes Georgia's current
tax structure as the most
important issue in state
government.
"We clearly had too
many exemptions in the tax
code... [Taxes] should be
broad-based, equitable, fair and [have] low mar
ginal rates," he says.
He says he hopes to act on the recom
mendations of the 2010 Special Counril on Tax
Reform and Fairness for Georgians, which will
report findings to the General Assembly at the
beginning of the 2011 session.
Tommy Malcolm joined the Oconee County
Board of Education while a master's student at
UGA, serving two terms. He is now a doctoral
student in workforce education at the univer
sity, and has taught middle school classes in
Gwinnett County for eight years in Exploratory
technology.
His platform includes taxes based entirely
on consumer spending and a transportation
plan that may include commuter rail and
bicycle lanes.
"The state is going to grow; it's a hot spot
for people to move to. We need to make sure
we're going to accommodate that growth," he
says. "We can't be operating our state on a
1970s or 1980s transportation mo<jel"
Kirk Shook is about to begin his fourth
year as a teacher at North Oconee High School
in Bogart where he has taught economics
and coached football. He has also worked in
construction, building and maintaining golf
courses across the Southeast
Like Malcolm, he favors a fully spending-
based tax, saying that the removal of the
corporate income tax would encourage job
growth. Shook has proposed regional taxes,
toll roads or toll lanes as a revenue genera
tor for road improvement projects, citing his
Georgia House District 114
Democratic State Representative Keith
Heard faces a challenge for House District 114.
The Allstate Insurance Company salesman has
seldom been opposed in his nine terms rep
resenting Athens since 1992. In 2002, Heard
defeated Democratic Primary challenger Sergio
Sandoval, who claimed that Heard did not
actually live in Athens, but rather in Atlanta, a
charge that a Superior Court judge dismissed.
Heard sits on, among others,
the Appropriations, Insurance and
I ntra govern mental Coordination committees.
In the past session, he has sponsored legisla
tion to allow convicts ineligible to vote to
regain voting rights following release or during
parole, the creation of an income tax credit
equal to 5 percent of the federal income tax
credit and to require law enforcement policies
that would prohibit racial profiling in an offi
cer's decision to stop a vehicle. A resolution
sponsored by Heard naming President Obama
a member of the Georgia Legislative Black
Caucus was defeated by the House in March.
His challenger, Holly Ward, is an edu
cational consultant at Anderson and Ward
Educational Services, a firm that trains teach
ers to customize their instruction to their stu
dents. She has taught at elementary, middle
and high schools and at Piedmont College.
She says four-year universities have excessive
dropout rates, and primary education must not
consider them the only goal for students.
"We're forcing people into a system where
every person is told they should go to college,
but it's not working for everyone," Ward says.
Ward's other platforms include dredging
reservoirs to increase capacity and tax incen
tives for the use of residential water-saving
technology. She proposes the creation of
a seed project in commuter rail travel to
experience using Florida's turnpike system. prompt similar projects in other states to ae-
"It may have cost six or seven dollars, but ate a Southeast network. She says that, as
you know what? I got there, and it didn't take with the development of Hartsfieid-Jackson
too long," he says. His other goats indude
General Assembly term limits, which he says
can be achieved with cooperation among
incoming freshman representatives. The former
volunteer firefighter also wants to incentivize
volunteer foe departments as a means of sav
ing county governments money and reducing
non* insurance piKnwro*
Stay Compere, an environmental nonprofit
director from Bostwkk, is unopposed on the
uemocratic stoe.
International Airport, such a network could
maintain Georgia's prim ;<cy in regional
transportation.
She proposes audithg corporate tax incen
tives, saying, "We're paying you to come to
our state,
resources
choose to
place to come ."
' -
JULY 14,2010