Will campaign donor scandal help Oxendine?
A BIT GEEKY, EH? One of the flattering photos of Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine that are plastered all over the state Department of Insurance website.
Georgia Republicans may be riding higher right now than Republicans are elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean the state party isn’t suffering from the same dysfunction that’s led the national GOP to nosedive.
It’s just that Georgia’s voters seem content to allow Republicans to get away with partisan excesses, fuzzy math and their inability to govern effectively — so long as they manage to sound more conservative and paranoid than the next guy.
Which brings us to the AJC’s revelations about John Oxendine’s campaign finance mess (is “scandal” too harsh a word?). The longtime insurance commissioner, now a leading 2010 Republican candidate for governor, has a reputation for raising big money from executives at the companies he regulates.
Last Sunday, AJC reporter Cameron McWhirter broke the story of 10 loosely connected political action committees — tied to a Rome, Ga., insurance baron — that funneled $120,000 last year to Oxendine’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. The donations appear to be illegal.
In the article, Oxendine pooh-poohed the revelations. And, taking the tact that a lot of Southern politicians have used when caught doing something wrong, his campaign sent out a hilarious e-mail blaming the article on “the left-wing, anti-conservative, anti-American bias of the AJC”:
What they have really done is confirm to conservatives which Republican candidate they are afraid of — which Republican candidate they do not want to win. This is a time honored tradition at the AJC. Attack and smear any real conservative who might actually win. Attack, attack, attack. Talk about anything but the issues.
At Team Oxendine, we wear this hit piece as a badge of honor. Georgia Republicans know perfectly well a candidate is not a serious front-runner until they have been attacked and smeared by the AJC. That day has come and the AJC has sent a message loud and clear — John Oxendine is a conservative the liberals cannot tolerate. We are proud to know the “fair and balanced” crowd at the AJC is not for John Oxendine.
(Kudos to Travis Fain’s Lucid Idiocy blog for publishing the full memo.)
That Monday, the campaign still was calling the article a “hit piece.” But, faced with an ethics investigation, it did announce it would give the money back.
I suppose it’s pretty basic to observe that Oxendine is trying to use the story to engage the Republican base in his victimhood, and that he’s hoping to tap into the anti-media paranoia that’s such a strong motivator for Southern conservatives. That would be nothing new, of course. In the early 20th century, governors Tom Watson and Eugene Talmadge ran against the “liberal” Atlanta newspapers to become the most powerful Georgia politicians of their day. South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond and Alabama’s George Wallace rode similar routes to national prominence in losing presidential campaigns.
It’s not necessarily the case that those guys were more ideologically pure than their opponents. Watson and Talmadge were ardent populists. Wallace lost his 1958 campaign for governor as a racial moderate, before famously telling an aide, “I’ll never be outniggered again” — and going on to win 1962 landslide as a virulent segregationist. Thurmond, like Oxendine, was a Democrat before switching parties.
The point was that, whatever their actual personal histories, each of those guys positioned himself as the bold guardian of a mythic Southern way of life. And each achieved edged into that position by cynically tapping into the anger and paranoia that sadly can distracts a lot of voters. Plus, they were all excellent showmen.
Watson, Talmadge, Thurmond and Wallace drew their lines in the sand to protect the South’s racial order. Forced over the last 50 years into a retreat over racial politics, Southern conservatives now make their stands for supposed traditional values on such “social issues” as opposition to gay marriage, illegal immigration and abortion, and to lazy poor people and taxes.
But the message is pretty much the same: My enemies are your enemies. They’re the people who aren’t like you. So if our common enemies attack me, they’re really going after you. Let’s get ‘em!
The problem for Georgia Republicans is that the more success they have by pushing myths and peddling anger, the more they become captive of a political style that makes it almost impossible to govern effectively.
Witness the difficult time Sonny Perdue’s had during eight years in the Governor’s Mansion: He’s presided over worsening economic, education, healthcare, natural resource and transportation crises. And he still hasn’t put forth a solution for any of them — mainly because he and his party have so much riding on anti-tax rhetoric that has little correspondence with reality. Earlier this month, Perdue was forced to veto a popular cut in the state capital gains tax because simple math showed that it couldn’t be done.
Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, who appears right now to be Oxendine’s chief foe for the Republican nomination, is similar politically to Perdue, who she briefly worked for in the governor’s office. She’d likely give lip service to the angry right, but would find herself conflicted with hard decisions when it came to governing.
Earlier this decade, Handel proved a pragmatist as chairwoman of the majority Democratic Fulton County Commission. But her decision as secretary of state to feed red meat to the Republican base with a partisan butchering of voters’ rights (through the state’s Voter ID Acts and other assorted efforts) doesn’t bode well for her willingness to separate politics from governing.
To which Oxendine — like the Southern Democratic demagogues of yore — says: What separation? For 14 years, he’s mixed his ambitions with the duties of his job, and visa-versa. The Georgia Department of Insurance website is plastered with some many photos of his glory and odes to his wisdom that it looks like a campaign website. His campaigns for insurance commissioner have largely been funded by people who’s business he regulates.
When it comes to actually stumping for office, Oxendine not only has shown no scruples, but he’s exhibted a kind cunning inventiveness as he’s scramble for the lowest common denominator.
A funny-if-it-weren’t-so-scary example was turned up by my old colleague, Thomas Wheatley, in the form of a 2002 recent video in which Oxendine says workers at the nation’s leading family-planning nonprofit “don’t mind killing babies.” Then, the commissioner promises that, if ever elected governor, he’ll “make it so uncomfortable that Planned Parenthood is not going to be able to operate in this state and they’re going to start losing money, and we’re going to make it economically difficult for them … Yes, they will be out of business in Georgia. They will leave the State of Georgia.”
“You have to wonder which voting bloc Oxendine is trying to court these days,” Wheatley writes. “He thinks the state should discuss privatizing MARTA. He decorates his child’s nursery ‘Confederate Gray.’ He says he would’ve been the first sponsor on a bill that affirms states’ rights and flirts with secession.”
The interesting question is: Will the familiar brand of unbridled demaguogery work for Oxendine in modern Georgia? In other words, is the party’s base sufficiently mindless — and insular — for him to be able to tap into the old angry paranoia without being perceived by more than half the Republican primary voters as a flake? And if he won the GOP nomination could a candidate as flawed as he is ride myth and anger to the governor’s mansion?
An Insider Advantage poll, taken before the AJC’s revelations about the PAC money, placed “Ox” in the lead position in the Republican primary with 21.3 percent — double the support of his closest competitor. That doesn’t mean he’s really the favorite; it’s more of an expression that people are used to seeing his name on the ballot after four winning campaigns for insurance commissioner.
But the poll, together with a substantial lead in campaign fundraising, will allow Oxendine to make a plausible argument that he’s the strongest Republican candidate, along with the excitingly conspiratorial claim that that’s why the AJC is in cahoots with Democrats to bring him down.
A second investigative piece on Oxendine’s fundraising, this one published in yesterday’s AJC , actually may give Oxendine a bit of fodder — not that the story itself isn’t newsworthy. In it, McWhirter and fellow reporter James Salzer quantify how much money the insurance commissioner has raised over the years from people who’s industries are regulated by the state Department of Insurance:
Of the $6.6 million his campaigns collected from 1998 to 2008, at least $2.6 million came from employees and owners of insurance and small-loan businesses, according to a review of state reports by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. That’s at least 40 percent of what Oxendine, a leading candidate for governor in 2010, has raised. And it’s a conservative figure. It does not include law firms working in the industries he regulates who have been major contributors. And during much of the past decade, Oxendine’s campaign did not disclose the occupations and the employers of many donors, making that information hard to track.
To voters who suspected, but weren’t sure, that the first story was a “hit piece,” the second article might confirm that what’s left of the “liberal” media is now piling on.
My guess is that Oxendine’s no Georgia Wallace. He’s got the cynical opportunism down, but he’s not in the same league as a showman. It also seems to me that there will be enough conservative but not-entirely-insular voters in the Republican primary to be turned off by a old-style political hack.
Still, you never know. We’re more than a year away from the Republican primary. And one of the patterns of Southern rabble rousers is that once they get a certain momentum, they’ll plow along and build support no matter what all the “responsible people” do or say to block them. They only lose when they self-destruct.
Anyway, I may not be the best spokesman for Oxendine’s appeal. An anonymous commenter on Jim Galloway’s Political Insider blog — is more eloquent at that than I. After Galloway merely reported the fact that Oxendine’s campaign would give the $120,000 back, the commenter — identifying himself as “Cynthia Tucker McKinney” — said this:
Hey Big Jim, are you going to cover the goings-on with respect to Nancy “Stretch” Pelosi, the Speakerette of the House, and he five different stories on knowing and then not knowing and then kinda knowing about Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. I know that you will cover Palin whenever she sneezes, I thought you may also want to cover the Speakerette of the House being caught up in her own lies on the issue of terrorism and national security. If it would make it easier for you, you could still try to find a way to bring up Palin. For fun you could say that Palin made the Speakerette lie and re-lie and then lie again. As far as this Oxendine garbage, he is returning the money just like the Obama camp. returned the funny chinese mone raised by that cat they found on that train. You know that big time democrat bundler that got busted. Obama took the cash and then returned and all was forgiven by the hack media libs. I guess you will do the same for Oxendine, right?
Kinda hard to argue with that, ain’t it?
Related posts:
- Maybe Oxendine was hunting for water [caption id="attachment_3048" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The John Oxendine shooting accident had...
- Oxendine channels William Tecumseh Sherman [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="338" caption="Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine"][/caption] Gubernatorial...
- Barnes may decide soon Roy Barnes is expected to determine within "3-4 weeks" whether...
- Governor’s race taking shape Maybe it says something about how next year's governor's race...
- Porter declares, Poythress attacks Fellow Democrat David Poythress responded far more sharply to DuBose...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Comments
3 Comments on Will campaign donor scandal help Oxendine?
-
Sunday AJCs do a bit of muckraking | Atlanta Unsheltered on
Mon, 18th May 2009 11:23 am
-
krollins on
Fri, 14th Aug 2009 11:06 pm
-
The Race For Governor « Chamblee54 on
Mon, 12th Jul 2010 5:33 pm
[...] candidate John Oxendine’s questionable campaign fundraising practices (which inspired my own bloviation on our, uhm, colorful insurance commissioner), but the paper’s done some real digging on [...]
if you want a respectable & moderate conservative in office, you’re going to have vote for a democrat next year…General David Poythress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHtS9ZEhaKw
Please join me in supporting him.
[...] about the other candidates? It is a sorry bunch. The front runner, and likely runoff contestant, is John Oxendine . Mr. Oxendine is the state Insurance commissioner. He is alleged to receive campaign contributions [...]
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
Our new website!
