CL endorses Kasim Reed
Creative Loafing's Thomas Wheatley attempts to look coy while covering a recent mayoral forum.
With the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s decision to abdicate its role as a community leader, my old paper’s endorsements in the city elections may turn out to be this year’s most influential — outside, of course, of backing from such special interests as the police union.
So Kasim Reed (mayor), Clair Muller (City Council President), Adam Brackman (Post 1 at-large) and Aaron Watson (Post 2 at-large) ought to be quite happy to have won the endorsements this week of Creative Loafing.
I’m not certain these are precisely the candidates I’ll end up voting for, but each of them remains among my personal finalists. They are very credible choices. And I thought each of CL’s endorsement essays Read more
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. Read more
DOT keeps Beltline doubts alive
The state Department of Transportation board had a chance today to snuff out the uncertainty it created a few weeks back over the future of Beltline. But instead commissioners said, “Nahhhh.” Young Thomas Wheatley offers a nice blow-by-blow of today’s debate on the issue.
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