Georgia and American History
Next week, we’ll be starting a new historical feature highlighting sites across the state. I’m excited to bring it to you and hope you’ll enjoy it.
On August 12, 1492 by the current calendar, Christopher Columbus set sail from the port of Palos de la Frontera in southern Spain with the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Other accounts date his arrival at the Canary Islands off the coast of northwestern Africa on August 12, 1492.
Juan Ponce de Leon invaded Puerto Rico on August 12, 1508 and declared himself Governor.
On August 12, 1864, Confederate General John B. Hood prohibited Confederate soldier from seizing civilian property.
The first Ford Model T rolled off the assembly line on August 12, 1904.
On August 12, 1908, Ford’s first “Model T” rolled off a Detroit, Michigan, factory floor. Within six years, the car, company and man were propelled to unprecedented success, thanks to the new Highland Park plant’s first-of-its-kind assembly line, which created the intricate product quickly and in large numbers.
“If it hadn’t been for Henry Ford’s drive to create a mass market for cars, America wouldn’t have a middle class today,” wrote [Lee] Iacocca.
Increased travel spurred appeals for better and more roads, the development of suburbs, the oil industry’s rise and a boom in gas stations, strip malls and motels.
But the assembly line itself had the biggest impact on American society, Hyde contended, in making possible the swift, mass production of everything from computers to “fast food.”
On August 12, 1910, Georgia Governor Joseph M. Brown signed legislation prohibiting the carrying of a pistol or revolver without a license.
East Germany began building the Berlin Wall on August 12, 1961.
[T]he government of East Germany, on the night of August 12, 1961, began to seal off all points of entrance into West Berlin from East Berlin by stringing barbed wire and posting sentries. In the days and weeks to come, construction of a concrete block wall began, complete with sentry towers and minefields around it. The Berlin Wall succeeded in completely sealing off the two sections of Berlin.
Three churches in Albany, Georgia first allowed African-Americans to attend their services on August 12, 1962.
On August 12, 1968, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham played together for the first time.
The first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, made its first flight in the earth’s atmosphere on August 12, 1977.
Newsbites
Click here for the 2014-15 Hunting Seasons and Regulations Guide – Georgia DNR.
Fritz Wilson of Cumming has been named to the FEMA National Advisory Council – Forsyth County News.
DeKalb County Interim CEO Lee May announced his nomination for his replacement as District 5 County Commissioner via YouTube:
In 2003, Georgia Latino voters accounted for only 10,000 voters,” a [Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials] press release stated. “In 2014, it is estimated that the Georgia Latino electorate has grown to well over 200,000 voters. It is because of this growth and potential that national attention is turning to Georgia.”
Bowdon City Council voted to maintain the same millage rate – Times-Georgian.
Senate Race
David Perdue claims stronger links to Georgia than his Senate opponent Michelle Nunn while campaiging in Perry on Sunday, according to WMAZ.
“We’re going to win big here in Houston County. I know the people here in Georgia. The conservative values I grew up with are still here. These are not Maryland values, these are Georgia values. And I’m going to be talking about that here. We’re going to do just fine in Houston County. These are all my friends. This clay underneath my nails is Georgia clay right here from Houston County,” said Perdue.
“They’re only about 10 people in the United States Senate who have any real business experience, and with my 40-year career, I hope to add some value to the debate of how to break the gridlock between tax increase and spending cuts, and get this economy going and put people back to work,” says Perdue.
Megan Whittemore, former press secretary to former Congressional Majority Leader Eric Cantor, will take a job with the Perdue Senate campaign, according to Jim Galloway’s AJC Political Insider. Whittemore is also an alumnus of Fox News, where she covered campaigns and Capitol Hill.
On the heels of the Democratic convention at which she took aim at David Perdue’s business track record, Democrat Michelle Nunn is now up on television with an ad on the same themes.
The buy includes at least $113k on WSB-TV in Atlanta, according to Daniel Malloy of the AJC.
We checked some of the political files and found the following additional buys:
If Republicans have a problem attracting votes from women, the Democrats may have a bigger problem with men, according to an analysis by U.S. News & World Report.
[I]n several of the headline U.S. Senate contests of the cycle, Democrats’ troubles with males are even more pronounced than the GOP’s deficit with the fairer sex, according to a U.S. News analysis of available public polling data.
The male drift from the Democratic Party, particularly white males, isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Reagan Democrats were comprised largely of men who felt the party had abandoned them, and not the other way around. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 62 percent of the white male vote. But in a campaign cycle set to see a handful of margin-of-error races that determine U.S. Senate control, it’s an often overlooked and undervalued element of the election.
“If they don’t find a way to reverse the trend, there will be a gender gap and it will favor Republicans,” says Republican pollster Wes Anderson.
An early August Wall Street Journal/NBC News national poll crystallized the canyon that exists between men and women’s views on the midterm elections. While women prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress by a 14-point gap, the difference is even larger among men. Males want a Republican-led Congress by a full 17 points.
Perhaps nowhere are males hobbling Democratic hopes more than in the battleground Senate race of North Carolina. Polls remain deadlocked between first-term Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan and Republican challenger Thom Tillis, but the preferences of the genders are jarringly far apart. In the most recent poll, from GOP-leaning Civitas Institute, Hagan’s advantage was 8 points. Among men though, she’s getting throttled. Tillis is up 13 points.
Republicans won men by 14 points in their banner 2010 midterm year, and this off-year Democrats could face a similar staggering deficit. But largely, their focus remains on increasing their margins with women rather than attempting to persuade men.
Republicans may also benefit from an enthusiasm gap, with GOP-leaning respondents indicating more excitement about voting in November than Democrats.
“The straight-forward conclusion is that this enthusiasm gap will play out at the voting booths in November, resulting in widespread GOP gains, led by a takeover of the U.S. Senate,” writes [Republican pollster Neil] Newhouse in a blog post on the Public Opinion Strategies’ website. “But, what if the enthusiasm gap is meaningless?”
As evidence of the potentially meaninglessness of having voters that are more fired up and ready to go than the other side, Newhouse points to polling data from the run-up to the 2012 election.
“The enthusiasm gap was taken to the woodshed by the Obama team’s [get out the vote] efforts,” writes Newhouse. “In a nutshell, the Democrats turned out voters who were ‘unenthusiastic,’ ‘unexcited’ and not ‘energized’ to vote, rendering the ‘enthusiasm gap’ meaningless.”
His point is simple: Enthusiasm is great. But enthusiasm without a get out the vote operation to bottle that passion into actual votes isn’t decisive. It’s Newhouse’s way of warning his party that there are still 85 days left before the election and that no one ever won in the middle of August. It’s a guard against complacency.
A related problem for pollsters is how to address the Democratic strategy of turning out voters who have not been active previously. The Michelle Nunn memo makes clear that her strategy includes adding 200,000 new voters, more than fifteen percent of her vote totals [Nunn memo at p.4]. With many pollsters using past voting behavior as a predictor of future voting, does this throw a monkey wrench in November predictions? Is there a way to determine from the outside whether Nunn’s Voter ID strategy is working?
Democrats sounding more like Republicans in their ads is not just a thing in Georgia – nationally, more Dems are calling for traditionally-Republican positions on economic issues.
Faced with a treacherous political environment, many Democrats are trotting out campaign ads that call for balanced budgets, tax cuts and other more traditionally GOP positions. Some of them are running in congressional districts that just two years ago broke sharply for President Barack Obama.
The Republican-flavored ads provide an early glimpse of how Democrats will wage their 2014 campaign. Democrats, hampered by Obama’s rising unpopularity and the tendency for conservatives to turn out at higher levels than liberals in midterm years, face the reality that swing congressional districts favorable to them in 2012 will be far less so in 2014.
I’ve written that the Perdue v. Nunn campaign will include a lot of “Main Street versus Wall Street” language from the Democrat and that Republicans have to become better at connecting our economic vision with the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of voters. But do voters still believe that they can move up the economic ladder? That’s a salient question for strategists looking at the 2014 Georgia Senate race.
An article in the Wall Street Journal analyzing poll results suggests there is a gap in belief in upward mobility between Republicans and Democrats.
The poll finds Republicans by a two-to-one margin believe the U.S. is still a country where anyone who is willing to work hard can succeed and be comfortable financially, whatever their background.
Democrats, by an even bigger margin, hold the opposite view–that a widening income gap between the wealthy and everyone else has eroded the ability for any American to climb to a higher income bracket and make a better life. Independents resemble Democrats on this question.
Speaking of the recession, income shapes how people feel about the economy. Sixty percent of those Americans who make more than $75,000 think the U.S. is no longer in a recession, while 62% of those who make less than $30,000 think it is. Republicans and Democrats split almost evenly on the question of whether we are still in a recession.
Still, anger and frustration seem to be the unifying theme this midterm-election year. Among the 22% of American adults who think the country is headed in the right direction, half said there was something that upsets them enough to carry a protest sign for a day.
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Why Gwinnett school board is expected to raise property taxes | www.myajc.com
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