Last night I was welcomed by the Greater Fayette County Republican Women to speak at their pot luck dinner and I had a great time. I’d like to thank the friends both old and new who made me feel welcome. And I saw this outside the Tyrone Depot:

That’s right: irrefutable, if camouflaged proof that the Atlanta Braves are moving forward with the maglev train they proposed from MARTA to Turner Field. And they have the audacity to do so without asking permission from Common Cause Georgia. Scandal!

And remember what happened when Springfield tried out a monorail.

Speaking of Common Cause GA, the group announced yesterday the end of their petition drive to put the new Atlanta Falcons Stadium on the ballot. Of 35,000 signatures required to place an issue on the ballot, they estimated they received about 10,000. This highlights the high burden placed on citizens wishing to place on the ballot an issue that local elected officials wish to keep off.

Also last night, I was reminded by Karen Handel of what a pro-level political performance looks like. Last night, the microphone was having difficulty so when she was offered a couple minutes, Karen spoke without a microphone in a cavernous space with poor acoustics and maintained a speaking level that was both conversational and loud enough to carry to everyone in the crowd.

Earlier this year, Paul Broun spoke under similar circumstances at a meeting of the Walton GOP and I wondered if a woman, with the higher timbre characteristic of their voices, could project as well at a conversational tone. During any campaign, this will happen, microphones will break or work poorly, and you’ll be left to your own ability to project your voice. For anyone in public life, as a candidate or in your job, this is a professional skill worth learning and practicing. Karen Handel is awarded +2 points for a polished performance on the stump.

Quote of the Day: Politics Edition

The Virginia Governor’s race has gotten so nasty between Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat former Democratic National Committee Chair Terry McAuliffe that Lt. Governor Bill Bolling called it “disgusting,” but that’s not nearly good enough for the QOTD, which goes to University of Virginia Political Scientist Larry Sabato for his extended remarks.

“These two are running against the only people they could beat,” says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

“They are vying with one another on the scandal scale,” Mr. Sabato says. “It really is a race to the bottom.”

“Because the two parties are very polarized nationally, this does reflect at least that much, but normally you have a wider selection of candidates and you have at least one of them that comes closer to the mainstream without having these very debilitating appendages,” Sabato says.

But Sabato notes one sliver of good news for all Virginians as they consider their decisions in the gubernatorial faceoff.

“The saving grace is our one-term limit, and I’m going to fight anybody in the future who proposes to change it,” Sabato says.

Georgia Campaigns & Elections

A Press Release from the Canton T.E.A. Party yesterday called former Congressman and current 11th District candidate Bob Barr the “TEA Party Favorite,” which I assume is an endorsement, though the release did not use the word “endorse.”

Macon-Bibb County Commission candidate Al Tillman’s qualifications for the election are being challenged by Macon City Council Member Henry Gibson, who is also seeking the Commission seat. From WDRW-TV in Macon:

According to complaint, Gibson says that Tillman claimed a homestead exemption for a residence located within District 8, which would prohibit him from representing District 9.  It reads, “he has a financial, moral and ethical responsibility to represent those citizens he would represent in District 9 (Nine) if elected, but can’t effectively do so if he has those financial, moral and ethical obligations to himself, his wife and children in District 8 (Eight).”

The complaint is referring to a home on Robin Hood Road which according to the Bibb County Tax Assessor’s website has a homestead exemption, and lists Tillman as the owner.

Tillman says the home’s no longer in his name, and he no longer lives there.

In early June, he moved across the street into District 9 to the Heaton Place apartment complex.

As stated in the charter for the new government, the only residency requirements to run for commission are the candidate must live in the county for at least a year prior to running, and must reside in his or her district after being elected.

Gibson believes Tilman moved to get into the District 9 race, which only had one candidate, James Timley, before qualifying re-opened at the end of July.

The Gainesville Times reports that a study commissioned by the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials indicates that Hall County had the largest growth rate for Latino and Hispanic voters of any area in Georgia.

The report found nearly 184,000 Hispanic voters in the state, which is about 3 percent of the state’s electorate and a growth of 26 percent since GALEO’s 2008 study.

Hall has the fifth-largest number of registered Latino voters in the state at 7,095, with Gainesville accounting for about 1,583, according to the report. The growth of registered Latino voters in the county since the 2008 study is 35.25 percent.

“Three percent, that’s not a whole lot of the electorate obviously,” Bullock said. “What’s happening is the Georgia electorate is less and less white, less and less Anglo, is more minority.”

GALEO’s study of the Latino electorate in Georgia was authored by Jerry Gonzalez, the group’s executive director, with database analysis on voter turnout by M.V. “Trey” Hood, political science professor and graduate coordinator at the University of Georgia.

[Gonzalez] has said GALEO plans to file a lawsuit against Gainesville next month because the organization asserts the city’s at-large election system violates the Voting Rights Act.

“A large percentage of the Latino voters in Hall County reside within the city of Gainesville, I think is one important fact,” Gonzalez said. “I think the other part that leads to our concerns with regards to the at-large voting is that the Latino vote is depressed in Hall County as well as in the city of Gainesville.”

Tom Crawford writes that Karen Handel is waging an unusually aggressive campaign for United States Senate while we’re still very early in the season.

Handel, one of the Republican contenders for the Senate seat Saxby Chambliss is vacating, went on the offensive last week against three of the male candidates opposing her in the GOP primary.
She launched a website under the mocking title of “Only in Washington” and said she would use the online venue to publicize 42 examples of the “ridiculous things” that Jack Kingston, Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun have been part of during their careers in the U.S. House.
“We are where we are in this country not just because of the Democrats, but also because of Republicans not having the will and the resolve and the courage to make hard decisions that needed to be made,” Handel contended.

These items are chump change that Kingston, Gingrey and Broun could not have eliminated anyway, and even if they had, it would have made no real difference in solving the federal government’s fiscal woes.
Handel is on firmer ground when she criticizes the congressional trio for not doing more to rein in the national debt, which was at the $4 trillion level when Kingston first entered Congress 20 years ago and is now approaching $17 trillion.

She is rolling out the same approach she used in 2010 when Handel lambasted the “good ol’ boys” network that runs state politics and annoyed Republican members of the legislature by insinuating they were part of that allegedly corrupt group.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is launching a campaign against what it characterizes as a Tea Party-flavored Kool-Aid fest of Republican primaries that will produce what they call extreme conservative candidates.

In Georgia, the DSCC said today, “the right-wing circus that’s erupted…could possibly be the craziest in the country and provides Democrats with a prime pick up opportunity.”

“With seven candidates in the race and a very conservative primary electorate, the divisive GOP primary is pushing all the candidates to the far right and is certain to produce a nominee too extreme for mainstream Georgians,” the committee added.

Here’s what the DSCC and many of the liberal elites in Washington don’t understand about Georgia. It would be hard to be too conservative to be elected in the General Election.

From a PPP poll deliberately skewed to present a rosy picture for national Democrats and also designed to portray Georgia Republicans as crazy yokels, we learn that a majority of all Georgia voters surveyed believe in Creationism over Evolution. That is a culturally and politically-Conservative electorate in which an Obama Democrat doesn’t stand a chance.

Maybe they’re just using the rose-colored-glasses scenario in Georgia as a way to raise money.

Bridging the Gap in Charleston

August 23d and 24th in Charleston, South Carolina, the Bridging the Gap Womens’ Summit will feature Congresswomen Kay Granger (R-TX), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Renee Ellmers (R-NC) and talking head and author Ann Coulter.

The two-day summit will include leading female business owners, party leaders, elected officials and conservative activists from across the country aiming to address the Republican Party gender gap and strategies for the GOP to better connect with female voters.

The Summit will also feature panel discussions on topics that range from messaging to female audiences, candidate recruitment and cultivating female leadership.

“We look forward to gathering at the Bridging the Gap Summit with some of the Republican Party’s most successful, prolific and inspirational women,” said event founder, Karen Floyd. Floyd added, “It is no longer enough to talk about what we should do, the time has come to show that we can, and we will deliver results. Greater female leadership will help move the Republican Party in the right direction.”

Traveling from Georgia to the Summit will be Meagan Hanson, Chair of the Georgia Young Republicans and Southeastern Regional Director of the YRs. Tricia Pridemore, a candidate for Congress from the 11th District will also be on a panel, and Jenny Beth Martin, a native Georgian will be there from Tea Party Patriots.

If the conference were not for women only, it would make a great excuse for me to visit Charleston, where I was married about ten years ago.