Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for October 1, 2014

Original Communist (O.C.) Karl Marx published Das Kapital on October 1, 1867.

Voters in the state of Washington adopted the state constitution on October 1, 1889.

The first World Series of baseball opened on October 1, 1903.

On October 1, 1908, Ford introduced the Model T.

Former President Jimmy Carter was born on October 1, 1924 at Wise Sanitarium in Plains, Georgia, the first American President to be born in a hospital.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Warm Springs, Georgia for the 21st time beginning on October 1, 1931.

In a Special Election October 1, 1940, Florence Gibbs became the first woman elected to Congress from Georgia, completing her late husband’s term and serving through January 3, 1941, but no standing for a full term of her own.

Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the Communist People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949.

The Carter Center in Atlanta was dedicated on October 1, 1986.

Mikhail Gorbachev named himself Chairman of the USSR’s Supreme Soviet on October 1, 1988.

President George H.W. Bush condemned Iraq’s takeover of Kuwait in a speech to the United Nations on October 1, 1990.

Georgia Politics in Brief

On October 8, the State of Georgia and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will sign an agreement to begin the deepening of the Savannah River channel.

The signing will allow the Corps to accept bids for the first contracts to be awarded under the $706 million project. The Corps’ Savannah District will announce two of those contracts this week.

Deal said the signing next week means the physical dredging of the Savannah River channel can finally begin.

“This expansion project is vitally important for economic development and job creation on a local and national level,” the governor said. “After years of regulatory purgatory, we will soon start moving dirt. I’m grateful to all involved for working tirelessly to see this project through to fruition.

“Next Wednesday will certainly be a great day for Georgia.”

And a day that has been a long time coming. Initially approved by Congress in 1999, the project’s 15-year path to a 47-foot river channel has been anything but smooth.

That’s timely news, as Toyota announced it will use the Port of Savannah to export automobile built in the United States to Australia and New Zealand.

“When researching a location for exports to Oceania, Toyota’s experience in Brunswick made a GPA facility an appealing option,” Akahoshi said. “The challenge was in bringing together the service profile — vessel schedules, processing, survey requirements and direct rail service.”

Toyota’s collaboration with GPA, Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines, Vehicle Services Americas and Norfolk Southern took the move from concept to reality within an abbreviated time frame, Akahoshi said.

“We had great confidence that with the GPA as a partner, the project would get done.”

The Japanese automaker will move thousands of Highlanders a year from its Princeton, Ind., plant through Ocean Terminal, which is located on the river just west of the Talmadge Bridge.

The vehicles will arrive in Savannah by Norfolk Southern rail, where they will be staged at Ocean Terminal prior to export. The GPA recently completed paving an additional five acres at Ocean Terminal, bringing the total parking area for roll-on/roll-off cargo to 40 acres on the terminal.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is in Atlanta today, and can be seen at 1:30 at The Varsity supporting Attorney General Sam Olens in the upstairs breezeway. Before that, Romney will be at a closed fundraiser for Republican Senate candidate David Perdue. Some supporters (and detractors) of Romney are taking his busy political schedule as a sign he may be considering a run for President again in 2016.

Libertarian Amanda Swafford, the only candidate for U.S. Senate in Georgia who has ever been elected or held public office, gets her close-up in a Time magazine profile of “the Woman Who Could Keep Control of the Senate Up for Grabs”.

There is a nightmare scenario that keeps most politicos working on both sides of the aisle up at night: after the midterm elections, and even through the anticipated Dec. 6 run off in Louisiana, control of the Senate likely won’t be decided until Jan. 6, the date a run-off in Georgia will take place, if any one candidate fails to muster 50% of the vote. It is this scenario that Libertarian candidate Amanda Swafford, who regularly pulls 5% in most polls, relishes.

“In that situation, if we did force a runoff,” Swafford tells TIME, “I’d say that’s a clear mandate from people of Georgia for a small government and less involvement in people’s lives.”

As of the end of June, Swafford had raised $7,683 for her senatorial bid. The single 37-year-old has kept her day job as a paralegal as she has mounted her campaign. “It makes for a lot of late nights and early mornings,” she says, “but I believe electing someone to the Senate like me, who knows what it’s like to work a job, have a boss, and make ends meet on a regular budget, would bring a valuable perspective to the Senate.”

Swafford is pro-choice and for the legalization of marijuana. And, like most Libertarians, she’s deeply suspicious of President Obama’s engagement abroad, particularly in Syria and Iraq. “Last year, the President wanted to bomb Syria for their chemical weapons, now he’s asking for their help to defeat another enemy,” she says. (Obama hasn’t actually asked Syrian strongman Bashar Assad for help in defeating ISIS.)

The Georgia State Ethics Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission is back in business, issuing fines to Columbia County Chairman Ron Cross and dismissing a complaint against Jason Carter.

The Augusta Chronicle editors write that Georgia voters should keep Mark Butler on the job as labor commissioner.

As labor commissioner, he has pledged himself to putting as many Georgians as possible back to work, opening several avenues for job-seekers to find work as soon as possible.

And that’s why Butler deserves your vote to remain Georgia’s labor commissioner.

Butler also formed a Regional Coordinator Program and a Business Service Unit that help identify pools of work talent statewide that businesses and industries can access for job recruitment.

He might even be the only labor commissioner in the country with his own SWAT detachment. The Special Workforce Assistance Team helps jobless Georgians better market themselves to potential employers.

Butler’s newest program, christened just this year, is Customized Recruitment, which offers specialized, streamlined job-seeking assistance for newly located businesses.

For all his laudatory work in helping others find jobs in this troubled economy, Butler deserves to keep his job in Atlanta.

I concur and will vote for Mark Butler. I heard him speak about his work at the Georgia Department of Labor at the Walton County GOP recently and his expertise in the subject matter and accomplishments in office are impressive.

Residents in the city of Gordon are asking a judge to hold their Mayor in contempt for allegedly violating the court order that reinstated her to office.

Two city councilmen and a group called the Concerned Citizens of Gordon filed a lawsuit early this year seeking Mayor Mary Ann Whipple-Lue’s removal from office. They alleged malfeasance and multiple violations of the state’s Open Meetings Act.

Whipple-Lue was suspended from office twice this summer, but she was reinstated in July on the condition that she abide by specific rules.

In the motion filed Tuesday in Wilkinson County Superior Court, the group alleges the mayor violated the order that reinstated her into office. Specifically, the group points out that Whipple-Lue sent City Attorney Joseph Boone a termination letter Sept. 25 that said “the city will take the next step and secure another city attorney.”

In the letter, Whipple-Lue told the longtime city attorney that although the city charter says the city’s lawyer serves at the City Council’s pleasure, two City Council members who took office with her haven’t voted for him to continue as city attorney.

Welcome to the Machine

Bill Barrow and Christina A. Cassidy of the Associated Press have a look inside the campaign machinery of a modern first-tier Democratic candidate. Via Macon Telegraph.

DECATUR, Ga. — Behind a nondescript storefront just outside Atlanta, Delores Washington makes telephone call after call in this Democratic stronghold using a list of potential voters handed to her by a young party staffer.

The retired high school principal doesn’t ask questions about the massive data collection behind the list compiled by expensive political consultants to predict and influence behavior at the polls.

But she knows what to do. “My job is to expand and get out that base,” Washington said. “That’s how we win.”

Democratic and Republican campaign committees from Washington have invested heavily in field offices here, with paid staffers and volunteers using national party voter databases that try to replicate turnout successes of President Barack Obama’s national campaigns. Both sides are pushing their identified supporters to vote early, and each camp agrees that it will take about 1.4 million votes to win in Georgia this year.