To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld—and as proved yesterday—sometimes you have to choose your candidate for the reasons you have, not necessarily the reasons you want or wish you had.
I mentioned last month that I didn’t know enough about the two candidates for county commissioner in my district, to really have any idea which to vote for. Well, I think I’m probably going to vote for Gary DeGeorge.
First (and least substantively), he was the one who contacted me seeking my support. That’s one of those little things that make a lot more difference than they should, and which John McCain could stand to think about. Now, DeGeorge admitted that he sought me out because I have this blog, which apparently has some local readership—but his opponent, Rodney Brooks, didn’t even respond to a League of Women Voters survey. DeGeorge, being younger, has some grasp of the possibilities of the “new media” in politics, and is trying to use them. (I do kind of wish he weren’t using MySpace for his campaign site, but at least he has one.)
Two other things have tipped me toward preferring DeGeorge, one being:
Brooks said he doesn’t understand why the county commissioners stopped a Wal-Mart from coming to Ga. Hwy. 154 at Interstate 85.
“We lost a large tax base,“ Brooks said. Many residents of the fourth district are going to Peachtree City’s Wal-Mart and taking their sales tax dollars with them.»
Candidates oppose passenger jets here
That Wal-Mart issue was as close as I’ve come in a long time to an outright NIMBY position, but others also opposed it who live nowhere near that interchange. The Times-Herald editorialized against it, citing its proximity to a considerably larger, existing Wal-Mart, and the need for massive road and intersection improvements to handle the traffic—improvements that the developers weren’t offering to cover. The cost of making that location workable for high-impact retail would have eaten a huge chunk of the sales-tax benefit Brooks envisioned. Furthermore, sales tax revenue contributes a great deal to government spending; not necessarily so much to residents’ standard of living. Coweta needs a wider and more balanced range of economic development. Minimum-wage retail has its place, but we’re not exactly hurting for those jobs as it is.
And for the record, if people who live in my part of the county are shopping at a Wal-Mart in an adjacent county, it may be due in part to the fact that so many of my neighbors’ jobs are not in Coweta. Priorities, people.
One more matter that enters into my thinking on county politics is the commission chairmanship. Of Georgia’s 159 counties, only Coweta County does not have a chairman specifically elected to that post by the voters. Rather, each year the chairman is elected by the members of the commission itself. There is some talk of bringing Coweta into line with the rest of the state, and I tend to agree—but it’s not a major issue to me.
This issue has had its profile raised a little bit after Commissioner Leigh Schlumper, the incumbent in my district who is not seeking re-election, was passed over for the chairmanship this year and sued for discrimination. The lawsuit raises other complaints besides the chairmanship, which I think deserve to be aired if they have any basis—but on the chairmanship itself I’m fairly confident what a court would have to rule.
The claim is that the county has a rule prescribing a sequence of rotation that essentially made 2008 Schlumper’s “turn” for a second term as chairman. However the chairmanship remains the subject of a commission vote. The rotation sequence, if binding, essentially dictates the outcome of a commission vote, which I think a court would rule the commission cannot do merely by ordinance. As long as the commissioners elect their chairman, they should be free to use their own best judgment from year to year in making that choice. For his part, DeGeorge agrees. Brooks would prefer that the chairman be elected countywide, so that the power now held by a non-elected county administrator would be wielded instead by an elected official, directly accountable to voters.
As I said, I think the voter-elected chairmanship is probably a better way to go than the current, rotating chairmanship—but a lot would depend on how the powers of the office are balanced against those of the other commissioners. Lacking a definite plan for such a transition I am not inclined to give that issue alone a great deal of weight in deciding my vote.
I think DeGeorge deserves a chance.
