A new Georgia poll shows that incumbent GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss could be vulnerable if former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes should enter the race for the Senate seat. Chambliss only polled 2 points ahead of Barnes in the new InsiderAdvantage poll.
Saxby Chambliss 42%
Roy Barnes 40%
DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones who does not have as much name recognition statewide as Barnes was able to keep Chambliss under 50% in polling as well.
Saxby Chambliss 48%
Vernon Jones 31%
Another Democratic candidate has stepped up to compete in the June 19th special election to fill the vacant seat of the late Republican Rep. Charlie Norwood: James Marlow. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Political Insider:
Just before 10 a.m., we got a call from James Marlow, the new Democratic candidate for the 10th District congressional race in east Georgia.He’d just finished breaking the news of his candidacy to the hometowners in Lincolton at the steps of the county courthouse. He counted nearly 60 witnesses, which in a town with four stoplights constitutes a throng.
“I just feel a calling to serve. I know that sounds a little corny,” Marlow said.
He’s a 46-year-old native, whose father served as mayor of Lincolnton. The son rode the Internet. You might remember the younger Marlow as the founder of AnythingSouthern.com, which was to be a way to get information on, well, anything Southern – food, religion, entertainment, the works.
The site was one of the many dot-com bubbles that popped.
Most recently, Marlow was a sales director for Yahoo Inc. He’s now a full-time candidate.
While four other Democrats are currently in the special election pool, Marlow has attracted the backing of local and state Democratic leaders, according to CQ Politics:
Marlow obtained the backing of 13 Democratic county chairmen at a meeting held March 31 in the 10th District city of Clarksville, according to Marlow spokesman Emil Runge.Although this is the candidate’s first foray into politics, his name is not unknown in local Democratic circles. His father, Buddy Marlow, served as mayor of Lincolnton. The campaign staff Marlow has assembled, including Jeff DiSantis, former executive director of the state Democratic Party, and Runge, former state Democratic Party communications director, likely will bolster his rookie political effort.
As for campaign issues, Marlow told the AJC that he won’t shy away from Iraq on the campaign trail:
He’s eager to talk about health care, education, and the creation of good jobs. “Iraq is obviously an issue,” he said.As we said yesterday, it’s clear that Democrats think it’s to their advantage to talk about the Middle East in this race.
Marlow says he’s an eager defender of America, but is also a defender of American troops. In the latter category, he places decent treatment for wounded soldiers and armor for those in battle.
It also means – and this may become his catch phrase – “not putting troops in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong numbers.” Competency, in other words.
While Bush won this district twice by hefty margins (63% and 65%, in that order), but Clinton was able to win it twice in the ’90s. And, according to the Marlow, the district has had no trouble voting for Democrats on the state level:
As for those who think the Tenth too Republican to elect him, Marlow points out that Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin, Attorney General Thurbert Baker, and Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond all carried the district. All, of course, were Democrats.
Georgia hasn’t been a bright spot for Democrats recently, but special elections have the habit of producing unpredictable outcomes. The upcoming race to fill Georgia’s 10th could be worth keeping an eye on.
On the web: Marlow for Georgia
Race Tracker: GA-10
Yesterday, I posted a diary asking help in formulating a response to an editorial printed in my local newspaper that slanders those who oppose Bush’s escalation.
I have written a draft of a response (quoted over the flip). There were many things I wanted to talk about such as the fact the all three Iraq war veterans in Congress voted for the resolution, how the Iraq War took time, effort, troops, materiale, and attention away from the hunt for Osama, and so on. However, I decided to keep in short (158 words) and focus only on the question of supporting the troops, hoping it will increase the chances of getting printed.
This letter is in response to Monday’s editorial by Cal Thomas, an article full of untruths, faulty logic, and distortion. What I really want to address is Thomas’ main argument that those who oppose Bush’s plan to escalate the Iraq War by sending 20,000 more troops into Iraq do not support the troops. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The greatest test of one’s support for the troops is not how fervently one waves the flag or how quickly one gets behind whatever plan the President has, it’s making sure that troops are asked to risk and give their lives only when absolutely necessary and only when some good will come of it.
So, those of us who oppose escalation support our troops by demanding that they not be sent into the crossfire of a civil war, knowing that past troop increases have not helped and that the President has no clear definition of what constitutes victory.
I have noticed recently that my local newspaper, The Daily Tribune-News (Cartersville, Georgia) runs only editorials from right-wing talking heads like Mike Reagan, a former chair of the county Republican Party, and the like. A couple years ago, there was balance. The chair of the county Democratic Party, Howard Dean, and a local Democratic activist all had columns at one time. Now, that’s changed.
But I digress. The object of this diary is not to complain about the right-wing slant of my local paper. It’s to ask help in formulating a response to one column published recently.
More over the flip.
In this column (linked and quoted), one wingnut spouts out the typical Democrats undermine troop morale bullshit:
Before political correctness, a person who gave someone a gift and later took it back was called an “Indian giver.”
This is what a majority in the House did last week when they “gave” their support to American forces fighting to stabilize Iraq and defeat our enemy and then promptly took it back. How else should one interpret this “nonbinding” resolution when part one said, “Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq,” but part two negates part one: “Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.”
This is like sending your love a valentine last week and this week sending a note withdrawing the sentiment.
Last Saturday, Republicans managed to block a similar effort in the Senate, but by only four votes. Senate Democrats — and a few like-minded Republicans — vowed to try again.
Once, most members of Congress supported the president’s prosecution of the war. That was when his approval numbers were sky-high. Now that those numbers have fallen, so has congressional support. Most Democrats claim, falsely, that the November election was a referendum on the war. If the president’s policy succeeds, though, two things will happen. First, some members who opposed him will claim they were behind the troop surge all along. Second, most Democrats will assert that success is actually failure because they can’t afford politically to admit they were wrong.
Do the troops feel supported by this House resolution? There are no opinion polls of military and civilian workers in Iraq, but two comments have come to my attention. One is a letter to the editor of The Washington Times from John McFarlane, a military trainer for Northrop-Grumman Technical Services in Elizabethtown, Ky. McFarlane writes that he has just returned from Iraq “after coming out of retirement to go there … I can tell you that the greatest fear of the young service members over there is that the American public will fail to pursue total victory and will leave early, thereby wasting their battle buddies’ life and blood. They feel pain every time somebody pays lip service to his or her conscience with the line: ‘I support the troops, but not the policy.’ (They) know they are the policy and that you should feel shame if you as an American would commit them to anything less than total victory.”
The second letter is from Army Sgt. Daniel Dobson, about whom I wrote in a column last week. Sgt. Dobson says he was in the chow hall in Mosul, watching CNN on the day of the House vote. He writes in an e-mail, “…it made me furious to see congressmen unashamedly proclaim their cowardice, but the reaction of the soldiers tore my heart in two. The faces were that of men that looked as if they were just told there is no United States to go home to. The fury gives way to depression: the thought alone that our elected representatives do not represent us anymore is more than depressing. We see cowardice, sickening spineless cowardice and it makes soldiers sick.”
So much for the assertion by some members of Congress that the House resolution, with the promise of more and binding ones to come, will have no affect on troop morale. How many other soldiers feel this way? How many others might be affected by these “no-confidence” votes? Of equal importance, how emboldened does the enemy feel as he sees the prophecy of Osama bin Laden coming true, that America doesn’t have the stomach or staying power for a long war and will eventually give up if enough death and injury is inflicted upon American troops?
If Congress wants to end this war, it should immediately vote to cutoff funds and receive whatever benefits, or consequences, that result. But too many who lack the spine to win also lack the spine to accept accountability for defeat. The only victory they appear committed to is the next election.
Some points I would like to make:
1. Thomas leaves out that all three Iraq war veterans in Congress are Democrats and all three voted for the resolution.
2. Voting for this resolution does support the troops by saying they should not be thrown into the middle of a civil war. What is so hard to comprehend about that?
3. He leaves out the fact that most Americans oppose the escalation.
4. His saying the election was not a referendum on the war is bullshit and the exit polls say so.
5. Keeping point four in mind, is he saying that most Americans don’t support the troops and are enabling the terroists.
Please chime in with points, information (citations especially), ways to word things, etc.
Folling the tragic news of Charlie Norwood’s death, the Republican vultures took little time to circle the sky above his still-warm body. Two Democrats were also mentioned, but none yet have announced
State Senator Ralph Hudgens (R) — who lost runs for Congress in 1988, 1992 and 1994 — already announced he will run. Hudgens was the early frontrunner in the 1994 GOP primary, but Norwood defeated him in an upset. State Representative Barry Fleming (R) also is likely to run. State Representative Jeanette Jamieson (D) and former Athens-Clarke County Mayor Doc Eldridge (D) are also possible candidates, although CD-10 demographics favor the GOP.
No date has been announced yet, but we should be prepared to at least make the Republicans work for it.