Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss is vulnerable to a Democratic challenge according to a local poll last week. To us Georgians, good ole Saxby is the overly tanned embarrassment who defeated Max Cleland by putting pictures of Osama bin Laden in his ads. It is time for him to go.
Word is that the Democrats had written Georgia off, which is ridiculous. Georgia has a lot of conservatives, but we have a lot of liberals, too. Remember that Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter (not that I'm a fan), Julian Bond, Sam Nunn, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Clark Howard, and many more liberals are from Georgia. Not to mention the B-52's and REM.
Know what else? The conservatives here are pretty nice. And reasonable.
The point is that Democrats can and do win in Georgia. They need a strong candidate. Unfortunately, no obvious name comes to mind.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin would be good. She has turned around a city government that many of us here considered corrupt and incompetent. She has a reputation for being effective and tough. She's a black woman, and as far as I can tell the business community loves her. She also has great presence.
The former Democratic Governor Roy Barnes is mentioned, but he doesn't seem interested. Vernon Jones, the manager of Dekalb County, will probably run, but he's kind of a nut. Julian Bond is only 67, but he lives in DC and may be too liberal to win. But he was pretty funny on the Colbert Report.
I'm sure there are plenty of ambitious, well coiffed aspiring Senators that I'm not aware of. But for now I like Shirley.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
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