Observations©

By Donald S. Conkey

Date: May 20, 2010 - # 1021 - Title: Get politically involved – get to know the candidates (4290) (841)

In sixty-one days (July 20) responsible Georgians are going to have to make a decision – a difficult decision on who they want to be their elected leaders for the next four years from amongst sixty candidates running for ten state-wide offices – nearly equally divided between democrat and republican candidates.

            There are ten candidates running for governor; three for the U.S. Senate; four for lieutenant governor; five for attorney general; six want to the state school superintendent; ten for state insurance commissioner; three for Georgia’s commissioner of agriculture; four for commissioner of labor and five for Georgia’s Public Service Commissioner - district two. Of the sixty candidates fifty-one are male and nine are female. Their names, web sites and party affiliation are listed on the Georgia Secretary of State web site.

            How things have changed since 1962 when I moved to Georgia to lead the Georgia Milk Producers Association. That year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Georgia’s ‘county-unit system’ was unconstitutional, changing Georgia’s politics forever. Georgia’s ‘county-unit system,’ patterned after the federal electoral system, gave each of Georgia’s 159 counties one ‘electoral vote.’ Following an election, and the votes counted, each county sent a delegate to Atlanta to cast their electoral vote for the candidate who received the most votes in their county.  The state was dominated by rural Georgia because a small county in rural Georgia with 2,000 voters had an equal vote with larger counties having 100,000 voters or more.

            In 1962 there were no republican or female candidates. It was a male dominated state. No more. The Talmadge family had dominated Georgia politics for decades. Senator Herman Talmadge was my political mentor during my first few years in Georgia. My milk farmers were his ‘people,’ and I never forget that. This was political reality. President F.D. Roosevelt’s influence was still being felt in 1962 with many treating Roosevelt as a god in rural Georgia. I soon learned about the ‘real’ politics they don’t teach at the university.

            But it is now 2010, 48 years later. Times have changed but not politics. They are still mean spirited, and in the next 61 days voters will be bombarded by thousands of messages from these 60 candidates asking for their vote. But remember the voter still determines who deserves their vote.

            As you show your voting registration card on July 20 you will be asked for your party preference and then given a ballot containing the names of those running in ‘your party.’ This is according to Georgia law. There are seven democrats and seven republican candidates running for governor. With so many candidates on each party ballot there will likely be a run off and you will then have to return to the voting booth in August and make another choice – to choose between the two top vote getters from the primary election.

            The system may seem cumbersome but it still is the best system in the world. But it requires citizen involvement, at every level of government, local, state and federal. On the state level the odds are that few Tribune readers will know all sixty candidates. The candidates with the most money may not be the most qualified, nor have the character our state needs today. This upcoming election, perhaps more than any election in our life time, is going to be critical. Corruption has destroyed many governments and many believe that corruption, especially at the federal level, is at the crux of the problems the nation now faces.

            Many things have changed since 1962. When I left Michigan in 1951 to enter the army Detroit was a teeming city, one of the leading cities in the nation. Today Detroit is half its population of 1950, and it has become much like a third world nation, all due to the political and moral corruption of the leaders ‘the people’ elected. How did this happen? There are several reasons. Foremost among those reasons has been Johnson’s Great Society adopted in 1969 that destroyed the concept that the traditional family is the foundational unit of all good government. Progressives led this movement. Another element for the self-destruction we see in many major cities is the change in mores of the nation, with the removal of God from schools and courts by those leading this movement. A third reason is retaliation for past perceived sins.