Geez & crackers

It’s an election year summer, which is a two-fold pain in the ass for me. It’s about this time of year that the television stations start peppering us relentlessly with campaign commercials. The races here in Georgia seemed to go negative pretty quickly, especially between the Democratic contenders for governor and the two Republican candidates for lieutenant governor. In the governor’s race, the two front-running Dems hoping to face Sonny “Concretehead” Purdue in November are current Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox and Georgia Lt. Governor Mark Taylor. They’ve been trading allegations of misuse of their respective offices for personal or political gain. Cox has accused Taylor of using prison labor in a private business and making money leasing property to the state. Taylor has accused Cox of misusing money in a public trust for a series of public service commercials he says were technically the start of Cox’s campaign for governor.

I got to watch both Taylor and Cox on a taped reply of last night’s gubernatorial debate, which also included two other candidates nobody’s heard of. Mac McCarley is a 78 year old World War II veteran who’s trying to get into the governor’s mansion. Apparently he’s running because he’s pissed at the Veteran’s Administration. He’s a fiesty guy (obviously), from what I could tell from his appearance in the debate, and some research I did on him revealed that he spent some time in the Alabama state senate during the late 1960s but was expelled due to allegations of unethical behavior. The other darkhorse candidate for the Democratic nomination on hand for the debate was a fellow named Bill Bolton. Bolton was the scariest of the four candidates. He constantly had that “deer in the headlights” look to him, and at one point he came mighty damn close to advocating abortion as a means of birth control, which would go over very well in a state loaded with Bible thumpers. I think Mark Taylor has a lock on the Democratic nomination; I like Cathy Cox and she has my vote, but Georgia’s not ready for a female governor, not in a state where conservative Southern Baptists think a woman’s place is in the home.

But the Republican primary in the Lt. Governor’s race has been much more entertaining and scary. This race pits Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, against Casey Cagle, a Georgia state senator. Reed has accused Cagle of serving on the state’s banking committee and promoting laws that have benefited Cagle and his business (which just happens to be a bank). Cagle likewise has accused Reed of “selling out Christians” by hiding unreported income in a non-profit organization and pointing out Reed’s association with the now disgraced Jack Abramoff. Reed’s troubles have just gotten worse as an Indian tribe in Texas has named him in a civil suit seeking millions in damages, alleging that Reed helped block legislation in Texas that would’ve legalized casino gambling while he was receiving money from a tribe and their competing casino in Louisiana to do so. Reed will deny everything, of course, but most people with more than eight functional brain cells realize Reed is dirtier than a college freshman’s laundry at the midterm.

The scary part of the Republican race came as I listened to a few minutes of the debate between Reed and Cagle this past Sunday evening on the radio. For a moment I thought I had tuned in a religious program, but the two candidates bashing each other with allegations confirmed that I hadn’t. Cagle brought up the topic of Reed’s affiliation with Abramoff, to which Reed replied, “I’m not perfect, but the One I serve is.” For me it doesn’t help that Reed’s campaign commercials include him stating, for the record, “As head of the Christian Coalition of Georgia Republican Party....” Um, thanks, Ralph, for so eloquently informing us that you’d like to bring the American Taliban to Georgia. And if you’re elected, the “One” you’d be serving are the people of Georgia and not all of us view the world through the prism of a Bible. And people were worried when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president in Iran; Ralph’s brand of religious zealotry is seemingly fine with folks.

Not even eBay can take me away from election year insanity. I like acquiring items of local color and history off eBay whenever I can. But at this time of year, with the college football season just around the corner, the listings where I can usually find these tidbits of local history are just loaded with auctions for individual and single game tickets for upcoming football games. People have been known to be gullible enough to shell out two or three grand on season tickets in these Rube Goldberg auctions. I call them that because at this time of the year, the college’s athletic association hasn’t even allocated tickets to those who put in their order forms. That’s right, people are bidding on tickets when the people auctioning them off don’t have an absolute guarantee that they’ll even receive tickets in the first place! Of course, I’ve already put in my order form for tickets and we’ll see if I get any. I’d better—the bastards at the ticket office have already tapped my credit card!