After months of speculation and guessing, it looks like Roy Barnes is finally jumping off the fence and getting into the race for governor. Whether the other candidates like it or not, he clears the field in the Democratic primary. Does DuBose Porter now run for lieutenant governor? Should Thurbert Baker go ahead and accept that federal judgeship? My educated guess is that David Poythress continues with his long-shot campaign but he will likely be relegated to the ranks of nuisance candidates.
Barnes gives Democrats at least a shot at being competitive in a statewide race. I figure that any of the other Dems who’ve announced would get, at best, 45 percent of the general election vote against the Republican nominee. One thing that Barnes can do very well is raise money, so he would have a fighting chance.
The key questions for this race now become: are Georgia voters content to drift along for another four years doing nothing about the major issues facing the state, such as transportation, education, and water resources? Or are they willing to elect someone a little more willing to take action? In other words, do voters continue the eight-year nap or are they ready for a jolt of caffeine to get the system running? I honestly don’t know at this point how that question will be answered.
The rural white voters who abandoned Barnes in 2002 are gone for good. I don’t see how he could do anything to win them back. How about the other group that deserted him, the teachers? Under the leadership of Sonny Perdue, more than $2 billion in K-12 funding has been cut and class sizes have been increased. Will that persuade teachers to get over the anger they felt towards Barnes in 2002?
There’s also the looming issue of what to do about Bobby Kahn, the architect of Barnes’ disastrous reelection campaign in 2002. I understand that Barnes has been told by more than one person that Bobby’s got to go, but it’s hard for me to imagine that Barnes would ever bring himself to do this.
If you see next year that Barnes is running another campaign where all the money is being spent on media buys for TV commercials and little or nothing is being done to build party support at the grassroots level or get people out to the polls, then you can be pretty sure that Bobby’s still calling the shots.
It’s all very early, of course, so stay tuned. This race has suddenly become a lot more competitive.
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