Thursday, September 4, 11:56 am

Cobb County State Rep. Rob Teilhet will air an ad on Friday's Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader episode that State School Superintendent Kathy Cox is set to appear on.  The spot questions Cox's appearance and offers Teilhet's own prescriptions for improving education in Georgia, including reducing class sizes and expanding Pre-K.  The advertisement is available online on YouTube.

You will never see me write again that the Republican Party is the dumb party. Corrupt maybe, or hypocritical or tobacco roadish, but never dumb.

The selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate was the slickest tactical move I have seen in politics. It took the wind right out of the Democrats’ sails and swept Barack Obama’s name out of the headlines. As soon as Palin was announced, that hissing sound you heard was the air going out of the donkeys’ momentum.

Though, for the life of me, I cannot picture in my mind’s eye the Hillary Clinton supporter who would switch to the McCain-Palin ticket because of the perception that Sarah has replaced Hillary as the women voters’ champion. Hillary’s supporters are mostly Democrats and Independents. Sarah is an extreme Republican and a strong antidepressant for the GOP’s evangelical bloc. The right-wing church folks seemed a bit down after maverick McCain, a sometimes pro-choice guy, won the primaries and the nomination. They ought to be feeling a whole lot better now that Palin, an unconditional anti-abortionist, is on board.

As Gov. Sonny Perdue and his fellow Republican leaders in Georgia head off to Minneapolis to party, more Georgians back home are beginning to feel the squeeze of his ordered budget cuts and reductions.  In one particularly tragic case, the Georgia War Veterans Home in Milledgeville has told residents that it will be shuttering its doors and that they'll need to find other places to live.

The assisted living facility houses veterans with special needs, many of whom were homesless prior to obtaining admission.  Programs such as this can be the casualty of across the board budget cuts when department heads look to ax one entire entity quickly instead of causing trouble by messing with the budgets of numerous internal agencies under their control.

Because Perdue's revenue estimates were too optimistic, and unless he convenes an unlikely special session of the legislature where budget writers can explicitly make their preferences known, it will be up to bureacrats to make convenient reductions that may prove to be politically unpopular.  In the case of the Veterans Home, it would probably survive a special session, but if it is shuttered that decision may be reinforced by the stark realities of this budget crisis when appropriators finally meet next January.

They'll be unwilling to come to the aid of unpopular decisions that have already sunk in if it means opening new cans of worm elsewhere.  By the way, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California skipped the Minneapolis GOP Convention to tend to his own homegrown budget crisis.

Former Gov. Roy Barnes may have thrown more red meat on the table against Republicans than all the national Democrats put together at the Denver convention.

Maybe that’s why Barnes didn’t get much TV time. He sounded as tough as Zell Miller talking about Democrats. But Barnes didn’t get around to challenging anyone to a duel as Miller did four years ago.

A newsletter report and interview on Barnes’ performance this year will have to suffice. At a gathering of the Georgia delegation in Denver last week, “Barnes delivered a stemwinder to wake up the delegates at their breakfast meeting, excoriating the Republican-majority Legislature for the ‘stench’ it has caused at the Capitol, and slamming Gov. Sonny Perdue for mismanagement of the state budget,” reported Tom Baxter of the Southern Political Report newsletter.

After Senator Barack Obama's well received speech to a packed house of nearly 80,000 Democratic delegates and activists at Denver's Invesco Field, Gov. Sonny Perdue may wish he had minced his words on Obama's problem with party unity.  Perdue, a former Democratic delegate from the 1996 Convention was trotted out by Sen. John McCain's campaign to weigh in on the problems Obama would have winning in a state like Georgia.  While discussing that he added in his own thoughts on the opposing party's unity.

Ironically, Perdue rode into office on the backs of disgruntled Confederate hold-outs angry at his predecessor for changing a Confederate themed flag and angry members of Georgia's teachers union.  That initial coalition was always too fragile to hold, but his actions since being elected have satisfied neither group.  In the legislature, Republican Senators have done battle on behalf of Perdue with the more unhinged House faction of the Republican party, that seems to win points for effort and moxy from the base if nothing else. 

Now Perdue, facing a $1.5 billion budget crunch, has informed cities and counties that they won't be getting an annual $400 million plus offset for local property tax payers.  Many Republican legislators worry that Democrats have an issue in November's elections that can tie the inaction that stems from a lack of unity at the Capitol into a real campaign issue by pointing out increasing local property taxes.  And county and city governments have been challenging Perdue's claims that this money doesn't effectively hold down taxes and warning property owners that they may see a second, larger tax bill later in the year, possibly before election day.

You have to hand it to the McCain campaign.  When it comes to problems with party unity, they couldn't have found a more seasoned expert than Sonny Perdue.

Only in Georgia …

State School Superintendent Kathy Cox flies to Hollywood to appear on the TV game show, “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” (Answer: probably not.) Meanwhile, her predecessor, Linda Schrenko, cools her heels in a federal prison for stealing a bundle from — where else? — the state education department.

Gov. Sonny Perdue finally gets his helicopter pilot’s license. Now he can fly daily over the ground-bound peasantry trudging its way to work in lowly cars. He also zips off to China again. Wonder why he keeps going to China. Is there something we don’t know?

State Sen. Mitch Seabaugh convenes a House panel to consider expanding the freedom to pack guns in Georgia. An “expert” witness testifies that the law ought to make it OK for adults to carry guns into schools, churches and other public places — even if they have criminal drug records. Georgia law already makes it legal for civilians to carry concealed weapons into airports and many other public and private places.

Monday, August 25, 3:14 pm

As Jim Martin prepares for the General Election against Sen. Saxby Chambliss, his supporters continue to let out one of the longest sighs of relief in recent Georgia political history at his runoff victory over DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones.  Despite Martin's win, an analysis of turnout for the primary runoff by Bill Shipp Online disproves one long held notion by many Democratic operatives here in Georgia.  Namely that African American voters don't return for a runoff.

In the July 15th primary, 48.3% of Democratic voters were African American while 49.3% were white.  Three weeks later at the August 5th runoff, the African American percentage of the electorate actually increased slightly to 48.6%.  Whites were down slightly to 48.9%.  Of the approximately 260,000 voters that returned for the runoff, African Americans actually outnumbered whites by about 3,000 voters.  A little under 75,000 new voters showed up to cast a ballot that had skipped the primary, and whites outnumbered African Americans here by 4,000.  In total, white voters outnumbered African Americans by only about 1,000.

While white voters in most rural counties as well as DeKalb and Fulton Counties have held to their longtime primary preferences and continue to vote in the Democratic primary, some white voters in North Georgia counties are continuing a move to the Republican primary.  And African American voters in suburban counties like Clayton, Cobb, Douglas, Fayette, Gwinnett, Henry, Newton and Rockdale continue to participate in local Democratic politics in higher numbers. 

Unfortunately for their hopefuls, Democrats may be getting ready to party like it’s 1988.

The Democrats open their convention in Denver Monday to launch Barack Obama against the GOP establishment guy, John McCain. The donkeys are already singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” The Denver convocation promises to be a wild but premature victory party.

Remember 1988? Twenty years ago thousands of happy Democrats rolled into Atlanta for the big A’s first (and last) national political convention.

Georgia voters often lament that due to local party dominance they have little say in top of ballot primaries for offices like US Senate, Governor and Congress.  This year Washington state has sought to remedy that problem with a unique open primary system.  In it, voters choose their preferred pick regardless of party on a per-race basis.  Unlike Louisiana's old "jungle" primary, the top two advance to the General Election even if one candidate received over 50% of the vote.  While it hasn't produced any surprises this year (most races will feature a Democrat and a  Republican in November) if a similar system was in place in Georgia, it is easy to imagine different matchups in prior races.  Though the measure was approved by Washington voters to reduce the influence of the parties, the desire to place one prominent candidate in contention to ensure they make it to the General Election may actually increase backroom deals and the power of party bosses.