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.

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.

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. 

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.

In 2004 and 2006, Republicans George W. Bush and Sonny Perdue won blowout elections at the top of the ticket, garnering at least 57% of the vote.  In the last Presidential year, Bush's massive victory helped the Republicans finally take over the state House as he racked up 60% of the vote or more in 102 of 180 districts.  Republicans ended up winning 96 on election day.

This year all signs still point to a GOP victory in Georgia, but possibly not the landslide victories of the past.  According to Rasmussen reports latest Georgia release, Sen. John McCain garners 50% of the votes in Georgia while Sen. Barack Obama takes 43%.  McCain is up 2% from an earlier poll by the firm, Obama has gained 4% as voters start to move from undecided to a decision. 

While Democrats can hardly crow about a poll which shows their standard bearer down seven, if Obama can compete for the undecideds in a manner similar to what he is getting from those who have made a decision, he could end up with nearly 46% of the vote.  State Democrats believe that kind of showing combined with an increase in African-American registration and turnout could put an additional 10 state House seats in play.  That could represent half the gains needed to take back the body with one election remaining (2010) before redistricting.

Of note: Georgia voters are split on former Sen. Sam Nunn as Obama's VP pick.  The same percentage say it would make them more likely to vote for Obama as less likely.  Saxby Chambliss, on the other hand, would be a net drag for McCain.  22% say they'd be more likely to vote for a McCain-Chambliss ticket, 25% say less likely.

As another sleepy summer descends on the Georgia political scene, political observers embark on a bi-annual exercsie to determine what if anything can be devined from the turnout in the summer primary.  It's common for one candidate or another in a downballot race to massively outpoll his opponent in primary votes only to be massively outpolled in the November election.  Georgia is still largely a one party state depending on the local county.

A study by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute urges the state to increase its minimum wage to at least the federal minimum wage and possibly higher.  According to the study, over 100,000 Georgia workers will see an increase in pay when the new federal minimum wage of $7.25 is fully phased in during 2009.  If Georgia raised the rate to $8, an additional 200,000 workers would see an increase in salary.

Georgia's Republican dominated legislature is unlikely to heed the call of this study.  A recent poll asked voters what income was needed to cover the basics for a family of four.  The average response was $44,000, a figure that is approximately four times the current minimum wage.  Democratic strategists believe the promise of a minimum wage increase helped the party overtake the 12 year GOP hold on Congress in the 2006 midterm elections and have long urged state Dems to make a similar promise on the state level a central part of their campaign platform.

The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports that Robert Moultrie, the disgraced CEO of Georgia based Facility Group has pled guilty to making $25,000 in illegal campaign contributions to former Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove.  The contributions were made at the same time as the Facility Group was managing a multimillion dollar construction contract to complete a beef processing plant.  The company is alleged to have defrauded the state and federal government of hundreds of millions of dollars after the plant was shuttered only months after completion.

Until very recently, the Facility Group has been one of Georgia's more successful government contractors.  The company manages multiple state and local government construction projects and employed Rep. Earl Ehrhart, the powerful Cobb Republican Rules Committee Chairman.  Ehrhart, who was a top executive at the company, left the company around the same time as felony indictments were unsealed for Moultrie and two other top executives in the Mississipp case.

As financial reporters begin to tell the story of what went wrong in the residential lending bust, Michael Hirsh of Newsweek shines a particularly harsh light on Georgia's role.  In 2002, Gov. Roy Barnes ushered through one of the toughest anti-predatory lending laws in the country.  It made the Wall Street financial houses that repackaged consumer credit legally liable for junk loans.

With Barnes gone a year later, a group of bi-partisan legislators led by Republican Senator Eric Johnson quickly pushed through Senate Bill 53 which gutted most of Barnes law and allowed for lenders to meet Georgia's exploding demand without worrying about who was left holding the bag when the clock would inevitably run out.  Now Georgia consistently ranks in the top handful of states for foreclosures and bad loans.

Though Hirsh's story has a national focus, it is worth remembering that both parties share much of the blame for the fiasco that was the passage of SB 53.  Although the original Senate version of the bill was more acceptable to consumer advocacy groups, the Republicans in the State House and enough of the Democrats who were in the majority at the time voted to amend it to gut even more of the protections championed by Barnes. The amendment that served as the vehicle for the pro-lender changes was offered by Rep. DuBose Porter, considered by many to be the frontrunner among announced Democratic contender for Governor in 2010.

When the bill returned to the Senate, three Republicans voted with the minority Democrats to return to the earlier version of the bill and force a conference committee.  However two Democrats joined the Republicans and one missed the vote due to health reasons, which allowed the pro-lender position to prevail.  One of those two Democrats, Sen. Tim Golden, has been mentioned as a possible candidate for Governor in 2010. 

Gabe Jordan of the Cordele Dispatch writes of meeting Bill Shipp many years ago and missing his twice weekly columns over the last month.

We’ve been missing his commentary lately.
While Shipp was serving in the Army in Germany all those years ago, he
met the love of his life, Renate, who he recently lost after a lengthy
battle with heart problems and ill health. Since that tragic loss Shipp
has justifiably taken a leave of absence that will end around Aug. 8.

Bill Shipp's column returns tomorrow and Bill Shipp Online will also return for coverage of the runoff elections and continuing coverage of Georgia politics leading up to the election.