Maria Sheffield and The Ox

Maria Sheffield officially announced her Insurance Commissioner candidacy with a press release yesterday that was sent to Peach Pundit’s Jason Shepherd.

The two most glaring things from that press release?

1) The headline says she announced via Facebook and Twitter. The problem here is that while she DOES have a Facebook page, I’ve been searching high and low for a twitter account – including asking quite a few people behind the scenes, doing a google search, and using twitter’s in-house search feature – and there flat out isn’t a twitter account with her name on it anywhere. So she’s already lieing, and this is only her first press release!

2) The other problem is her blatant – and apparently, deep – connections with her former boss, the current Insurance Commissioner, the lieing, bullying John Oxendine. Her first paragraph makes her appear to be an Ox Clone, as her positions are pretty much exactly his – up to and including supporting the so-called “Fair” Tax. Next, she reveals that she spent several years working directly for Ox as his “Legislative Liaison and Legal Counsel”. Given the volume of Ox’s allegedly unethical and possibly illegal acts, doesn’t sound like she was very effective there, does it? (In her defense, she left the Ox’s employ at some point in the past and is now working as a lawyer dealing in “regulatory and corporate insurance law, public policy, government relations and coverage matters”.) Her connections with the Ox go back all the way to his very first election as Insurance Commissioner. In that 1994 race, she served as his “political coordinator”, then was hired by the Office of the Insurance Commissioner as Ox’s “Attorney for the Regulatory Services Division and Lobbyist for the Georgia Department of Insurance” in 1996, where she served until 2002. Apparently, she has been at her current job since then. Finally, she notes that she has hired Kathryn Ballou as one of her “general consultants”. This is the same Kathryn Ballou that served as Ox’s campaign manager until he fired her over the summer for her ineffectiveness, and it is the same Kathryn Ballou that is still married to Ox’s Chief Bully Strategist, Jeff Breedlove.

Due to these facts, Sheffield appears to be The Ox’s appointee hand-picked successor. With her in office, The Ox would be able to maintain control of the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, regardless of whether he wins his own race or not. IF he actually manages to win his own race – and current indications are that he has already plateaued and is declining – it would thus give the Governor almost direct control of the Insurance Commissioner office – in direct violation of the whole point of having the Insurance Commissioner elected separately from the Governor. If it was the will of the People of Georgia to have the Governor appoint the Insurance Commissioner, why have them constitutionally mandated as separately elected offices?

In other words, yet another power play from The Sterile Bull that absolutely reeks of back-door, good-old-boy (and girl) politics.

Is this REALLY someone we want to even actively consider??