Hodges is absolutely clueless

While campaigning, staffers always fear that their candidate will say something stupid.  In some cases, it’s inevitable.  In others, it’s fixable.  In still others, it’s just proof of how out of touch a candidate really is.  What’s really amusing is when they couple a stupid comment, sometimes acceptable, with something that no one who knows them actually believes.

And that’s just what Ken Hodges did last week in Thomasville.

First, Hodges is quoted in the Thomasville Times as saying, “I’ll be the only South Georgia candidate running for statewide office.”  Well, I’ll bet that’s news to Libertarian candidate for governor, and Cairo resident, John Monds.  I mean, last time I checked, governor was a statewide office, right?  And Monds is running, so that makes Hodges either a liar or just clueless in this case…I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt in this instance and just call him clueless.

As if this wasn’t enough, Hodges is quoted as being in favor of open government.  Now, this is just hysterical.  This is the man who is claiming he’s entitled to immunity for operating the Dougherty District Attorney’s office as if it were the private investigators for Phoebe Putney.  This is the man who sought charges against two whistle blowers for crimes they allegedly committed in locations they had never been to.   This is the same man who required employees to attend a “meeting” that turned out to be a campaign event for a friend of his.

Frankly, I have to have serious doubts about Hodges “open government” credentials with all of that going on.  Of course, open government is easy to ask for when you’re campaigning.  It’s what you do while in office that counts, whether it’s open or behind closed doors. 

We knew Ken Hodges was a big fan of abusing power, but now we know he’s apparently unable to use Google effectively.  That alone would have shown him that Monds was running.  He could have phrased it differently to make it clear he wasn’t counting Monds (that whole “viable candidate” stuff could have come in handy here), but he didn’t.

Now, not everything Hodges said was something I can take issue with.  For example, Hodges is also quoted as saying “Fixing Atlanta at the expense of the rest of the state would not happen on my watch,” and that’s something I can completely get behind.  Ignoring the rest of Georgia while focusing on Atlanta is a bad idea, and I can frankly support that sentiment.  However, it’s easy to make a sound bite.  It’s actions that count.

The actions that I’ve seen from Hodges make me question whether I’d want him as dog catcher.