I’ve been hearing some grumblings in Democratic circles over the past 36 hours or so about 10 Democrats who voted for David Ralston, the Republican nominee, for Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives instead of Calvin Smyre, the Democratic nominee.
The 10 were Ellis Black, Bob Bryant, Amy Carter, Mike Cheokas, Bubber Epps, Carol Fullerton, Gerald Greene, Bob Hanner, Kevin Levitas, and Alan Powell.
I wanted to look at it from a bit more clinical perspective, so I used the General Assembly Vote Tracker to do a basic mathematical analysis (I’m a computer geek and a former math teacher, sorry!) on these ten Representatives’ votes from 2009, as well as both Parties’ nominees for Speaker – David Ralston from the GOP and Calvin Smyre from the Dems.
My methodology was simple: I weighted all nay votes as -1, all yea votes as +1, and all no votes or excused votes as 0. I did one analysis with all 526 votes the House cast last year, and another round counting only those votes where there was at least one no vote from one of the 12 people in question. Under this analysis, a person who is present and votes no 100% of the time will have a score of -526 for the first round and -172 for the second round. Similarly, a person who is present and votes yea 100% of the time will have a score of 526 or 172. A person who is either present and whose yea/nay votes are exactly 50/50 or who is never present for any vote will have a score of zero. The results are below the jump. [Continue Reading]
Quite a few new developments came out yesterday in the continuing saga of the fallout of Glenn Richardson’s political collapse, and I want to get y’all caught up, for the moment, on where things currently stand – at least as best as possible, given the currently available information.
In the Speaker chase, several new names cropped up. Erick Erickson, in an endgame I knew had to exist, went forward endorsing Tom Graves for the job late last night. Earlier in the day, a Facebook group to get Barry Loudermilk the job was created, and Bill Greene, a recent candidate for Mayor of Braselton, GA, wrote an article on the Campaign For Liberty site about this. The Facebook group was created by Jenny Hodges, Ray McBerry’s campaign manager, and quite a few of its current 22 members are people associated with Ray McBerry’s campaign, including the man who openly called for war against the US Government a month ago, State Rep Bobby Franklin. Quite frankly, while Loudermilk is well regarded, he simply doesn’t have the influence to pull this move off, and it is a VAST over-reach, which we’ll talk about in a moment.
Also placing his name in the Speaker chase was Tommy Smith, whom AJC’s Political Insider Jim Galloway credits as being the first entrant. Smith, an unknown who had many questions of “Who??” and “What????” erupting (even though he has been in the House for 30 years, much of that time as a Democrat) is running for the job on the promise of ending the hawk system I still need to get a chance to write about, but which DuBose Porter has made some great points against.
Others who have been named as possible contenders include Larry O’Neal of Warner Robbins (currently the chairman of the very influential Ways and Means Committee) and David Ralston. [Continue Reading]
Note from Jeff: I did some basic checking into this post, and apparently Porter is correct that the Hawk system was a creation of the Republicans when they took power in the House of Representatives. Before that, many House leaders were ex-officio members of most committees – meaning that they themselves could still swoop in and potentially change the outcome of a vote to suit their wishes, but they did not have a system of “roving enforcers” that the Hawk system creates. That said, I’m not sure I agree with the title of this post, but I didn’t create it. This post, minus this paragraph and a brief question at the end, was completely written by a candidate, and I happen to agree with its general premise that the Hawk system needs to be disbanded. Without further ado, here is some commentary on the Hawks in the Georgia House of Representatives written by House Minority Leader and Democratic Candidate for Governor DuBose Porter.
Have you ever wondered why Georgia, one of the most beautiful states in the world, is at the bottom of the good lists and at the top of the bad ones? It is corruption, plain and simple. Corruption blocks jobs, keeps gridlock, designs water plans to fail. Georgia’s corrupt government keeps education down and prison populations up.
As a State Representative I have fought corruption on either side of the aisle, but the number one corruption facing Georgia today, is a corruption that allows other corruption to thrive- the Hawks in the Georgia House of Representatives.
The Hawks in the Georgia House of Representatives have taken away representative government in Georgia. Only in Georgia does this threat to the American way of life exist. [Continue Reading]
Above is the Fox 5 Atlanta report from last night titled “Her Side of the Story”. In it, Susan Richardson, the ex-wife of Speaker of the Georgia House of Reprentatives Glenn Richardson, makes some very serious allegations – specifically that Speaker Richardson recently threatened to beat her and use the Georgia State Patrol to track her down and that the “inappropriate relationship” that was the center of an ethics complaint against him a few years ago was actually a full-blown affair that she knew about.
Suffice it to say, the Speaker has not exactly had a good day today. Erick Erickson has said that the text messages in question are real, and even GriftDrift has begrudgingly said that Erick is probably right. State Rep DuBose Porter (D-Dublin), the House Minority Leader and a current candidate for Governor, has already called for the ethics investigation to be re-opened, and there have been many calls among various Representatives about what is going on and what will happen next. Indeed, I’m told that the “damage control” phone call Erick said occurred around 5p wasn’t so much “damage control” as trying to figure out what happens next – after all, this story is barely 24 hours old. [Continue Reading]
