The Other Athens: The TOA Local Endorsements

It seems to be the time for endorsements in the blogosphere, so here are mine –not that I expect to sway any opinions whatsoever. Like others, I will not cover federal or state level offices, as my ideological predisposition can be gauged by merely glancing to the sidebar at the right.

Locally, however, thing are a bit different; Jmac over at Safe As Houses and I come from opposing philosophical camps – and yet our endorsements for Clarke County races are almost identical.

I will take that as validation of my contention that party affiliation has little to do with local issues. Back in 2004, when the matter came up for a referendum regarding the mayor and commission slots (the Board of Education has been nonpartisan for years), lots of folks on the left made hysterical predictions that Republicans would exploit nonpartisan elections to covertly infiltrate the progressive goodness of the Unified Government, leading inexorably to the county’s downfall and that the entire idea was an evil GOP plot.

What utter bunk – and yes, some of the people peddling that line knew damned well that it was bunk. Regardless, since 2004 I am the only Republican to run for a local office, thereby revealing that the argument was, indeed, bunk.

Be that as it may, here are my endorsements:

Clarke County Board of Education District 2 – J.T. Jones

I don’t have anything against Vernon Payne personally but he has been on the Board since the Carter Administration, during which time the CCSD has been mired in increasingly expensive mediocrity. The logic that the editorial staff at One Press Place used to pick Payne in this race totally eludes me.

Clarke County Board of Education District 6 – Jim Geiser

Again, nothing against Charles Worthy personally but his term as President of the Board has been less than impressive. See Jmac’s comments, with which I am in full agreement.

In a related issue, not that anyone cares, I contacted the PR folks at the CCSD to get the source material for that per pupil expenditure figure Worthy used at the candidate forum. The CCSD claims that Worthy’s figure is based on the “operating budget” and that Geiser’s figure is based on that plus “federal allocations” for the same period. The story is that the figure was arrived at by some back-of-the-envelope type calculations by the PR folks using the operating budget and the number of students. In response to my (very specific, but polite) inquiry, I received none of the specific numbers used in that calculation and no citation of sources. I still maintain that Worthy’s figure came from the Georgia Department of Education’s 2006 expenditure report for the CCSD, which it matches to the dollar, and that Geiser’s figure came from the same report for 2007, to which his campaign web site links directly and which he versified on the Banner-Herald comment board. But like I said, no one cares.

Clarke County Board of Education District 8 – David Huff

This is the one race over which Jmac and I differ. We both think that either choice would be an improvement over the retiring incumbent; he comes down of the side of Chinami Goodie, while I come down on the side of Huff. Fair enough.

Athens-Clarke County Commission District 6 – Valdis “Red” Petrovs

I’ve been in Petrovs’ corner since the get-go on this one. I found Ed Robinson’s idea of annexing portions of adjoining counties so as to extend the “green belt” questionable, to put it mildly, for quite a few reasons.

Clarke County Sheriff – Kenneth Brown

What with hiring Nuwabians, eavesdropping on inmates’ calls to their attorneys, etc., we should count ourselves fortunate, indeed, that Ira Edwards hasn’t gotten the county sued eight ways from Sunday.