COLUMN: Porters look to make history

The husband and wife team are running for Governor and Lt. Governor respectively and reports indicate, if elected, might be the first husband-wife combo to pull off such an accomplishment. In some states, the candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor run as a ticket, however, that is not the case in Georgia.

The Porters are actually running separate campaigns. DuBose, a newspaper publisher who has been involved in politics for years, faces a tough road in the Democratic primary for Governor. He would have had better odds had former Governor Roy Barnes not decided to get into the race.

Ironically, Porter’s wife, Carol, may have a better chance of obtaining the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor. Currently, she is the only announced candidate challenging Republican incumbent Casey Cagle.

In doing some research on this, I can’t find anything quite like it and it appears no one else can either. The only thing that even comes close — and this probably stretches it — is when Lurleen Wallace succeeded her husband, George Wallace, as governor of Alabama in the 1960s.

George Wallace was planning on a run for president in 1968 and needed to continue having the power of the governor’s office as his sounding block. Alabama state law at the time, however, would not allow Wallace to hold consecutive terms (the law was later changed) so he got his wife to run. Lurleen Wallace won in 1966 although she would die from cancer before the term was over and before her husband ran a third-party presidential campaign.

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The 7th Congressional District will have a new congressman beginning in 2011 as John Linder has decided to retire. Look for a crowded field, especially in the Republican primary, this summer as candidates look to replace the long-time Congressman.

I have never been in favor of term limits. (They actually already exist in the form of the voting booth. If people don’t like an incumbent, they have the power to vote him or her out of office). However, a replacement for Linder will not be all bad as the long-time congressman’s lone claim to fame has been his proposal of the Fairtax bill.

While I am in favor of the Fairtax and any bill that lowers taxes for that matter, on a scale of 1 to 100, the chance of this ever becoming law is closer to 1 than 100. Linder has, quite frankly, done little else while in office. In a time when the average working man and woman are hurting and hurting badly, we need elected officials to do more than push a single issue that will never become reality.

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Thumbs up to Republican state senator David Shafer of Duluth who has introduced a bill which says if a party is currently ballot-qualified for the statewide offices, then it is also automatically qualified for all offices.

According to an item in Ballot Access News, the bill by Shafer is the first introduced in the Georgia legislature since the 2005-2006 session. It would help ease the burdensome restrictions on third parties in Georgia.

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The Tea Party is now a ballot qualified party in the state of Florida and has qualified a candidate for the United States Senate in Nevada, Ballot Access News also reports. Petition work is also underway in Connecticut. Unless ballot access laws are made more accessible in Georgia, it would be tough for the party to take off here, at least as far as putting candidates on the ballot.

Chris Bridges is an editor with Mainstreet Newspapers. You can reach him at chris@mainstreetnews.com.