Bloglanta

Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor of Georgia in 2006, just hit his first major road bump in the campaign. Taylor’s son Fletcher was charged with a DUI after crashing his car on Aug. 18 in Charleston, S.C., killing his passenger. This situation presents a serious problem for Taylor who, as lieutenant governor, has continually fought for tougher DUI laws.

Now Taylor’s son is sitting in a Charleston jail just as the race to garner the democratic nomination kicks off. Taylor says he will not resign his post nor will he quit the race because of the incident. He added that he will give his full support to his son during his difficult time.

Taylor’s first challenge is to defeat former Secretary of State Cathy Cox, a formidable opponent who says she has the endorsement of 51 members, or two-thirds of the Democrats, of the state House, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The race between the two of them should be fairly clean.

Should Taylor win the nomination, then he will have to face Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue in the general election. We all know how Republicans conduct warfare in Georgia politics. Remember in 2002 when Republican Saxby Chambliss defeated Democrat Max Cleland for his seat in the U.S. Senate by running television advertisements with a picture of Cleland next to pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in an attempt to make Cleland look weak in the war on terror?

Cleland is a triple amputee Vietnam veteran while Chambliss never went to Vietnam. National observers described that campaign as one of the dirtiest in recent memory.

Republicans must be licking their chops in anticipation of all the television advertisements they can come up with. I can just hear it now: (narrator speaking in a dark voice) “Mark Taylor says he is for tougher DUI laws. Mark Taylor says he wants to crack down on drunk drivers. But Taylor’s own son was involved in a fatal drunk driving accident last year. Is Taylor’s disingenuous rhetoric really right for Georgia? Re-elect Sonny Perdue!” This may not be exactly how it is but will probably sound similar.

If Taylor thinks the Republicans will not use this incident against him, then he only needs to take a look at recent history to see that he is sadly mistaken. Readers might say to themselves, “Boy, Jonathan, you sure are pessimistic. No way will the Republicans stoop so low.”

I do not believe that the issue is “stooping to a new low” so much as it is an issue of doing or saying anything to win. Gov. Perdue is a weak governor who unnecessarily opened new wounds over the state flag, is responsible for the egregious Voter ID Bill, and, with fellow Republicans in the State Assembly, partially succeeded in fighting open government (although they did not succeed in taking closed government to the extent they wanted). I do not believe the governor has a leg to stand on in the general election and will have to resort to telling half-truths about and use distortions of his opponent to win.

The Republicans are just now coming back to power and after being out for so long, the incentive to do anything to win is even more enticing. I just hope I’m wrong.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 27th, 2005 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Politics, as Usual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.