Win A Signed Copy By Senator Max Cleland!
Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove
By Senator Max Cleland
The North Fulton Democrats have a copy of Max Cleland’s book autographed by the senator himself. It could be yours if you win our participation competition! Next Tuesday join us for our first ever Activist Fair. Along with Anne Bartoletti, former chair of the NFD and a lieutenant in Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy, we’ll be signing up volunteers to work for and with the NFD and local Democratic candidates. We want you to bring as many Democratic friends to this event as you can.* Whoever has the most friends in attendance wins the book. Simple, right?
with 2010 being such an important election year in Georgia, the North Fulton Democrats is starting to build its volunteer base. Soon we’ll be hitting the streets, going door to door and making phone calls to spread the Democratic message and we need YOUR help!
*guests you bring must be first time NFD attendees or can’t have attended NFD events in the last 12 months. Guests must check in at the sign-in table and inform us who invited them.
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Democrats Vie to Take On Chambliss
Oh, if there were only an appropriate punchline to follow.
But Dale Cardwell and Dr. Rand Knight, two men who hope to run against and unseat Republican Saxby Chambliss, were nothing but earnestly serious while outlining their respective credentials at the North Fulton Democrats meeting Tuesday, Aug. 14.
While Cardwell, the former investigative reporter for WSB-TV, stressed his honesty countless times, Knight declared Georgia the greatest state in the union and both hammered at what they called Chambliss’ incompetence.
Generally, they both toed the party line on the hot-button issues of the upcoming campaign: get out of Iraq now, No Child Left Behind needs to be left behind, we’ve got to secure our borders and curtail illegal immigration.
“We were lied to,” Knight said of Iraq. “We really don’t have time to argue that. It’s time to get out; it’s time to get out now. There’s no reason we can’t start right now. We have 150,000 troops there, let’s take out 10,000 next month, let’s take out whatever we can take out immediately and start the process. We have left our own country completely at the mercy of folks who can attack us and our domestic security is weak.”
Cardwell said: “We as Americans have allowed the Republicans to create some connection in people’s brains that equate their position with Americana or Americanism. I think we need as Democrats to start setting the record straight. I agree that we should not have gone in to Iraq. But I’m telling you, we didn’t lose the war. Our troops won the war, Pres. Bush lost the peace. He failed to secure the peace in Iraq. We’ve got to quit being the police department for Iraq. Which means we’ve got to start pulling out. I believe we do it the same way we should have done it when went in. We should have never invaded Iraq to do nation building.”
Both agreed that it’s time to undo Bush’s No Child Left Behind initiative.
“It’s an unfunded mandate,” Cardwell said. “I’m, against it, I’d repeal it or it has to be vitally improved and it has to be funded in a manner that helps local states do the job of educating our children.
“I don’t believe in vouchers. I think vouchers are a fancy way of allowing private schools to raise their tuition. It’s not workable. I believe in charter schools. I believe in giving kids an incentive to achieve.”
“We’re not that far off there,” Knight said. “I don’t’ want no child left behind renewed and I don’t believe in vouchers. If we as a country can afford to send people to Mars, for goodness sake, if we can afford to give $40 billion subsidies to Exxon when they’re making $10 billion a quarter, we can afford to give the kids in our schools new computers. We can afford to make sure there aren’t ceiling tiles falling on their heads. We can afford to make sure that teachers are not the lowest paid professionals on the public docket.”
Cardwell revealed a three-point plan to deal with illegal immigration.
“No. 1, it promotes national security to secure the border,” he said. “We have to secure the border. No. 2. I’m going to create and force Congress to use our social security card system as a clearing house to make certain that if someone wants to get a job, that you can online or over the telephone verify that they are who they say they are. We already have the technology. Why won’t we do it? Because special interests won’t allow it to happen. No. 3, this is tough but I told you I’m going to tell you the truth and I’m going to tell you the truth from day one I believe that if an illegal immigrant breaks a law, commits a felony in our country, that begins the process of sending that illegal immigrant back to the country of their origin. If the felony is severe and it outweighs the crime of crossing our border illegally, then that person has to do his time if convicted in an American court.”
Knight countered: “I worked with NASA for several years up in D.C. on a project that brings a 40-foot container out, opens up a big satellite dish and we tracked birds that weight a half-pound, individual birds, half a mile away. We can tell you every single flock of birds and how many birds were in it coming from Acadia National Park down to the Everglades. And you know if we can track a bird, we can track people crossing the border. Let’s give employers and business the tools they need to solve this problem. And let’s stop making these jobs available. Immigrants will not come and take them if the jobs are not available.”
Both candidates endorse universal health care. Someone in the audience wanted to know how to counter when Repblicans “start streaming socialized medicine.”
“We already have universal health care,” Cardwell said. “Take a look at Grady Hospital. They’re going broke. You know who’s paying for that? Raise your hand. You’re paying for it. Saxby’s not paying for it. The big health insurance companies aren’t paying for it.
“Wouldn’t it make a whole lot more sense to turn the model upside down? Create an incentive for companies to find a way to keep us healthier, keep our children well. We ought to give our parents the opportunity to sign on to use a caregiver, a physicians’ assistant, and a nurse practitioner in our schools as a primary caregiver. You get your inoculations there, you get your yearly checkup there and when you have the sniffles you go to that doctor at your school and you afford it on a sliding scale. If you want to opt out and want to choose private health care, that’s the way you do it.”
“Yes, we need to re-prioritize our spending immediately,” Knight said. “The first thing we do when we get there is we stop sending $20 billion to $40 billion, depending on who’s doing the accounting, a year in subsidies to profitable pharmaceutical companies. These are the companies that are already making plenty of money. We need to provide health care immediately for all Americans who cannot afford it. The way this looks is it’s going to be a privatization issue.”
And whom would they vote for for president if the election were held today? Knight took a pass, saying he’d support the party’s nominee.
“You want an honest answer, you want a straight answer and that’s what I did for 23 years [in broadcasting] and I’m going to continue doing it tonight,” Cardwell said. “I’m not officially endorsing this man tonight, but I’m going to tell you if I had to pull the switch right now it would be for John Edwards.”
They’re Back! Democrats Work to Solidify Base in North Fulton
By Liz Flowers / Reporter: Roswell Beacon
Last week, cars lined the street of a quiet, up-scale suburban neighborhood, their drivers arriving early for a Saturday morning event in North Fulton. The affair drew a houseful of motivated area residents ready to take on the establishment and reclaim a position in the leadership of the state. That’s right. Georgia’s Democrats are back from the grave and ready to party. And there are more of them than you might think living in North Fulton. One might even be your next door neighbor (gasp!).
Jane Vandiver Kidd was the star attraction at the recent North Fulton event, which drew Democrats from Roswell, Sandy Springs, Milton and Johns Creek. The diminutive Kidd took the reigns of the Georgia Democratic Party in January promising a back-to-basics strategy, including a bottom-up grassroots organizational approach to politics. “We’re here, we’re back, we never really left,” Kidd said to loud applause.
Kidd is no political novice. A native of Lavonia, Ga., she is a cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia, a former city councilwoman, a former State House representative, manager of a successful congressional campaign, and has served on numerous commissions, boards and federal agencies. She is also the daughter of the late former Georgia Governor S. Ernest Vandiver and grandniece of the late U.S. Senator Richard B. Russell. Kidd grew up with a deep-rooted sense of commitment to community and public service. She is gracious and approachable, but Georgia politics runs deeply in her veins.
Losing the State Senate, the State House and then the Governor’s mansion after 130 years of control might have been the wake-up call Democrats needed to motivate the faithful and attract newcomers to the cause. There is always a political complacency that accompanies existing power. Democrats had run the state since Reconstruction. There’s something very motivational about being the underdog.
For most of its tenure, the Democratic Party of Georgia was a tool of the governor’s office – not an indictment, but simply a well-known fact in political circles. That’s just the way it was. DPG’s reputation for supporting local candidates wasn’t good and, therefore, provided little reason for grassroots support of the state party. Local Democratic candidates relied on their own fundraising strength or that of their local party – if there was one.
But there are other mitigating factors boosting Democratic causes these days, too. Georgia Dems, like their compatriots across the county, are getting a jumpstart in support from what many perceive as the missteps by the current occupant of the White House. Widespread anti-war sentiment and frustration on what the future holds in Iraq is oozing from the cracks, regardless of political affiliation. Immigration policy has pitted Republican against Republican. And without a single presidential candidate to rally around, in a crowded primary, the GOP isn’t focused with its typical laser-like mantras. Senators Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss and Representative Tom Price, with normally tightly synced media messages, started unraveling under the pressures of immigration reform.
At the state level, there’s been chronic Republican infighting, while some leaders jockey for more power and set up for their own 2010 gubernatorial bids. And the Fulton County Republican Party chairman’s seat is being challenged for internal voting irregularities.
Democrats, not historically known for having a fabulous game plan, are learning to take advantage of the opportunities. “Republicans have been very self-destructive,” Kidd said.
For now, Democrats have let Republicans fight it out, but Kidd said Democrats can’t and won’t sit on the sidelines forever. “We’re still new at being in the minority, but we have to emerge with solutions. We can’t just sit back and wait. We have to present new and fresh ideas. We need to develop spokespeople who are right for certain issues and [the party] has to work with elected officials,” Kidd said.
Kidd said one of the first things Democrats had to come to grips with is that Georgia was indeed a two-party state. “We were one of the last states to ‘go red,’ and we will be one of the last states to return [to blue]. I see us in the middle of that curve,” she said, talking about the blue/Democrat-red/Republican state-by-state political mapping. “But were are on the back side of that slope and that gives us real momentum for 2008 and 2010.”
Kidd said the party has to “mean something” in order to be relevant and connect with the average voter. The strong emphasis on television media during recent political campaigns is not the essence of the Democratic Party, she said. “We need to return to our roots, and build strong coalitions. We need to focus on the overlapping concerns of all our party members – the moderates, the conservatives and the liberals. We need to command economic efficiencies and prioritize our spending. We turned our back on business partnerships and we didn’t express ourselves very well [in that arena]. Our platform was not clear and we let the Republicans co-opt the language. We have to focus on access to education, access to health care and jobs.”
Kidd has a simple plan – win elections. She hopes to do that through candidate recruitment and training and restoring the state party as a meaningful resource to Democratic hopefuls. She also wants to increase the voice of local organizations by providing a greater role for out-of-state party members, moving away from the “Atlanta knows best” concept. And she has restructured the party’s leadership to include hands-on vice chairmen with specific outreach assignments. One of the vice chairs, Virgilio Perez Pasco, lives in neighboring south Forsyth’s Polo Fields.
Kidd brought Matt Weyandt, DPG’s brand new executive director, with her to North Fulton. Weyandt has been on the job for only a week, but he is working with Kidd to develop a statewide strategy. Also joining Kidd at the event were lieutenants from the Young Democrats. The YD’s are on a mission to revive Democratic outreach in schools. They recently registered 5,000 people to vote, with a goal to motivate 30,000 more people to go to the polls by 2010. And with a $250,000 challenge grant from the national Democratic Party, they may have a running start.
Kidd said she remembered the days when candidate stumping attracted crowds of 10,000 people. It was a family event, she said. Recognizing that loading the family into the Chevrolet may not be practical in this era, she said taking politics back to the people through door-to-door campaigning, blogs, e-mail and podcasts are viable campaign strategies.
But to make Georgia Democratic candidates viable again, says Kidd, the challenge for Democrats is to be competitive in every single race. “We are not doing our best work as a political organization unless we give every voter that choice,” Kidd said.
“2008 represents a turning point for Georgia Democrats. We can stop the Republican tide and begin winning races again. We can re-organize our party and turn it into the party that we want and deserve,” she said. “The first thing we have to do is throw out the tired concept of ‘winnable’ races. Most of the races that we write off are ‘unwinnable’ only because there hasn’t been a viable Democratic challenger in years. That’s our challenge.”
And it will be a challenge. North Fulton has a voting split of 60/40, favoring Republicans. But there are precinct pockets that strongly vote for Democrats, several of which carried John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. “It’s a tough, tough challenge, but even if we don’t win, we want to show [Republicans] we’re there,’ Kidd said.
The first test of the DPG’s new strategies comes this week. As the Beacon goes to press, a Tuesday special election is taking place in Georgia’s 10th Congressional District to fill the vacancy created by the death of Charlie Norwood. “It’s perceived to be the reddest of the red [areas],” said Kidd. But she said with more than 20,000 get-out-the-vote phone calls and three back-to-back weekend door-to-door canvasses, the party hasn’t left any stone unturned. “We’re not willing to write anything off.” They’re praying for low voter turnout (which, in a crowded field, helps the Democrats) and fruitful returns.
The stakes couldn’t be higher for Democrats in Georgia. Whether or not Kidd’s plan to turn around the lackluster DPG will work remains to be seen.
Paul Troop, a North Fultonite at the DPG event, said his biggest party concern is to avoid another bloodletting primary election, such as the one that took place in 2006 between Democratic gubernatorial candidates Mark Taylor and Cathy Cox. “We need strong top-of-the-ticket candidates that will appeal to Georgians,” Troop said. He added, “We must unite now.”
“Iraq is the biggest thing I hear about when I talk to friends at work about politics,” said Naomi Donaldson, a new member of the North Fulton Democrats. Donaldson said she wanted to become more involved in her community and made a decision late last year to get involved with the Democrats “Essentially, we all want the same things,” reflected Donaldson. “We have to be willing to listen to each other.”
“We want to reach out and bring back all those who feel like they didn’t have a [political] home,” said Steve Leeds, secretary for the DPG. “We want to bring everybody back.”