The Evolving 42nd District GA Senate Race
Decatur Metro | January 22, 2010Things are slowly beginning to take shape in the race to fill the 42 District GA Senate seat being vacated by David Adelman, who is scheduled to become President Obama’s Ambassador to Singapore in the coming weeks.
Jason Carter and Tom Stubbs have already officially announced, but are there other candidates waiting in the wings? In an overview of the race thus far, the Decatur News Online e-pub drops this interesting tidbit…
Acting Chair of the DeKalb Libertarian Party, Chris Barber, told Decatur News Online that his camp will announce a candidate for the seat in the very near future. Barber says that the candidate is a long-time Decatur resident and small business owner that will “reach out heavily to the gay and lesbian community.” “His platform will be based on human rights and fiscal responsibility,” Barber said.
And shifting the focus back to the known candidates, David writes in to DM with a report of a polling call from Jason Carter and a question for his fellow readers…
Got a polling call from what was never explicitly identified as — but very clearly was — the Jason Carter campaign for the Adelman seat. It was remarkably thorough and long (i.e. expensive), it might be interesting to post a “have you gotten any polling calls? if so from whom?” question in the next few days.
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I had a polling call that was obviously from Carter’s campaign, and I was taken back by the phony nature of the questions. After the rather standard favorability questions about important issues, current politicians and the candidates running for the seat, they began to ask questions about how they should market the candidate. For example, if I was told that his great grandmother (Miss Lillian for those that remeber the Carter era) joined the Peace Corps and inspired him to join would I be more less favaorable to Jason Carter. Or if I was told that he helped found a shelter for battered women, would that impact my opinion of him? Or if I was told that his wife is a public school teacher and he help start an after school program, would I be favorably impressed?
Does the candidate really need polling to define himeslf to the voters? It all seems so phony. Please just cut the consultants, be yourself and let the voters decide. The other possibility is this was a push poll intended to build his name recognition and reputation. In either case, I’m not impressed and I’m a liberal Democrat. As far as I can tell he is an unknown in DeKalb County. I want to see a citizen who has done a lot of volunteer work, or has been a leader in some neighborhood issues/causes. Thats a genuine public servant who might be deserving of elected office. Riding on your family name and marketing consultants, doesn’t cut it.
Uhm, isn’t politics phony? Like, isn’t that the point? to fool enough people into thinking that you will do exactly what you say you will do if elected, and, then, turn around and do nothing, or, worse, the opposite?
I got this same call. I thought it was funny, because the pollster mispronounced Adelman, Decatur, and DeKalb.
I would suggest that you give serious consideration to learning more about Tom Stubbs. I think you will be impressed. He has been a leader on many neighborhood issues and he is a tireless volunteer for a number of community and school projects. Whenever I need a volunteer, I know I can count on Tom. He is also a leader in the legal profession. He has been the president of the DeKalb Bar Association and he is currently a member of the Board of Governors for the State Bar of Georgia. I am lucky to have Tom for a friend and I hope he is my next state senator. He is a genuine public servant.
He has done a lot of volunteering. In fact, he co-founded an entire volunteer-bank organization that goes around to help worthy causes called “Democrats Work” (http://democratswork.org/index.php?page=display&id=182).
Democrats Work…isn’t that an oxymoron?
Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself. Let the stoning, flogging, tarring and feathering begin.
Yeah, whereas Republicans hire immigrants to the hard work.
I kid, really, politicians ARE all the same.
Politics is the weighing of your personal conscience against the expectations of those you represent and getting things accomplished.
Would you fair any better Jack Burton? I mean…Gibbets?
“Politics is the weighing of your personal conscience against the expectations of those you represent and getting things accomplished.”
Idealistically, sure that’s what it is, but I think in reality anyone that can handle the stress and cognitive dissonance involved is a person who is searching for something other than “getting things accomplished”–like money and power and money or power, or rather money/power=power/money. Take your pick–like I said, they’re all the same.
I’d rather be called Richard Burton, really, and no I wouldn’t fair any better because I would not be in politics.
I had the same call and I don’t even live in Dekalb any longer. They even called me using an area code outside the district!
Pollster mispronounced so many names and other errors I had to keep asking questions of them!
As for the questions about the family members influencing favorability as a candidate, that to me was a clear toe in the water to see if President Carter’ several recent controversial positions/statements would make voters turn off to Jason.
make room for the possibility that the questions Progressive Dem described were designed to explore respondents’ values and priorities. That is, of the many things that could be highlighted about the candidate in this particular campaign, which ones are likely to push positive buttons among which categories of voters? that’s strategic communication, and there isn’t anything phony about it, necessarily.
back to the regularly scheduled politician-poking.