The City of East Cobb and Term Limits

Poor Bill Byrne, no one has a nice thing to say about him or .

If you were thinking about writing something about Bill Byrne’s notion of creating a city of East Cobb, it’s been done. There was nothing nice about the idea in .

There was nothing nice in an online Marietta Daily Journal article, which was followed by comment after comment after comment and they were nearly all negative. We know that Billy was pandering to the famous over the top greed of many East Cobber’s to help him in his election.

Next time Billy needs to rewrite his message to make it more attractive because greed isn’t going away or return to his favorite theme, racial fear better known as blacks on trains.

Many Democrats think that “term limits” are just a tactic by Republicans to remove long-serving Democrats from office without an election. Some Democrats think it is just a campaign theme Republicans use to run on when they can’t think of anything else to say but fail to impose it upon themselves when they have the chance.

After living in Cobb County since 1995 and in East Cobb for six years, it’s apparent to me that “term limits” is actually the desperate plea of many Republicans to allow some of the sunshine of democracy to be allowed into Georgia Republican politics.

Cobb County is a microcosm of Georgia. It is majority white and Republican but just barely and becoming less so every year. It has a strong coalition of the greedy and fearful. All these old white Republicans, mostly males, wonder why can’t their views be better represented in the state legislature.

Special interests rule in the Capitol. To get elected, our representatives say the correct conservative words. They tip their hats to the NRA, the Georgia Right to Life, and the Georgia Tea Party to get their votes but they go to lunch, ball games, share vacations, and return the calls of the special interests that actually get them elected and re-elected and re-elected.

Most county commissioners engage the public with town hall meetings and timely responses of voter inquiries but our Republican state representatives and state senators haven’t been seen in years and years. The lack of visibility problem got Don Parsons a primary opponent, , and Matt Dollar a primary opponent too, . East Cobb Republicans should say “thank you” to the ladies with the backbones.

One way that real Republicans think they stand a chance to get real, non-corrupt Republicans elected is to limit the number of terms a candidate can hold office. Newt got the Republican base motivated behind “term limits” but he was only kidding.

It got some of his true believers angry enough to mortgage the house, campaign on “term limits,” get elected, and then quit after a short time in office. When they noticed that they were among the very few of Newt’s army who were quitting, they felt betrayed. But Newt is still on FOX.

On the down side, “term limits” will likely result in the spouse of an elected official to run for office once and give it back to their spouse after a term or two. A candidate could use up his allotted number of terms and let a law partner hold his place for a while, think tag team wrestling.

Actually, Democrats also think that Republicans control the Republican party. But west of I-75 there are two Democratic runoff elections where the candidates who knocked on the most doors and made the most phone calls are doing better than their big buck opponents.

As it turns out, we’re talking about ladies again, Lisa Cupid for Cobb Commission and Diana Eckles for the State House. We are talking about three-shower-a-day door-knocking campaigns in a Georgia summer. While Cynthia Rozzo her campaign, her performance showed that grassroots organizing and canvassing can be effective even for Republicans.

While the Cobb Republicans are thinking of ways to take back their party, we should all thank JoEllen Smith. Legislators in Atlanta who had not gotten an e-mail from Don Parsons in years, if ever, were flooded this summer with electronic correspondence. Don had gotten one award after another and he was making sure everyone knew. 

Was Don always this nice but too modest to share the good news? Did his check writing friends help him out? Ask him at his next town hall meeting. Thank JoEllen for getting Don to pretend to look like he was a living breathing public servant.