Beer and Wine pouring passes predictably; Bell tosses hat in the ring

Oconee County Board of Commissioners Chairman G. Melvin Davis cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the beer and wine pouring ordinance for restaurants in unincorporated Oconee County yesterday. Conversely former Oconee County Republican party chair Sarah Bell tossed her hat into the ring to run against Davis for the nomination. I wish Ms. Bell the best of luck with her burgeoning trek but so far her campaign has a less than auspicious beginning.

I wonder where local G.O.P. wunderkid Jay Hanley comes down on this race; I would imagine with Davis, but it will be interesting to see how the beer and wine issue ferments in the next several months.

Her former party leadership position is also where the incumbent Davis started his ascension to the top of Oconee County Board of Commissioners position when a few members of the Republican party decided to purge the nomination of a firefighter and husband of the former Mayor of Bogart almost a decade back. Charles and Robin Hoag along with former chair Wendell Dawson remain not the biggest fans of Davis, and perhaps Bell can ring them up for support.

I commend Ms. Bell for taking the chance to run against Davis but her ideas are less then inspiring so far. I would agree that her employer Gainesville State College needs more land, but she missed a chance for a simple solution of connecting the two ends of Bishop Farms Parkway to make the campus safer and have another entrance into the cramped campus. The chair of the BOC could take a leadership role working with Watkinsville and State of Georgia in expanding the crowded campus, but she seemed less than anxious to take on this role if she were elected.

She seemingly wants to do away with an unspecified amount of some of 300 county jobs, but does not know where to begin. I would say she is quite naive in this respect. Having been a county employee twice in the last couple of decades does jaundice my view. She shows a distinct lack of leadership and plan for the future of Oconee County, both areas of vulnerability for Davis. She could galvanize the supposed opposition to the beer and wine ordinance; but that would be pandering to a special interest group which she claims to not represent. I do not think this would amount to more than a couple of thousand voters at the maximum; I could be very wrong on this but I think it would take some kind of scandal or other issue to catch fire under Bell to propel her to victory.

Bell should have switched parties or run as an independent as nothing she said on the interview with Tim Bryant's Newsmaker Thursday radio show on 1340 WGAU seemed particularly partisan or party related other than waving the banner of overgeneralized G.O.P. platitudes. This would give her more time to raise money, awareness, profile and allow voters of Oconee County to get to know her better. Admittedly the Republicans still have a two-to-one lead locally in active voters and the political calculus has not changed enough to give any Democrat a serious shot at winning right now.

I would wish that Lee Becker would run as a Democrat against Davis or at least for a spot on the Board of Commissioners. Also I would recommend Jonathan Veit as a quality candidate on the Democratic side of the ledger for the Board of Commissioners. Both have quashed attempts on my part to urge them to run. Rich Rusk would be another quality Democratic candidate for county or regional position. There are many other well-to-do Democrats in Oconee County who could run for office, and so far the local Democratic leadership, myself included, have failed miserably in recruiting and retaining candidates to run for ANY office.