Oconee County Observations: Oconee County Republican Candidates Not All Pure Republicans, Voting History Shows
Republicans in Oconee County are in fashion, are trendy, and are the favorite brand of soap of most voters. It is as if the country club of choice if the G.O.P. in Oconee County, and the fact remains that the Republicans remain a 2-to-1 majority locally and it is damn near impossible for a Democrat to be elected locally in this day and age. Purity and adherence to some supposed orthodoxy are not a very good indicator of how genuine a candidate is in my humble opinion. In this day of teabagging, the Republican party's big tent has become smaller and more exclusive to relatively wealthy white people, while the Democratic party has rebounded in the once Republican strongholds of Cobb and Gwinnett counties in Georgia.
The fact that some candidates have voted for Democrats in the recent past should actually bring more votes to some candidates, but some local voters claim a purity test of how much a conservative Republican are they. A gauge of how meaningless party labels are would be the latest profile photo in Facebook of G.O.P. chair Jay Hanley shaking hands with Democratic politician Zell Miller at a recent fundraiser for Hank Huckaby. Now admittedly Miller has burned every bridge with Democratic hierarchy locally, statewide and nationally but remains a favorite of Republicans, but he refuses to change parties like almost every Republican in Oconee County has in the last several decades with the exception of Hanley (he's too young).
Local blogger extraordinaire Lee Becker does his usual thorough job of analyzing voting trends of most local candidates, and while I maintain that primary voting really does not indicate what a person does or does not believe, it does show how some folks say one thing and act another way. I have selected the G.O.P. primary ballot in almost every local election because I want my vote to go toward the local election since the Republican primary has become the defacto general election in Oconee for more than a dozen years. No one who knows me or reads this blog would accuse me of being a DINO (Democrat in Name Only) but it seems there is a whisper campaign about some candidates on the other side being RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).
I would think that a record of political campaign donations that candidates have made in the last dozen years might be a better gauge of where candidates come from, but I salute Becker for remaining a nonpartisan observer of both parties and someone who puts his money where his blog is.
Oconee County Observations: Oconee County Republican Candidates Not All Pure Republicans, Voting History Shows
The fact that some candidates have voted for Democrats in the recent past should actually bring more votes to some candidates, but some local voters claim a purity test of how much a conservative Republican are they. A gauge of how meaningless party labels are would be the latest profile photo in Facebook of G.O.P. chair Jay Hanley shaking hands with Democratic politician Zell Miller at a recent fundraiser for Hank Huckaby. Now admittedly Miller has burned every bridge with Democratic hierarchy locally, statewide and nationally but remains a favorite of Republicans, but he refuses to change parties like almost every Republican in Oconee County has in the last several decades with the exception of Hanley (he's too young).
Local blogger extraordinaire Lee Becker does his usual thorough job of analyzing voting trends of most local candidates, and while I maintain that primary voting really does not indicate what a person does or does not believe, it does show how some folks say one thing and act another way. I have selected the G.O.P. primary ballot in almost every local election because I want my vote to go toward the local election since the Republican primary has become the defacto general election in Oconee for more than a dozen years. No one who knows me or reads this blog would accuse me of being a DINO (Democrat in Name Only) but it seems there is a whisper campaign about some candidates on the other side being RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).
I would think that a record of political campaign donations that candidates have made in the last dozen years might be a better gauge of where candidates come from, but I salute Becker for remaining a nonpartisan observer of both parties and someone who puts his money where his blog is.
Oconee County Observations: Oconee County Republican Candidates Not All Pure Republicans, Voting History Shows
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