Oconee County, GA Politics

This is the result of a long series of email exchanges, but it was fun and I was happy to contribute. I can remember being huddled at the end of the stairwell in my pajamas watching a crowd of people up our stairs raising their hands for George McGovern on a cold night in 1972. We had a "raucous caucus" according to the Des Moines Register and Tribune newspaper at the time and thus was born yet another nickname from Coach McGuire. We had people packed into every corner of our stucco house on the hill in the middle of Snake Drive.

I have lived in Georgia more than a quarter century with my father's family going seven generations deep on a hilltop in Druid Hills, but I grew up in the great state of Iowa in a rather interesting political climate. My mother Norma S. Matthews was part of the apparatus adjusting the Iowa Caucuses to the front of the line in 1972. We hosted a caucus at our house on 44th st.eet "Snake Drive" where people huddled in corners to declare their allegiance to everyone from Hubert Humphrey to Edmund Muskie to Scoop Jackson and George McGovern. My mom was the co-chair of the McGovern campaign and we had quite a parade of people through our living room and guest rooms that year, including Bill and Hillary, Gary Hart, and many others less famous. McGovern came in third that evening but won in the expectations game, doing better than was thought possible, and the Senator from South Dakota won the elusive momentum factor into New Hampshire and Wisconsin on to the nomination. Every ...