Oconee County, GA Politics

I am just as flabbergasted at some of the results as the rest of you. The air was sucked out of the big upstairs courtroom last night as the final votes were tallied in the chair race. Sarah Bell ran a good race and emerged out of nowhere to challenge chairman Davis to the very end. I guess this means despite the perceived anti-incumbency fervor fanned by everything from Jim Ivey to secret meetings to courthouse moving rumors, Oconee County residents are reluctant to change leadership by a very slim margin. Looks like Oconee County voters rewarded John Daniell for his patience and smacked down Don Norris because of his suggestions about moving the courthouse. It also appears that there are more favorable memories of former fifth grade students of Kim Argo than there were people who actually voted for Ashley Hood. Hood knocked on many different doors in almost every subdivision in the county, but did not prevail despite an amazing collection of people helping her out. I really hope A...

But evidently Mr. Maxey heeded unsubstantiated advice from someone giving him some faulty political intelligence to have (contemplated) switched races at least twice since then. Based upon the overwhelmingly enthusiastic and positive feedback received upon floating a trial balloon campaign against Norris Board of Commissioners' slot for Post with the powers-that-be-and-don't-be around here, Maxey then explored the idea of running against Melvin Davis for Board of Commissioners chair. By then Sarah Bell had been lining up her supporters and much of the non-aligned political players in the county, thus negating any perceived or imagined groundswell of support for a Maxey candidacy. He has run a very high profile campaign, pouring lots of money in multiple billboards and various sized yard signs. I am voting for and actively supporting Chuck Horton for many more reasons than I can list here. Primarily (and this goes across all campaigns and races) there are those who think gover...

I am a yard sign person. Plant a picket with me. The young ruffians in my subdivision and surrounding areas of Watkinsville do not like the growing number of signs in yard. The vandalism has increased from pulling the signs off the metal posts to now bending over the metal support frame. No sign by itself has ever won an election by itself, but signs are a way to energize the supporters and show the increasing popularity of a candidate. Seldom has a local campaign won without signs, but I am sure it has happened somewhere in the recent past. The simpler the sign the better in my humble estimation. Less is more, more or less. Sometimes signs will have only the basics. The most minimalist sign this time around in Oconee County, Georgia has to be the simple green sign of Chuck Toney, running for the Board of Education, post 4 versus Mike Hunter. So far I have not seen a Tom Breedlove or Mike Hunter sign (but I am sure they are there), but the Toney signs simply say TONEY BOE in two decks ...

Mike Maxey may have made his biggest visible mistake by leaving (behind?) his campaign sign in the sacred soil of Harris Shoals park in Watkinsville, but there is lots going on behind the scenes that gives one pause and puzzlement at the very least. This Board of Commissioners candidate originally had his sights set on the Chairman's job, but the Chairman Melvin Davis's campaign manager Larry Benson is building a big hotel that Maxey will be paving soon here in Oconee. So this appearance of conflict of interest coupled with the convenient decision to pave the Veterans Monument coupled with the changing of his mind at least three times does not exactly instill confidence in the Maxey approach to governing Oconee County. This gives me ample reason to endorse the candidacy of incumbent Board of Commissioners candidate Chuck Horton for Post 4. Horton has more experience than just about anyone in public service, first as the Chief of Police at the University of Georgia and several t...

Listening to Mike Maxey on NewsTalk 1340 WGAU AM this morning was an interesting and ear-opening experience. He is younger than me, so I salute him for running for Post Four on the Board of Commissioners against Chuck Horton. He has lived here his whole life, so I am a carpetbagger compared to him (I've been here since the early 1990s). To listen to him though on Tim Bryant's show, we are an anti-business bunch on the BOC and have a bloated budget needing to be sliced in Oconee County. Look folks, we have a volunteer fire department. That is going to need to change sometime in the next couple of decades. We have more people coming to his county every day, so we need to have an equal increase in government infrastructure and planning. I think Mr. Maxey's experience on the planning commission proves he is part of the problem, not part of the solution. We have three thousand empty lots in various subdivisions and developments right now, so I think we need to let the infrastruc...

Voter suppression is a very hot button topic around Georgia, what with the poll tax, the county system, and various other nefarious schemes cooked up over the years and here. So this study and article should be of some interest to those who wish to Get Out the Vote and register more people. I wish we had voter registration tables at Gainesville State College campus in Oconee, the Oconee County Courthouse and every soccer, baseball and softball game (not to mention auto shows). Good to see Tommy Malcom out campaigning this weekend. When will Blake Aued of the Athens Banner-Herald cut Malcom a little bit of slack and at least include him in the conversation about State Senate District 46 seat held by Athens attorney Bill Cowsert? There have been a couple of articles and a few blog posts that sometimes do not even mention Malcom as a candidate against Cowsert, suddenly the darling of the state GOP party. I saw a lot of Malcom signs out Good Hope way in Walton County. What is Mike Maxey ...

The biggest news out of this story should be that Oconee County Board of Commissioners member Margaret Hale got up and left a budget meeting, but instead it looks like another member of the G.O.P. elite are going to run against G. Melvin Davis for the chairmanship of the Board of Commissioners in Oconee if we are to believe the scuttlebutt at the end of the comments. Always click on the show comments section of Athens Banner-Herald stories online as they often provide hilarity, irony and insight into various goings-on in Oconee County and elsewhere.