chrisishardcore.com

« Dean Makes Good Moves | Main | Social Security "Means Testing" »

April 22, 2005

Sonny's Full Circle

Today Sonny Perdue signed the voter ID bill. Let's do a little recap on Sonny's decade plus in politics. In 1990 he was elected as a Democrat to the state Senate, where he quickly rose to the top (under the tutelage of former Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard (D - Decatur)). In that time period, the leadership of the Democratic Party in the state Senate was overwhelmingly dominated by white males. In 1997 Sonny was elevated to President Pro Tem of the Senate, which is considered the top spot and in that time period served as a very close #2 to the Lite Governor.

Something else happened in 1997, Charles Walker, the charismatic African American senator from Augusta became the first black Majority Leader of the body. Interestingly, he beat out future party switcher Jack Hill (D - Reidsville), who also happens to be a college friend of Sonny's. About a year later, at the end of the '97-'98 session, Perdue announced he was leaving the Democrats and switching to the Republican Party. Allegedly he had become involved in a shouting match with Walker that may have gotten physical.

In 1998, Perdue predicts (wrongly) that a number of other Democrats in the Senate would switch parties with him and that Republicans would take over the body after the election. Instead, Democrats have an historic year, thanks in part to record African-American turnout, and elect statewide a number of progressives on race, including Governor Roy Barnes and Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor (who both nearly instantly become Perdue nemeses) as well as an Attorney General and Labor Commissioner who are both black.

This all culminates three years later when Barnes pushes through a divisive but long overdue change of the state flag. Legislative Republicans are almost universally opposed to removing the racist Confederate battle emblem from the banner -- then Republican House minority leader Lynn Westmoreland advises his colleagues that the flag change is "a Democratic issue that they must settle. An issue that the governor must address." Then Republican Senate minority leader Eric Johnson adds "It's their [Democrats] problem. Let them deal with it."

The cowardly insinuation was clear -- when the flag was last changed in 1956, the legislature was overwhelmingly Democratic and so it was their problem. Never mind that in 1956, the vote was extremely close (the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy had opposed the change) and that those segregationist Democrats that voted for it where the forefathers of the modern Georgia Republican party. In the case of Westmoreland there wasn't a clear-cut direct lineage, but in the case of Perdue and many other Republicans who had actually been Democrats only a few years before, Westmoreland and Johnson's logic should have compelled them to not just participate in but lead the effort for the change. After all, if it was the Democrats fault that we had the old flag, and the responsibility of those Democrats to change it, well you can't just absolve your old Democratic sins by calling yourself a Republican.

The flag change, if nothing else, finally gave Republican activists something concrete to point at when rural conservative Democrats would question why they should abandon a Democratic party that had been so good to them. Amazingly, only a charisma challenged suburbanite and Cruella DeVillish state school superintendent challenged Perdue, a real life good ole' boy if there ever was one in the Republican primary. Perdue hitched his wagon to a subtle racist opposition to the flag change that was good enough to win both the Republican primary and general election.

It should have been clear to just about everyone that Sonny has what you might call a problem with race, but he's a "nice guy" so he gets a pass. He simultaneously announces a racial healing tour of the state and a bill to change the state flag that includes a provision that could ultimately lead to the return of the 1956 flag (House Democrats remove this provision, the tension filled atmosphere surrounding the bill ultimately leads to the disarray that causes the Democrats to lose control of this body).
Two years later, the Republicans have complete control of Georgia government. A top priority becomes a voter-id bill, which includes stringent identification requirements that will slow down and bottleneck voting at heavily minority and elderly precincts while at the same time loosens requirements and invites fraud in Republican dominated absentee balloting. Today, Sonny Perdue signed that bill into law. Confronted with the myriad objections of groups like the NAACP, League of Women Voters and AARP, he said he "just can't comprehend" their arguments.

And so, Sonny Perdue has come full circle. He emerged from a culture where whites (then Democrats) dominated. Confronted with a resurgence of minorities having power (like Walker) or wielding it (to change the flag) he balked, switching allegiances to a party where whites (now Republicans) still dominate. And now he has used the levers of power to try and cement a status quo where the right issue still allows a coalition of traditional whites to dominate.

Sonny Perdue is a man of God, and having met him (and being on a first name basis) I don't doubt his convictions. The Voter ID bill (like opposition to the flag change) may help him get re-elected, and for four more years he and his party may well reign supreme over our state. But at some point he will look back on his life in politics, how he took the easy road and appealed to the basest elements in his fellow man. And he will have to ask himself whether he was serving God or a man-made ideology. That will be a tough question for him to answer.

Posted by Chris at April 22, 2005 03:54 PM

Comments

Posted by: phillip at April 26, 2005 07:41 PM

Posted by: chris at April 27, 2005 05:43 PM

Posted by: phillip powell at April 28, 2005 08:14 PM

Posted by: Sid Cottingham at May 6, 2005 01:42 PM

Post a comment