Even though the Barack Obama campaign has begun advertising in Georgia and other Southern red states, Thomas Schaller doubts the presumptive Democratic nominee can actually flip any of the GOP's solid South in a New York Times editorial today.  Schaller, who wrote a book urging Democrats to focus on winning national elections with a strategy that excludes a Southern appeal, points to the curious case of Mississippi. 

In the state, Obama could receive up to 37% of total votes just from African American voters, and would only need 21% of white voters' ballots to get to 50% and take the state's 6 electoral votes.  Unfortunately, 21% would represent a 50% increase over John Kerry's haul in 2004, which was just 14%. 

In Georgia, Kerry got about 23% of all white votes, and the African-American percentage of the electorate was 25%.  Based on Schaller's math, Obama would need to similarly increase his share of white voters in the Peach state to just under 33% to win, or slightly less if Libertarian Bob Barr takes votes from John McCain.  That will be tough: though Bill Clinton likely got that number in the 1990's, that would have been the last time it happened.  Al Gore's estimated share of the white vote clocked in just under 30% in 2000.

Rep. Earl Ehrhart's former employer, the Facility Group, and its top executives including CEO Robert Moultrie were re-indicted by federal prosecutors on June 19th.  The new indictment was unsealed today.  The new indictment, which replaces the prior one, alleges that the company used "straw contributors" to circumvent state contribution limits.  A straw contributor is someone who gives to a campaign and is then reimbursed by someone else for their donation, in this case the company.

The Facility Group's troubles stem from a failed beef processing plant that the company built in Oakland, Mississippi which cost the state more than $50 million and 400 lost jobs after it closed just a few weeks after it was completed in 2004.  Federal prosecutors contend that the Facility Group knew about problems with the plant but didn't inform the state.  In Georgia, the Facility Group and Moultrie are politically connected and manage construction jobs for numerous government entitites, including Speaker Glenn Richardson's Paulding County.

In what could ultimately be a troubling sign for the prospects of presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, the New York Times reports that 6-term conservative Utah Congressman lost a Republican primary Tuesday to a candidate that challenged him from the right.  Rep. Chris Cannon had a 96 rating from the American Conservative Union and the endorsement of President Bush, which should have been enough to carry what is one of the most conservative districts in the nation.

But the voters in the district which covers Salt Lake City's suburbs opted instead for a former BYU football player who hammered Cannon for being weak on immigration and other issues.  McCain's lifetime rating from the ACU was an 82 as of 2007.  That places him solidly to the right of the average Senator, but maybe not far enough right for voters like those in Utah and similar blocks of voters in places like the Metro Atlanta suburbs, Virginia Beach or the Republican outposts of Northern Virginia. 

Voters in those areas delivered massive margins to George W. Bush in 2004, which helped to put Georgia solidly in the Republican column and move Virginia from a potential tossup to a fairly comfortable win.  Former Congressman Bob Barr once had the solid conservative credentials to appeal to these voters, but he has moderated many of his stances since leaving Congress and is now more in the mold of a traditional libertarian.  Ultimately though, some of these voters could end up deciding on Barr not because of his policies but due to dissatisfaction with the Republicans for what they perceive as the GOP diluting its conservative brand over the last few years, and McCain has long been the poster boy for that movement among the far right. 

The Politico today takes notice of something that just about anyone glued to the TV this presidential season has noticed: just about everyone these days is a political strategist.  As long as someone can string together a few coherent sentences and isn't too hard on the eyes, the cable networks can find some time to slot them in to offer their 'expert' opinion on whatever the day's controversy is, even though many of these so-called experts only political experience is volunteering with a Young Democrats or Republicans organization or writing a speech or two one summer as a college intern.

Of course, by the above definition of coherency and being pleasant to the eye, many actual political strategists are most likely disqualified.  Speaking of issues with legitimacy, results from dubious pollsters with questionable or non-existent long term track records have recently put red states like Georgia "in play" while removing a traditional "battle ground" state (Michigan) from contention in this year's Presidential election.  The Politico's article today is a good start, the public is being fed an unending stream of low-fiber commentary.  Maybe tomorrow they can focus their lense on the booming field of pollsters that supply much of the fodder that the fake strategists regurgitate.

Bloggers have been complaining for months that Democratic Senate candidate Jim Martin has been unseen.  Well apparently he's been in the call room raising money, and he's hoping that voters will see enough of him between now and July 15 to make up for the fact that they haven't seen that much of him prior to this point.  Martin's campaign is spending approximately $250,000 with Georgia broadcast and cable stations to air the following ad for the next seven days.

The Milken Institute's latest State Science and Technology Index is out, and Georgia ranks right in the middle of all states at #25.  The AJC ran a modified AP article that devoted considerable ink to the state of California, which dropped from its longtime #2 ranking (behind Massachusetts) to #4.  Curiously, they did not mention Georgia's steady slip from as high as 15th place 6 years ago to 18th four years ago and 25th now. 

The category most responsible for Georgia's slip in the rankings, Technology and Science Workforce Composite Index measures the number of people working in various fields per 100,000 residents.  In growing fields like biomedical engineering, Massachusetts has more than 15 times the number of per capita workers that Georgia does.

Tifton's Republican state Senator Joseph Carter is abandoning his re-election bid to run for an open Superior Court race, reports the Tifton Gazette.  When a candidate for the state legislature withdraws before the primary, his or her party cannot replace them on the ballot with someone else.  Because no other Republicans are running, this could have put this otherwise safe Republican seat into Democratic hands.

Luckily for the Republicans, the Georgia Democratic party was unable or unwilling to qualify a candidate here.  They also left the seat uncontested in 2006.  Assuming no independent candidate qualifies in the next week (anyone who can gather the approximately 4,000 signatures needed can have a seat in the Senate) the state is expected to re-open qualifying at some point in the near future, although the legal procedure to do so remains unclear.

Don't be surprised if state Rep. Austin Scott, currently locked in a tight rematch with an opponent who drew 46% of the vote in 2006 withdraws from his race after the primary and enters qualifying for the Senate seat.  Scott, a moderate Republican often at odds with the House leadership in the past would be able to easily hold the Senate seat for his party, averting a disaster.  If he withdraws from the House race after the primary, the Republicans can also replace him with another candidate.  One quirk: Scott's cousin, former Democratic Rep. Ray Holland of neighboring Ashburn was often said to have his eye on this Senate seat when it was held by Democrat (later Republican) Rooney Bowen.

Last week, WSB-TV’s Lori Geary reported an important story that has been largely overlooked (or ignored) by the print media. Implicated in this lack of coverage is the state’s primary paper of record, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Geary’s report featured an angry-looking Gov. Sonny Perdue responding to her question regarding the tragic case of 16-month-old Amiya Brown, who was allegedly beaten to death by her parents, even after the Division of Family and Children Services (DFACS) had opened a case file about the child after her arm and leg were broken. Rather than taking custody of the child, DFACS sent her home with her parents, who allegedly murdered her days later.

Perdue’s specific response to Geary was, “If the expectation is, is that we as a state are going to keep every criminal out there from harming or killing their child, that’s probably an unrealistic expectation.” Geary contrasts that response with Perdue’s attack on then-Gov. Roy Barnes for saying during at a WSB debate the 2002 campaign that with 20,000 children in state custody “children die every day.” The story replays a portion of an television advertisement Perdue’s campaign used to exploit the Barnes statement, including the following statement: “Things just have to change. Sonny knows there’s no excuse for even a single death.”

More important than the issue of a media “gotcha” resulting from Perdue attacking Barnes for a problem that Perdue subsequently failed to solve, the press is failing to follow up on whether the current governor has succeeded in eliminating deaths of children who are serviced by the state’s child welfare system. Fixing Georgia’s chronic problems with its child welfare system was among Perdue’s most important campaign promises — far more than those he made and broke regarding our traffic mess, like incentives for telecommuting and retiming of traffic lights. The Amiya Brown tragedy is just the latest DFACS failure during the Perdue administration, and that sad circumstance has received little notice in the media. Even when such a story does draw attention, Perdue has not been put on the proverbial hot seat by the press corps to explain why he has failed to keep his promise on the topic.

If pressed, Perdue will likely trot out his latest flack to give the stock answer that “he’s turning around 130 years of Democratic rule,” upon which Georgia’s political press corps will likely accept the answer, include it in a story and move on. That’s too bad. Perdue is almost three-quarters of the way through a two-term administration. He needs to be pressed about the important issues, and whether he’s doing enough (or anything) to address them.

DFACS is at the top of any reasonable list. Other important issues, however, are included. Some of those are a school system that shocks the state with a massive failure rate by students on standardized tests, the water crisis and metro Atlanta traffic, to name just three.

In any case, someone should be asking questions. Sometimes you never know how the pressure created by particular pointed questions might change the world. For the sake of the next Amiya Brown, let’s hope that someone starts asking, someone else feels the heat, and the world changes just a little bit for the better.

VIDEO: WSB Report.  2002 Perdue Ad.

On the same day that State School Superintendent Kathy Cox suggested to Georgia school systems that they delay the start of the next school year to give officials more time to clean up the mess from the last one, House Democrats slammed her for the recent CRCT failures.  In a call for accountability, House Democratic Leader DuBose Porter, who has been rumored as a potential 2010 candidate for Governor asks Cox what she knew and "when did she know it?"

Democrats and many education officials allege that Cox and others knew the currently taught curriculum was not adequate to pass the new test based on a small sample of students who were given the exam last year.  Instead of redesigning the test, or the curriculum that was taught, they continued to recommend out-of-date coursework that guaranteed even many honor students would fail.  As part of their press release, the House members called on Gov. Sonny Perdue to work with already cash strapped school systems who must  now accomodate a record-breaking number of summer students who need to be re-tutored and tested in order to advance to the next grade by August.

"I'm too old to wait."  That's Rev. Joseph E. Lowery's personal plea to Georgia Democratic donors on behalf of Sen. Barack Obama's Presidential campaign.  The letter, hitting mailboxes this week contrasts Lowery's long involvement in the civil rights movement with the urgency of this year's election and ends with a plea to generously give whatever the donor can afford to Obama for America.