Poetic Justice in Georgia

When 2006 dawned, it looked as if yesterday’s primary in Georgia would be a sleepy affair. Republican governor Sonny Perdue seemed like a strong favorite for re-election. Neither of the state’s senators faced re-election. None of the state’s members of Congress seemed likely to encounter strong primary opposition.

Seven months makes a big difference. The GOP primary for lieutenant governor featured the implosion of Ralph Reed—undone not by liberals but instead by Christian conservatives disgusted by revelations from the Abramoff inquiry, which showed how Reed’s Christianism took a back seat to his pursuit of money. And in the Democratic primary for the 4th district, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has been forced into a runoff by a badly underfunded challenger. McKinney, of course, is a very controversial figure, but this race looked like a shoo-in before she decided to strike a Capitol Police Officer who asked her to go through a security checkpoint on a day when she wasn’t wearing her members’ ID.

Georgia voters have, in my opinion, made some peculiar choices in recent years, especially in the 2002 Senate election. Yet yesterday they delivered some appropriate poetic justice to two of the more disreputable politicians of recent times.