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Campaign Diary by William Coit
Thursday, March 21, 2002From the Griffen Daily News, March 20, 2002
By TRAVIS RICE
trice@griffindailynews.com
Daily News Staff WriterA parade of Republican candidates passed through Griffin Saturday at the Spalding County Republican Party breakfast at Western Sizzlin'.
State Senator Mike Beatty of Jefferson is visiting Republican organizations across the state to build a network for his run for Lieutenant Governor. "We are building a statewide organization," Beatty said. "We've got to set up a campaign strategy that will work statewide." Beatty's message is the Republican mantra of lower taxes and less government. Like many Georgia Republicans, Beatty is also making a campaign issue out of the heavy-handed control exercised by Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes and the Democratic majority in the legislature. "The reason I'm running for Lieutenant Governor is because we need to end the political plantation system that has evolved over the last 100 years," Beatty said. Other Republicans have run in the past on the platform of ending the one-party Democratic control of the state, and those efforts have failed. But Beatty said voters are ready for a change in leadership. "This is a different year, this is a different election cycle," he said. "People are ready for change." Beatty was a key opponent of video poker, pushing the issue last March before the Democratic majority was ready to address it. "The video poker issue is something the people were very ahead of the politicians, it was a grassroots effort," he said.
State Rep. Mitchell Kaye is running for state school superintendent and he is trying to avoid the partisanship that is so evident in most statewide races. "I've been a partisan Republican for 10 years," Kaye said, "When it comes to education, there are no black children, no white children, no Republican children, no Democratic children, just children." But Kaye's non-partisan tone doesn't stop him from criticizing Gov. Barnes' education reforms. He said the new state agencies the reforms created don't address the main issue of the state's curriculum. "It was more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic," Kaye said of the A-Plus Education reform plan. Kaye said that, if elected, he will overhaul the state's Quality Core Curriculum to make it more demanding. "The focus on learning and achievement is the most important thing," he said, "Everything else is just a distraction."
Congressional candidate William Coit also attended the Republican breakfast. Coit is a black Republican running in the newly-created 13th Congressional District, which runs south into Griffin from Clayton County. The district was created by Democratic lawmakers to favor a Democratic candidate. It is a heavily minority district, but Coit said he wants to run on issues, not race. "I don't want to raise the racial issue, it should not be a part of the 13th district," he said. Coit said he supports the agenda of President George Bush. "My campaign is about putting money back in people's pockets," Coit said. "That cuts across all races." These candidates must win the Republican Party primary in August before facing the Democratic nominee for each position in November.
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